Impacts of Migration on Urban Areas.

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Mark Evans

Impacts of Migration on Urban Areas

During the 1990s, more than 70% of the world’s population increase is expected to take place in towns and cities – 67 million people every year, equivalent to around four extra cities the size of New York. By the end of the century, nearly half the world’s population will live in cities. It was predicted that at the rate of growth occurring at the time that by the turn of the century there would be over 300 cities in developing countries with populations of over one million with two-thirds of the world’s urban population situated in developing countries. According to the United Nations Development Programme, ‘rural poverty, high fertility and environmental degradation continue to drive some 20 – 30 million of the world’s poorest people annually to the towns and cities.’ In general, migration is a more important component of urban growth in poorer, less urbanised countries where the nature of the migration process has dramatically increased due to the improvements in transportation.

Over recent years many factors have accelerated rural to urban migration. Increasing numbers of people mean there is an increased demand for housing, infrastructure and social services. The result of this is that almost half of the population in many large cities live in slums and squatter settlements usually without running water, toilet or electricity. This influx of people causes the city boundaries to spread outwards taking away farmland and forests and just encouraging more newcomers putting an even greater strain on the city.

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One of the important features of this urban growth has been the increasing tendency for it to give rise to megacities/primate cities - one of disproportionate size compared to next largest town/city in the region. A good example of this is Bangkok which totally dominates the development process in Thailand. It has a population of around 7 million – approximately 56% of the total urban population for Thailand – in a country which is still predominately rural. It is 50 times larger than the second city, a disparity that continues to grow, and subsequently it dominates the countries political, ...

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