The world is constantly changing, and the majority of these changes are hard to explain, comprehend, and predict. People have to deal with a number of issues in order to avoid the challenges and undesirable adjustments. However, when globalization turns out to be the reasons for new urban inequalities and misunderstandings, people are stuck with their inabilities. Each new wave of globalization is characterized by many changes based on the economic well-being of citizens, increased social diversity, and neighborhood characteristics that cause some negative attitudes of ordinary citizens (Low, 2001; Wilson, 1996).
Globalization has a double nature. On the one hand, globalization may be considered as a chance to improve incomes and the quality of life in general. On the other hand, the benefits that can be observed as a result of globalization are not always available to everyone, and the number of losers can exceed. Wacquant (1999) admits that âthe new urban marginality results not from economic backwardness, sluggishness, or decline but from rising inequality in the context of overall economic advancement and prosperityâ (p. 110).
Therefore, though globalization may be considered as a chance to change something and enjoy the improvements, there are many groups of people, who continue suffering and staying invisible behind the tremendous success of globalization. There are many politicians and economists, who have already approved the presence of such burning problems as urban inequality and poverty, but they fail to offer appropriate solutions to solve such problems and provide people with concrete ideas (Florida & Garlock, 2013). Such facts prove another negative aspect of globalization in regards to the inequalities in todayâs largest cities. People are aware of the problems and their possible outcomes. Still, the development of new urban inequalities is hard to track because of the presence of benefits that make the majority of people blind.
Economic and urban inequalities may gain different forms, and one of them can be expressed through growing rent burdens. Ray, Ong, and Jimenez (2014) identify these challenges as an important long-standing problem that has to be solved because low-income renters and unexplainable tight housing market conditions put many people in danger of being broke and unable to rent houses. Ritzer and Dean (2015) raise the importance of ethical and moral concerns. It is possible to combine these challenges with housing trends and come to the conclusion that it is still possible to promote policies and change the situation. Affordable housing production has to be accelerated so that people can use the urban change to buy rather than just rent. Rent burden that many people suffer from today can be defined as some portion of income that is spent on the payment of gross rent (rent payment) that is hard to analyze at all regions (Ray, Ong, & Jimenez, 2014).
There are people, who cannot or do not want to pay cash rent. There are also the groups of people, who do not receive any income or have a negative history of incomes but have to pay rent anyway. Globalization and the current Internet progress and opportunities may help to hide incomes and deprive people of the possibility to pay rent. In other words, the new urban inequalities may influence the general housing rent due to the possibility to hide incomes and inabilities to declare true rental payments that have to be registered and controlled by the government. In other words, all people are free to earn the ways they can. Still, poor people remain to be poor, and rich people can use poor people to enrich themselves and do not pay any price.
References
Florida, R. & Garlock, S. (2013). Why itâs so incredibly difficult to fight urban inequality. City Lab. Web.
Low, S.M. (2001). The edge and the center: Gated communities and the discourse of urban fear. American Anthropologist, 103(1), 45-58.
Ray, R., Ong, P., & Jimenez, S. (2014). Impacts of the widening divide: Los Angeles at the forefront of the rent burden crisis. Center for the Study of Inequality, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Web.
Ritzer, G. & Dean, P. (2015). Globalization: A basic text. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons.
Wacquant, L. (1999). Logics of urban polarization: The view from below. In R. Crompton, F. Devine, M. Savage, & J. Scott (Eds.), Renewing class analysis (107-119). Oxford: Blackweel.
Wilson, W.J. (1996). When work disappears: The world of the new urban poor. New York: Vintage Books.