Outline
The history of human kind has been one of movement, migration and settlement. While humans for most part of their history have lived in villages and subsisted mainly on agriculture, the rapid pace of modernization has shifted this emphasis from the rural background to an urban landscape. This has resulted in rapid urbanization which has led to underdevelopment, a concept, the veracity of which is being examined in this essay. The essay develops the argument by first examining the popular sociological theories of Dependency and the World system. It also examines the counter-urbanization theory of Neo-populism to give the contrarian view.
The essay finds a direct link of urbanization with underdevelopment. The essay through examples of the developing world and the developed world establishes the linkage between rapid urbanization and underdevelopment in both; the cities as well as the outlying peripheral areas. The author of this essay opines that urbanization alone is not responsible for underdevelopment but that a wide range of other factors such as Climate, Climate change, misconstrued government policies, social, moral and ethical parameters are also responsible for underdevelopment
The essay offers an original thought on utilizing the Boyd OODA loop to explain the problems of urbanization and underdevelopment. The essay concludes by finding credence for the two and three tier system theories but finds the neo-populist theory impractical. Underdevelopment however can be mitigated if the states evolve a holistic comprehensive plan that can be implemented in an optimum spatial and temporal time frame.
Rapid Urbanization and Underdevelopment
The history of human kind has been one of movement, migration and settlement. These settlements occurred due to a number of factors such as changing climate, population growth, and search for better living conditions or in some cases conquests for ‘God, Glory or Gold.’ Nevertheless, human societies continued to evolve, formulating sociological systems that regulated their lives and brought in stability. While humans for most part of their history have lived in villages and subsisted mainly on agriculture, the rapid pace of modernization has shifted this emphasis from the rural background to an urban landscape. The United Nations in 2007 had estimated that over half the world’s population were living in urban areas. This rapid urbanization has had its concomitant effect on the overall development of the states. Empirical evidence suggests that rapid urbanization has led to greater prevalence of underdevelopment which this essay aims to examine through the prism of sociological theories and the extant socio-economic factors.
Underdevelopment occurs when the complete socio-economic resources of a state or for that matter a region are not utilized optimally. It has often been theorized, especially, by Marxist thinkers that Capitalism encourages the empowerment of the few over the many and that resources get exploited to enrich the cities and not the rural countryside. This resulted in a ‘dependency’ in which the urban center dominated “the extraction and terms of utilization of the resources of the immediate hinterland (Flangan, 1993, p. 119)”. Thus the urban centers became the dominant core while the outlying hinterland became the underdeveloped areas.
The Two tier dependency theory was extended to comprise state relations wherein rich states grew richer at the expense of the poor states. The effects of this ‘dependency’ model according to some theorists, was that it led to large scale migrations within the country from rural countryside to the cities as also immigration of people leaving their poor countries for richer countries. This movement has been, in parts, a result of population pressures on the land. The UN’s World Report (2004) estimates that “world population is projected to grow from 6.1 billion in 2000 to 8.9 billion in 2050 (p. 4)”. Such rapidly growing population and land shortage in the rural areas according to Kitching (1989),” has led to an even more rapid process of urbanization (p. 74)”. The ill effects of urbanization are more visible in the third world than in the developed world. But such a conclusion is misplaced. The West faced very much the same problems that are being faced today in the developing world. When the Industrial revolution heralded a new age in Britain and Europe, it led to rapid urbanization. The cities became the magnate for the polity to gravitate to and consequently became choked. The sheer influx of human population outstripped the capacity of the cities to provide basic amenities leading to widespread scarcity of potable water, pollution and poor sanitary conditions leading to epidemics. This has been a historical trend right from the early days of industrialization where 19th century records show that “mortality rates in large cities appear to have been higher than the national average” (Leon, 2008, p. 3). The reasons why the Western countries were able to overcome the problems of underdevelopment so rapidly has been attributed to colonialism. European countries could source cheap labor, raw materials and sell their manufactured goods at competitive rates because of their colonies that provided the resources. Thus, the resources of lands almost three or four times the size of the imperial country were made available in the homeland that helped overcome the gap of urbanization and underdevelopment. Having had a head start on the road to modern economic development, the developed countries have managed to maintain the momentum till now, where the policies of free market, trade and globalization are showing their deleterious effect in the present global economic meltdown.
A large number of studies show that urbanization has been directly responsible for declining health standards in the ‘periphery’ because of the relative ease of providing better health care in the cities than in the far flung rural areas. Such studies and observations are true for the developing world. Better awareness and education offered by cities with their health awareness program make even the poor better aware of the health risks involved. “The higher rates of smoking in rural compared with urban areas in China and India (Leon, p. 4)” is a pointer in this regard.
Today, the two tier dependency theory is undergoing revision in the developed world as to its applicability. For example, within the developed world cities, underdevelopment is taking place within the cities. While rest of the ‘Big Apple’ is sufficiently affluent, the Bronx is decidedly underdeveloped with almost third world standard civil amenities. Not surprisingly, violent crime has spiraled in the inner cities leading to the formations of ‘gated communities’ for protection. Other than the gated communities, this rapid urbanization and its adverse effects have led to a ‘reverse migration’ where the suburbs are becoming the choice of abode of the people instead of the cities themselves. So in these cases, the ‘periphery’ is becoming more developed rather than less developed.
Yet another theory called the ‘World-System’ theory posits that the world system consists of the economically dominant, the underdeveloped and the intermediate semi-periphery states. This theory draws its strength from the example of the East Asian ‘Tiger economies’ that have prospered between the tussle of the rich and the underdeveloped countries. According to Ginsburg and Koppel (1991), Taiwan’s sustained growth with equity has been made possible because of “the effectiveness of both the population strategies and national development policies (p. 193)”. The same rationale is used to describe the prosperity of South Korea. Social theorists have argued that these intermediate periphery countries have been successful because unique geopolitical space had been created for them due to Cold War dynamics and thus they could exploit both the Blocs to their advantage. Political scientists have also used the logic that effects of urbanization in creating underdevelopment in a country also depends upon the type of political system in vogue in that country. According to their formulations, dictatorial regimes have had a poor record in aligning urbanization with underdevelopment leading to greater poverty. North Korea is the oft quoted example in this regard. Such a line of thinking is fallacious as it does not explain why the divide between the rich and the poor is so accentuated in democratic countries like India, and Brazil that hold the promise of being future economic giants but yet have oceans of underdevelopment riddling their respective landscapes.
In some cases, artificially enforced systems have kept the pace of urbanization low such as in South Africa during the Apartheid days. The White minority government had kept the majority black populations segregated and away from major cities. This led to low developments of the periphery but well developed ‘white only’ enclaves in South Africa’s major towns. However, when Apartheid fell, it led to rapid urbanization where “black people poured into the cities… placing enormous strain on urban infrastructure” (Louw, 2004, p. 181). These changes have accentuated the other ills of underdevelopment namely, unemployment, “lifestyles involving drug addiction, prostitution and alcoholism” (Nagle, 1998, p. 46). All major cities of South Africa have suffered from this rapid urbanization which has only increased social inequalities and violent crime rates.
The effects of urbanization have been more visible on island nations or islands because of the small land mass and limited resources that such geographical entities have. Rapid urbanization due to population growth has put tremendous pressure on resources that can be devoted. Citizens in search of work have moved from villages to cities which have not been able to keep up with the human influx. So rapid internal and external migration has also become a characteristic associated with rapid urbanization. The socioeconomic underdevelopment has also resulted in pronounced gender inequalities (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005, p. 672) amongst such communities with women mostly being the disadvantaged gender.
The undue emphasis on industrialization and urbanization has led many thinkers to evolve counter theories of development such as those propounded by Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Michael Lipton and E F Schumacher. Their theories called Neo-populism holds that for a nation to develop requires holistic development of towns and villages alike. In India, Mahatma Gandhi fervently believed that the overall development of the country was only possible if the villages too developed on an equal footing. Nyerere held that since Tanzania was an agricultural country, agriculture and the rural landscape deserved more emphasis rather than the towns as Tanzania in any case did not have a sound industrial base. These theories despite their idealistic appeal have failed to evolve into practical systems as the steady march of globalization has favored urbanization over the development of the rural areas.
The narrative so far makes it appear that increasing population is the main cause for migrations and urbanization which is further leading to imbalances between the cities and the rural landscape. While the ‘Malthusian Trap’ is true in its context, there are many complex factors that interplay when one examines the issues of underdevelopment. Climate plays a major role in determining which parts of the world ‘have it easy’ and which have to go ‘the extra mile’. For example, the degree of difficulty for Sub Saharan countries to sustain agriculture cannot be considered same as those faced by Europe or America.
Culture too plays an important role in the dialogue of development. In the Indian subcontinent, it is culturally mandatory for a farmer to divide lands amongst his male heirs. Most land holdings in the subcontinent measure less than an acre as compared to a farmer in the American Midwest whose holdings stretch over the horizon. Since the land holdings are small, productivity declines, leading to farmers forsaking agriculture and migrating to cities in search for more paying jobs. Underdevelopment is therefore a natural corollary. Non-democratic states have experimented with resolving this problem by taking away the lands from the farmers and collectivizing them. The great ‘Collective Farms’ experiment of the erstwhile Soviet Union was a resounding failure as curbs on human free will anywhere in the world has been. Economists point to China’s success in this regards and point to their double digit growth. The Chinese success story is slowly but surely unraveling as more and more reports trickle out of the ‘Impenetrable Dragon’ regarding food riots, land riots and poor conditions of rural China. On the contrary, the Chinese model of economic development reinforces the thesis that rampant urbanization is causing underdevelopment on gigantic scales irrespective of what the UN development indices may tell the world. Kahn & Yardley (2007) report that “ambient air pollution (in China) alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year and nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water” (¶ 3). The concept of ‘Development at any cost’ and ‘Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics’ is propelling China into an ecological, demographic and sociological maelstrom. In China’s case urbanization is just one symptom of underdevelopment. It is, in fact, the sum of many ill advised government initiatives.
Elsewhere, the urbanization-underdevelopment linkage gathers weight especially in South East Asia. One typical example is Jakarta, Indonesia. This metropolis was the brainchild of Indonesia’s Army general Suharto who wished to create a world class capital second to none. Consequently, over 60% of the country’s resources were poured into making a glittering capital with its wide verdant roads and leafy residential areas with American style mansions dotting the Jakartan landscape. A study by Jakarta university revealed that high level of urbanization in East Jakarta “created a high level of unemployment with 53.44% value of contribution and 45.56% influenced by other factors (Effendi, 2006, p. 33) “.The effects on the rest of the country were disastrous. The ‘periphery’ suffered immensely and Indonesia, which in the early 1950s was considered as a prosperous nation became one of the poorest countries in South East Asia. Today with the return of democracy, the government is trying to redress some of the problems of unplanned urbanization.
Sao Paulo, Brazil mirrors the experience of much of South America. The rate at which the town grew into a Megapolis could not be matched by the infrastructure development leading to startling divide between the rich and the poor areas of the city. Underdevelopment in this case affected not only the city but also the ‘periphery’.
Morality and ethical behavior also impinge on the dynamics of development. The stability of rural life in any country depends upon family and community values. This value system has come under increasing strain due to globalization and intense competition for scarce jobs. The large rural families consisting of two-three generations living together have come to pass not only in developed countries but also in developing countries. Single parent households are becoming a norm and urbanization has further acted as a catalyst for the degradation of traditional values. Morality too has become more ‘relative’ with its adverse effects on the society at large. It therefore comes as no surprise that America has the largest prison population in the world which according to the U.S. Department of Justice Statistics (2008) is 2,299,116 prisoners held in federal or state prisons or in local jails (¶ 1).
Urbanization per se does not always lead to underdevelopment if it is supported by sound planning and execution. John Boyd’s famed OODA loop is a useful theory to explain the relationship between urbanization and underdevelopment. “This model, although originally applied to military situations, is also applicable to business and other competitive situations (Bridges, 2004, p. 2)”. The Observe, Orient, Decide and Act processes are a full fledged tool for sound planning and execution. Governments that observe the socio-economic conditions properly, giving sufficient time to Orient themselves with the associated problems of urbanization stand to gain. Having spent optimum time in the observation and orientation, the governments that take the right decisions for urbanization which includes holistic town planning, realistic future growth assessment and development of spare capacity stand to gain. Having carried out these three activities in sufficient time, going through with the execution and the implementation of the plan allows the governments the luxury of having a stable economy and society. The OODA loop with respect to urbanization has to be executed in the correct spatial and temporal terms. Oftentimes, sound economic policies and town planning schemes come to naught because either the authorities execute them in too short a time or take too long by which time the demographics and socio-economic imperatives of the state overtake them.
In conclusion it can be reiterated that rapid urbanization has significant linkages with underdevelopment. The sociological theories of ‘dependency’, two tier or three tier systems are quite valid. The counter urbanization theories though idealistic and appealing have little chance of success in this world of galloping globalization where inequalities and the divide between the rich and the poor is a fact. However, rapid urbanization is not the only reason for underdevelopment. There are many factors such as misconstrued state policies, climate and climate change, social, moral and ethical parameters that have their effect on the development of a state. Underdevelopment however can be mitigated if states evolve a holistic comprehensive plan that can be implemented in an optimum spatial and temporal time frame.
Works Cited
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