Essay on Urbanization Is a Blessing in Disguise

Hello Aspirants,

The statement “Urbanization is a blessing in disguise” can be both true and false, depending on the context and the perspective from which it is being viewed.

On one hand, urbanization can bring many benefits. Cities are often centers of economic activity, innovation, and cultural exchange, and can offer opportunities for education, employment, and social mobility. Urban areas can also provide access to better healthcare, sanitation, and infrastructure compared to rural areas.

However, urbanization can also have negative consequences. Rapid urbanization can lead to overcrowding, traffic congestion, pollution, and the spread of diseases. Urbanization can also exacerbate social and economic inequality, as well as lead to the displacement of vulnerable communities.

Therefore, it is important to carefully consider the effects of urbanization and take steps to mitigate its negative impacts while maximizing its potential benefits. This can involve investing in sustainable urban planning, providing affordable housing, improving public transportation, and promoting social inclusion and equality.

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Introduction

Urbanization is a process whereby people of urban area increases many fold as compared with people surrounding rural area. There is considerable variation in the simplicity of definition of urban area. In Argentina settlement having population of more than 2000 people is categorized as urban settlement.

In Israel all the settlements of more than 2000 habitants accept those where at least one third of the heads of households, participating in the civilian labour force earn their living ma agriculture is categorized as urban. In Norway the localities 200 or more inhabitants is classified as urban. In India the definition of urban area adopted is as follows.

(i) All places with a municipality, corporation, cantonment broad notified town area committee etc.

(ii) All places which satisfy the following criteria.

(a) A minimum population of 5,000 (b) at least 75 percent of male working population engaged in non-agricultural pursuits and (c) a density of population of at least 400 persons per sq. kms.

Main Characteristics

Urbanization has characteristics which are as follows:

(i) Urbanization involves an increase in the number of points of population concentration (ii) Urbanization involves a growth in the size of these points and (iii) Urbanization involves a transfer of people from agricultural to non agricultural occupations.

Urbanization as a Blessing in Disguise

Urbanization contributes to economic development in three different ways:

Firstly, cities and urban areas act as engine for growth in terms of production and market or service centers for their influence areas leading to an all round economic development of the area.

Secondly, urbanization and industrialization go hand in hand and are positively correlated with each other. It is an established fact that urbanization is always accompanied with industrialization or vice versa.

In urban area there are huge concentration of industries and other related activities which act as pulling forces for people from rural area thus proving as blessing in disguise.

Thirdly the urban v/ay of life has a significant impact on fertility rates. Urbanization helps to bring down both mortality and fertility rates.

This is evidenced from the experience of the North European countries which experienced a significant decline in fertility rates following urbanization and industrialization. But this example is not applied with the developing countries like in India where urbanization has led to multifarious problems.

Urban population living in towns and cities has steadily increased in India over last 90 years. In 1901 about 26 million persons where enumerated as urban residents and in 1991 the urban figure shot up to 217 million forming about 25.72 per cent of the total population.

India ranks fourth among the countries in the world in terms of absolute size of urban population, the first three being China, Russia and U.S.A. The urban population in the year 2000 is projected to go up to about 315 million indicating a share of 32 percent in the total population.

Out of 3696 urban agglomeration/towns in the country according to the 1991 census in 300 the population exceeds one lakh each. These 300 classes’ centers account for 64.89 percent of the urban population of the country. Out of these 26.64 percent of the population in class centers is concentrated in four metropolitan cities each with a population of more than 5 million.

The other 24.93 per cent inhabit 19 cities each with a population of one million or more. These 23 cities contain 50.57 per cent of the population in class I cities. A little over 35 per cent of the total urban populations are accounted for by medium and small towns, which hardly offer any productive employment but are at the most centers of trade and administration.

Rural migrants heading for urban work would not find it there and would go in search for it in the big cities. Moreover in this anything to the maintenance of that infrastructure, therefore the infrastructure Of the big cities is often overburdened.

The urbanization has proved blessing in disguise for various reasons. Industrialization

It refers to the growth of industries in urban area to the large scale providing the opportunity of employment and acting as magnet for the attraction of people from rural area and other small town.

Thus industrialization is the blessing for the people of these sector but problems are that all the people who come to cities do not get gainful employment and they become burden on cities in terms of slum dwellers and low paid workers.

Improvement in Transportation

Urban centers are known for containing good means of transports on which whole economy of the cities is dependent. These also act as means of attraction for rural people and thus proving as blessing for them. But their unlimited arrival in the cities overburden the transport system leading to contestation.

Improved Communication

Means of communication have played a vital role in the cutis’s economic development and which in turn have proved as blessing in attracting people from rural areas as well as for those people living in the cities. But again over- utilization of these facilities by these groups of people have aggravated the situation whereby instead of proving as blessing it has proved as a curse.

Higher Educational Facilities

These are the most important reasons for the urban centers to prove as blessing. It is the established fact that governments have established all the higher educational centers in the big and small urban areas which have acted as source for attraction to all kinds of people seeking the facilities for higher education.

Conclusions

Over viewing urbanization as a blessing in disguise it has been seen that this process has proved blessing of course leading to general development of economy through industrialization and related activities, but at the same time unlimited and unaccounted migration of people in urban area have overburden all the facilities available.

The fact that urbanization has been caused by push factor has given rise to a number of problems like overcrowding in urban areas and sheer inadequacy of infrastructure and various civic services.

Thus urbanization has proved blessing at the one hand and on the other hand has created multifarious problems for city dwellers in the forms of overcrowding.

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