Urbanisation

Question 1

what are the negative impacts of urbanisation

Answer 1

• not enough housing for migrants, or they can’t afford to buy or rent
• some migrants forced to live on the streets or in shelters e.g. 2009 more than 13,000 homeless Sau Paulo
• migrants often build their own houses, leads to unregulated growth of slums or shanty towns (leads to further problems)
• high competition for good jobs in the formal sector, migrants may have to accept low wages
• migrants may be forced to work in informal sector that don’t pay well
• rapid population increase puts pressure on roads and railways increasing congestion and air pollution

Question 2

what are the problems caused by shanty towns?

Answer 2

• often built on land unsuitable for construction
• often a lack of basic services like clean water and sewage disposal
• children don’t have access to education, difficult to get a well paid job and move out of shanty town
• tensions can arise between those who live and don’t live in shanty towns (difference in wealth)

Question 3

how can the impacts caused by urbanisation be managed?

Answer 3

• building new housing to replace slums e.g. Sau Paulo replace favelas with apartment blocks for locals to rent cheaply
• improving the services available in slums
• get residents involved in improving their local areas
• redeveloping whole areas of slum into new independent township e.g. Dharavi, Mumbai