ESG-4102: Urban Geography and Planning

Lecture 08: City Problems

A H M Nahid
Assistant Professor
Department of Development Studies
Islamic University, Kushtia

Lecture by A H M Nahid
 • Obsolescence is the process of
becoming antiquated, out of date, old-
fashioned, no longer in general use, or
no longer useful, or the condition of
Obsolesce being in such a state.
• Obsolescence can be of 2 types –
nce 1. Physical: poor structural condition,
old building, building worth
preserving.
2. Functional: Mismatch.
 Squatters
• Squatter settlements are areas of housing, usually
located on the peripheries of megacities, where
residents do not have the legal right to occupy the land
they live on.
• Squatter settlements are one broad consequence of rural-
to-urban migration and population growth, and they have
come with many social, political, economic, and
environmental effects within cities.
• Squatter settlements are generally located on the
peripheries of megacities in developing countries.
• Depending on the physical geography and spatial
organization of a city, squatter settlements can be found in
areas of undesirable land or areas where there is unclear
land ownership.
• Negative effects: Waste, unclean water, lack of sanitation
facilities, increased crime rates, lack of access to
education and health facilities etc.
Urban Environmental
Problems
The City’s Ecological
Footprint
• Cities impose an environmental impact on their
hinterlands and, in some cases, on ecosystems far beyond
the immediate region, owing to their demand for
renewable resources, such as water, fossil fuels, land and
building materials, which cannot be met from within the
city’s boundaries.
• Cities are also major producers of wastes, much of which
impact upon the surrounding region.
• The more populous the city the greater its ‘ecological
footprint’, which may be defined as the land area and
natural resource capital on which the city draws to
sustain its population and production structure.
The City’s Ecological
Footprint (Cont.)
• In the past, the size and economic base of any city was
constrained by the size and quality of the resource
endowments of its surrounding region, and a city’s
ecological footprint remained relatively local.
• Today city-based consumers and industries based in
wealthy nations have the capacity to draw resources from
far beyond their immediate regions and have increasingly
appropriated the carrying capacity of rural regions in other
nations, with little apparent regard for the environmental
impact of their actions.
The City’s Ecological
Footprint (Cont.)
• In the Third World the urban imprint is generally less far-
reaching, but nevertheless exerts a fundamental influence on
ecosystems within the city region.
• Among the major challenges for most Third World cities is the
need to address the range of environmental problems that has
been termed the brown agenda.
• This focuses the attention of urban analysts and decision-makers
on the primary requirement of providing safe, sufficient supplies
of water to households and enterprises, and making provision
for the collection and disposal of liquid and solid wastes in order
to combat the effects of pathogens that underlie the high levels
of morbidity and mortality characteristic of most Third World
cities.
 Suburban Sprawl

Major Waste Disposal

Challeng
es to Maintaining good air and water quality

Urban Climate Change

Ecological Footprint
Policy Solutions
 Redevelopment Schemes for
Squatters
• Provide ownership rights to relieve tension, fear, and
insecurity. This will –
1. turn the residents into active development participants.
2. change their life and send them into a transitional stage.
3. greater security causes decline in tension and crime.
4. social revolution takes place and they finally get integrated into
the main city.
 Urban Water Management
Strategy
• UNEP proposed a six-point integrated strategy for managing urban water
resources:
1. city-wide water audits by local authorities;
2. policies to halt pollution of water sources and to protect watersheds;
3. the use of new technologies to minimize loss of water through leakages and
illegal connections;
4. socially sensitive pricing policies;
5. the involvement of individuals and community groups to devise innovative
ways of recycling waste water;
6. an integrated strategy for demand management in each city, including
educating users of the need for water conservation.
Sustainable Urban Development
• Sustainable development is ‘development which meets the needs of
the present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs’. (Brundtland Commission: Our Common
Future, 1987)
• This concept is based on the following three principles:
intergenerational equity, social justice, and trans-frontier
responsibility.
• Concern for the sustainability of cities is expressed at two levels:
global (aggregate impact) and local (individual impact).
Cont.
 Urban Metabolism
• In addition to providing resources for urban consumption, areas immediately around cities often
receive much of the waste and pollution from urban growth, in the form of contaminated soil,
water and air.
• The fundamental cause of these problems is the essentially linear nature of the metabolism of
modern cities. Resources flow through the urban system with little concern about their origin or
about the destination of wastes; inputs and outputs are considered as largely unrelated. Raw
materials are extracted, combined and processed into consumer goods that eventually end up as
rubbish that is rarely reabsorbed into living nature.
• Fossil fuels are extracted, refined and burned and their fumes discharged into the atmosphere.
• Nutrients are taken from the land as food is harvested and not returned, as most urban sewage
systems discharge into rivers and coastal waters.
• This linear model of production, consumption and disposal differs markedly from nature’s circular
metabolism in which every output by an organism is also an input that renews and sustains the
whole living environment.
• In its current form, urban metabolism is disruptive of natural cycles, promotes waste and
undermines the goal of sustainable urban development.
 Cont.
• Energy Consumption:
• The apparent unsustainability of future adverse energy scenarios led the World
Commission to advocate a new, low-energy path based on energy efficiency and
conservation, and accelerated development of renewable resources.
• The measures required to affect this strategy will have profound implications for
urban development in both developed and Third World countries. Significantly,
in the short term at least, the development needs of the latter imply additional
energy consumption, even assuming major improvements in efficiency both in
the supply of energy and in its final use.
• The onus therefore falls on developed countries, which at present consume
more than twice as much energy as the Third World, to reduce their energy
demand and to assist others to develop benign energy strategies through
technology transfer and financial aid.
 Cont.
• Towns and cities are major energy consumers and there is a recursive
relationship between energy systems and the structure of the urban
environment.
• On one hand, falling real energy prices during the twentieth century have
permitted increasing spatial separation of activities and the outward spread
of urban areas at decreasing densities. On the other, the structure of urban
areas is itself an important determinant of energy demand, especially for
transport and space heating or cooling in buildings.
• Interaction between energy systems and urban structure takes place at all
scales from that of the individual building to the metropolitan region:
Neighborhood level (changes in urban form, solar design and trees), District
level (CHP schemes), and Metropolitan level (sustainable mobility).
 • Pacione, M. (2005). Urban Geography:
A Global Perspective. Taylor & Francis.
Ch. 26 & 30.
• https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/expla
nations/human-geography/urban-geo
graphy/challenges-to-urban-sustainabi
lity/
References
• Waste management as an effort to
improve urban area cleanliness and
community income (journal review) by
Bag Kinantan, A Rahim Matondang
and Juliza Hidayati.

Lecture by A H M Nahid