Week 10 – Urbanisation
The city will belong to the poor
Cities provide hope for the people, especially the poor. The lure of jobs and the promise of freedom from backbreaking farming are often found in cities. Cities are also often seen as the bastions of knowledge and fortune. To get to any of these, you have to get inside. It’s a privilege for the “insiders”. There is a saying, slightly different depending on where you come from, ‘If you’re willing to work, you won’t starve in the city.’ Cities are for everyone, where the poor go to be rich, and the rich, richer.
Cities grow and flourish because they are central places (Jacobs, 1970, 1984). It’s where trade, religion and royalty converge. People go there to sell goods; people go there to buy goods; and people who have neither goods to sell, nor money to buy go there too, hoping to get goods to sell, or money to buy. The cities are where the money is, so the rural areas are neglected by the government. (Lipton, 1977). That’s why many of the rural poor flock to the cities, seeking fortune and a future.
With so many of the poor having to leave their rural homes behind, they are often lost in the urban jungle. They had to leave their families and ties behind, causing them to feel lost and un-belonged (Durkheim, 1897). Not contented in feeling lonely, they seek out others of their kind, and forge similar ties to those they left behind. (Gans, 1962). They practically import a community, from the rural areas right smack into the cities. This challenges the people who were there already (Park, 1914) and creates tension within the cities.
Not everyone who goes to the cities find jobs. A significant minority remain jobless, or become jobless often enough, that crime becomes a more viable option to them. These, too, gather together in their ethnical groups. Ethnical criminal organisations also ‘part-time’ in protecting the turfs of their community.
With such a constant influx of new (and sometimes unsavory) members, the city dwellers also feel displaced within their own territories. Tensions soar and city safety can no longer be guaranteed.
With so many people within the city, the number of vehicles increase exponentially. And it degrades the air. Factories, cars and human fumes all contribute to making fresh air a rare commodity.
With globalization, and the constant need to compress everything to fit in everyone and to accommodate their preferences, the buildings in the cities bear no difference from one another. They all look the same – international style.
With advances in communication technologies, office folks are increasingly not required to work in their offices. More and more corporations offer their higher end employees to work from home, over the internet. With this, there is now no difference whether you work at home 3 miles from office, or 300 miles.
This is a new phenomena occurring. Facing all these, the richer city folks are abandoning ship. The city no longer hold any attraction for them. City lifestyle is nothing but negative for them. They want to pursue a more wholesome life, where they can breathe fresh air, have their own space and not worry about the increasing crime rates. For those who can afford to leave, they’re finding cheaper estate prices, and less congestion of the sub-urban areas more attractive. Not to say, lower crime rates as well.
But for the poor, they have no such options. The city still holds the hope of fortune and fame. They have to be ‘inside’ to enjoy the proximity of medical and educational services, where they have no access to in the rural areas. They still need the city. For a hope, if not anything.
The rich are leaving, but the poor continues to flock in. But without the rich, the job-makers, can the city still hold any viable hope for the poor? Without the rich, the city can only turn out to be slums for the poor. With enough passage of time, the situation will be reversed. The rich will be out in the countryside, while the poor all huddle in the city. The city will, in time to come, be where the poor, the down and the destitute converge.
