Responsible Cities And Happy Animals
(Urban Migration- Part 4 of 4)
Today is our last Sunday exploring the topic of Urban Migration. We will use this opportunity to recap everything we’ve discussed this month about the issue, ideas and solutions.
And don’t forget! Today is our podcast release day!! (woot!) It is at the bottom of this post. Click it. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app. Yep. Do it. Do it now.
Okay, let’s get started. Urban Migration is when people move from rural areas to urban centers. It is a trend that is happening right now and urban centers (and rural areas) across the globe are dealing with it in real-time.
For urban centers, they are dealing with the influx of people into their cities. According to data, this means more cities and bigger cities. Not all of the cities are ready for the influx of people. What this means, is the cities have to expand both their housing availability and infrastructure systems, while also preventing excessive pollution, congestion, deterioration and slum formation. Possible solutions include additional housing, expansion or more efficient infrastructure, and population integration into the city fabric. These are just some of the urban planning issues created by the urban migration plan.
Rural areas also face the effects of this transition. However, the issue affects them in the opposite way- with people leaving. Consequences? Loss of available labor force, services, and goods. The economy of the town slows down and the most vulnerable groups get left behind with no one to provide for them- (young, old, and disabled for example). Ways to fight this? Invest in existing assets of the town, take outside help, and form a vision with the community that is still in the town. For example, what do they see in the future of the town? And what would help them stay?
None of these issues are simple and many would require innovative solutions. But if the past has taught us anything, innovation often pushes us forward. Innovation in combination with proper planning can ensure the future is well prepared for the challenges that we are facing, and maybe make us even more prepared for the challenge we’ll face tomorrow.
Next week, and for all of September – we will be focusing on Affordable Housing. Our first post will be released on Sunday, 9/1. Make sure to find us on social media. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, you know the drill. Follow us to get the latest releases. As always, leave a comment or write to us, we love to hear from our readers and listeners.
Thank you for joining us and have a wonderful Sunday night.
Project Planning Green
Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1: (00:15)
Hi guys. Welcome to our fifth episode. Time flies. If you haven’t subscribed to us yet, now is the time to do it. Yep. Do it. Click that subscribe button. Yeah. Okay. This week we are finishing up discussions about urban migration. Quick recap. Urban migration is the current trend where people are moving from rural areas to urban centers. Two weeks ago we looked at the reasons for the trend and why the topic is important. In our last episode, which you can check out on any of your favorite podcast apps
Speaker 1: (00:57)
as discussed before, there are a lot of reasons for people to leave their homes and go somewhere else, but the simple fact is if a vast number of people are moving from the rural towns to city centers, then cities are becoming more appealing or at least people think is necessary to move to a city in order to have a better life. What does this mean? Well, this means that people in the rural area are either not happy about their situation or life is difficult there. This napkin population movement across towns and cities has become one of the major issues of modern planning. As the population shifts from rural areas to cities with slew of new issues appear that requires a planner’s attention. The issues are basically two fold. One, preparing for the abandonment or the revitalization of rural areas and two, preparing for the expansion of the cities.
Speaker 1: (02:00)
The focus on urban migration is because the trend compound with other issues that communities struggle with such as affordable housing, providing enough housing general and struggling with congestion and providing adequate infrastructure, which are all issues that our communities are already struggling with. Let’s talk about what happens when a large number of people move to the cities. As a first I view this creates more cities and larger cities as a number of cities grow and the cities themselves grow larger and denser. One of the comments factors among them are the concentration of wealth, the distinct primarily from the corporations that part the resources of the cities and the high earning specialized workers that are hired by these these companies. Various financial opportunities comes with that wealth. Since the services and goods are necessary order to support the concentrated wealth, the spill over effects means that everyone else such as other industries, businesses, and the public Oh stand to benefit from the concentration of wealth and businesses.
Speaker 1: (03:14)
So how does all this work? All concentration of wealth requires services and brings in people to support his operations. This includes package delivery, cooks, furniture, office supply development, and lots of other services. People providing goods and services that’s required for the building and supporting of the wealth are not the only ones who are benefit at all. These urban centers are also able to attract highly specialized workers and they need to keep them happy. What this means is that they need to have entertainment and conveniences ready, the hand of the cities, things that makes life easier for the people who will have the money to pay for them.
Speaker 1: (04:01)
Things like movie theaters, culture and art technology that enhances the life’s conveniences like Uber and meal delivery and all these businesses will also come along for the ride. All of these businesses create financial opportunities for people and attract others to join the city.
Speaker 1: (04:22)
The concentration of these services also means more convenience is enjoyment as a smaller radius for everyone that’s there with many choices of where people can go together, goods and the services that they desire.
Speaker 1: (04:38)
Well, of course all of us, city jewelers know they’re living in the city is not all unicorns and rainbows. The conveniences and Simon does come at the price often. Quite literally living in the city is much more expensive than living in the rural areas and most of that costs stems from housing costs.
Speaker 1: (05:01)
Because of the fact that things are so concentrated at the study center and then it’s so highly valued, everything becomes much more expensive. With high density, there is limited space for housing services, commercial development and all of those sectors. Competing for the limited space space is therefore very valuable and people at the city end up living in smaller spaces and paying an astronomical price for it. The problem of limited land extends further than just expensive properties. It often also means limited housing and limited commercial spaces, narrow and inadequate railways and limited recreational spaces. All too often we learn about people who do have jobs but could not afford a place to live because the city is so expensive. A lot of cities have since tried to apply a variety of different tactics to increase the number of housing to accommodate for the increased number of people buying.
Speaker 1: (06:10)
A lot of cases, local communities are against large developments and the changes in density to their community. This is true almost everywhere. Urban or rural. The difficulty in building affordable housing means people have to come in from far away to come to work and these commute only contributes to existing traffic. We will explore affordable housing or so topic next month. Bring us back of this increase in density for city Chris, stress on existing infrastructure without proper upgrades or efficient improvements. The infrastructure are vulnerable to overuse crowding and deterioration. This applies to almost all infrastructures including transportation, utilities, and waste, just to name some of the most significant ones. Without other questions, protection facilities, people will not have adequate mobility to go to work or buy everyday necessities. Also, we all know congestion and in effect also pollution. It’s a big problem in big cities. We can see trends alleviating some of those pollution and congestion issues because you can move more people more efficiently with mass transit and as data shows, this is exactly what a lot of cities are doing, building more mass transit infrastructure. There are multiple upsides to building mass transit such as less land requirements and more efficient use of energy.
Speaker 1: (07:53)
Utilities is another infrastructure that we require. Upgrading the availability of basic utilities is paramount to a success and existence of a city or individuals and businesses require a reliable source of utility in order to run their operations with more people. The utility grid, water and gas will have to expand and provide more goods to the expanding population. This can be done mainly in two ways. One, expanding existing facilities or to run the systems more efficiently. Fortunately, modern technology has made it possible to collect energy cheaply and more sustainably while taking up less land. We can see one example that is becoming more and more widespread today and that’s solar. Solar power can be installed on individual homes, which means extra land consumption in the cities where the availability of this land is limited. The energy can also be harvested sustainably and if the system breaks down, there’ll be no surface or catastrophic consequences.
Speaker 1: (09:10)
Innovative solutions that minimize risks, improve the efficient use of resources are essential in the coping of the enlarging cities that we know today with infrastructure has much of the same requirements for expansion in order to deal with increase amount. The ways and the type of solutions that can happen is much the same as utility and transportation systems, either expansion of the system or increased efficiency. So the moral of the story is so these preparing for the barrage of people heading their way needs to look into proper preparation and planning. There are only limited resources every city and without good infrastructure, smooth operations of a city can come to a hole which will significantly impact both businesses and individuals. This is also why spending money carefully on issues that matter is so important. On the upside of these required infrastructure upgrades and additional labor force being spread new financial opportunities for the residents and the newcomers. Now moving on to the impacts of rural areas as people are moving out. Personally, I consider this the more difficult problem. It is one thing to deal with the future that you know for certain what the issue is like in the cities is overcrowding is quite another to deal with issues that may be multi-fold and hard to analyze and qualitative like why do people leave rural areas in droves and how do we fix it
Speaker 1: (10:54)
regardless? Here’s what we know for sure. There is a trend around the globe where people are moving away from rural areas and starting to live more and more in cities. We all know one of the primary reasons that people move is for a well paying job and where are most of the paying jobs. Yep. In the cities. This has long been the primary reason presented for the push of people out rural areas. A job opportunity with a paying salary is such a motivating poor factor because in our society that’s often the determinant factor for people’s survival and quality of life. Even with a higher expenses as cities. Sometimes the opportunities as small rural communities is so limited that the choices between being able to afford basic survival items or not having any money at all, the lack of job opportunities is further escalated. As able bodies move away from the rural town itself, less evil bodies move away. There are fewer and fewer people who are available to hold down the jobs, run the economy and provide basic services to the community. With our job opportunities and public services, business opportunities will move away and other opportunities goes away as well. This includes opportunities like academic opportunities, recreation opportunities, volunteering programs. Any other opportunity that you can think of
Speaker 1: (12:31)
it’s clear to see if on the list that financial opportunity will not be the only type opportunity that our community will be losing as people are moving out of the rural area. As the opportunities dwindle. The people who are left at a town gets less and less access to goods and services. The town becomes more and more difficult to live in with mostly the people with the least amount of resources and the disabled or elderly left behind since they’re the ones with the least amount of mobility, adaptability to a new environment. The biggest issue for rural town to solve here is really the people retention. In order for this to happen, the towns has to be able to provide attractive opportunities and attractive places for people to live. Much of this involves doing a variety of things to build the town.
Speaker 1: (13:25)
The U S environmental protection agency came out with a document that looks at a rural towns and cities and their success and revitalization and how the studies done it. You can find the information in the show notes. The basic concept, however, are these, number one, identify and build our existing assets. Every town and city has some kind of asset that can be invested or build on investing in these existing assets can make the towns more attractive and some of them may even generate revenue. You will also need to engage the community to plan for the future. This is important because a future that your community is now bro with will not help you retain your existing residents. The rest of the strategies include taking advantage of also funding, creating centers for redevelopment and investment, encouraging cooperation across communities and supporting a clean and healthy environment. The study also provided success stories of various small towns such as Ben or again, Douglas, Georgia and Emporia, Kansas. The success stories so that it is possible for small towns to reinvent themselves and retain the population they need in order to thrive. Even with the ongoing migration trend. One thing that I learned very quickly in urban and environmental is that everything is connected and impact on one thing is not limited to that one issue. The impact on that one issue spills over and affects all the other issues related to it and the snowball of impacts continues.
Speaker 1: (15:09)
I want to end this podcast with a reminder with good planning, a city or a rural town can get a positive makeover and be run more efficiently than ever. Why is it going maybe rough? The new challenges can also encourage technological breakthroughs. While the city’s tried to figure out ways to tackle these new challenges, the technological breakthroughs can then hence the quality of life of everyone in future.
Speaker 1: (15:43)
This concludes our two part series podcasts on urban migration. I want to take this opportunity to know that our citations and resources, barring our show notes and our blog pages, please check them out if you’re curious and would like to dig deeper, especially if a subject really speaks to you. I really encourage you, who knows? You may find a lot of interesting points about the topic that haven’t had a chance to cover or you might find something that knock on them, right? Either way. Researching can only add to your knowledge arsenal. As always, don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to stay on top of our releases. If you like what you see in here, tell your friends about us. Project planning. Green is always looking to grow his family. If you want to further support us Reyes on your podcast platform, it helps others find us. Also, please leave us a comment or give us feedback on our social media feeds or the contact page. We’re always improving our show to make it a better experience for everyone. Have a wonderful Sunday night and we can’t wait until next time.
Speaker 1: (17:02)
These are for today’s podcast is provided by our good friend, DJ Kiraz. She’s a Swedish DJ and you can check out her information in the show notes or look her up on SoundCloud or Instagram on Kiraz music. That’s K. I. R. a.Z music. Additional music is provided by Vexento and Joakim Karud. You can find Joakim’s music on YouTube under his name. Joakim Karud. That’s J. O. A. K. I. M. first name and K, a. R. U. D. last name. The information for the two artists. Can also be found in the show notes.
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