Socio-cultural issues in urban planning

Abstract

All over the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, rapid increase in the share of urban population is common. The rapid increase in urban population is mainly due to internal migration, and the process is called rapid urbanization. The phenomena of rapid urbanization is also creating a massive problem of concentration of population in fewer geographic points on space. Thus, concentration of population is another common phenomena in the social geography of rapidly urbanizing countries. Much of the urbanization in the developing countries is due to their desire for development. Paradoxically, however, the process of development is creating certain socio-economic and physical phenomena which cannot be called development. Let us first consider the influx of immigrants and the socio-economic and cultural problems that it has engendered. The rate of immigrants arriving in towns and cities is far beyond the capacity of the city managers to provide for them. This is as much true of a city in Brazil or Bangladesh as in Malaysia. The first problem in the chain of problems is that of unemployment and poverty, followed by problems in other social and cultural spheres.