The Social And Political Challenges Of Rapid Urbanization

Decades ago and even nowadays, urbanization was and still remains a trend which has influenced people worldwide. “Urbanization occurs when people move from rural to urban areas, so that the proportion of people living in cities increases while the proportion of people living in rural areas diminishes” (Boundless, par.1). Lately, the world is experiencing the largest wave of urban growth in history, and more than half of the world’s population nowadays is living in towns and cities. It is believed that by 2030, the number of people living in cities will “swell to about 5 billion” (UNFPA, par.1). Further, the United Nation Population Fund believes that “Urbanization has the potential to usher in a new era of well-being, resource efficiency and …show more content…
Health is significant to life and as such it must be treated so. Inhabitants of cities tend to be healthier because of the better living conditions and better access to health care. However, when rapid urbanization occurs, …show more content…
These challenges are connected with many problems that remain as a question mark for a long period of time. That is because even the social and economic challenges mentioned above are kind of part of the political challenges. The first thing is that the political leaders and government planner have to respond and try to solve all the problems that are presented by urban populations. This is because all the citizens are directed to government for all the problems they are facing. Then, what government can consider as a challenge, is actually dealing with the rapid urbanization itself. Government has to decide how to interact both with the private in public sector, and “self-help efforts” (Handelman, 195). As it was mentioned earlier in the social challenges of the urban poor, where governments in Less Developed Countries have constructed public housing to alleviate housing shortages. Another political challenge is the social