With Reference to a City at a Low Level of Economic Development, Discuss How Effectively Planning and Management Methods Have Reduced the Negative Impacts of Urbanization.

With reference to a city at a low level of economic development, discuss how effectively planning and management methods have reduced the negative impacts of urbanization.

Mumbai is a world city with a population of around 20 million people. It is slowly becoming more developed but faces major problems with its sheer amount of people that have came from urbanization processes. Mumbai receives on average, 1000 new migrants a day that put the never ending pressure on the services and infrastructure of Mumbai. These migrants cause a wide range of different problems. A main problem associated with the large number of migrants is the problems with health mainly due to the shanty towns and heavy industry. In the shanty towns the pollution can come from fecal matter getting into the open rivers which is a main cause of the spread of cholera throughout Mumbai. Another problem Mumbai faces is the widespread poverty and unemployment in a large percentage of the population mainly due to the high birthrate which is too high for Mumbai’s resources to manage.

A main slum in Mumbai is the Dharavi slum which one million people live in illegally. The most obvious problem which can be seen with Dharavi is the sanitation issues. It is estimated that there is only 1 toilet per 1,400 residents which means many of them resort in using the river for defecation. This has led to the spread of contagious disease within the slum and also severely limited the areas drinking water supply. Another issue with Dharavi is the fact it lies just north of central Mumbai meaning it severely restricts the cities growth. In addition, it also lies across routes which bring people into from northern suburbs into the city.

Mumbai in undertaking a $2.7bn redevelopment for these areas. A housing clearance – housing in Dharavi is planned to be removed and replaced with 7 homes which will accommodate more people with modern facilities such as water, toilets and electricity. Evicted people will be rehoused in temporary accommodation and those who can prove that they have been residents of Dharavi since 1995 will be granted free housing. The remaining vacancies will be sold or let to the open market. Although this sounds like it will be a very great solution towards the Dharavi problem it doesn’t come very smoothly. There has been a lot of controversy between the residents of Dharavi about the fact their houses are being destroyed (the most controversy comes from the ones that have not been there since 1995 which means they will not qualify for the free housing). Also a problem the government will face from this is that it will be very hard to control the amount of people that will have to be rehoused and will cause more problems with homelessness which will create even more problems for Mumbai. So although this idea would cause a lot of controversy and new problems, it will eliminate one of the biggest problems Mumbai faces allowing them to increase its development hopefully helping to increase economic development through more people investing.