Impacts of Urbanization

After food and clothing, housing is the most important human essential. Since 200 years ago urbanization had changed the population distribution. As a result, nowadays 50% of the world’s population lives in big cities. Thus, the development of housing becomes a very important concern in the big cities. Regrettably, such development in some developing countries like Indonesia is relatively uncontrolled. The government does not realize that a city is an ecologic system. It has to sustain the cycle of energy, provide important material resources, and has it own eco-friendly waste systems. Additionally, a city is not self-contained because it also depends on its suburb areas and neighboring cities trough transportation and communication. This uncontrolled city development creates several major problems concerning housing development, such as overpopulation; dirty environment; pollution of air, water, and soil; insufficient supply of clean water; lack of open-areas or city garden; flood; poverty; traffic density; excessive garbage; and crime.

For example, we can take Bandung as an illustration of this problem. One of the major problems that the city faces is housing. Bandung which is 167.45 km2 wide is populated by more than 6 million people. Whereas in fact it is designed to support only 500 thousand people. Nowadays population density in Bandung has reached more than 110 people / acre, far exceeds the UNESCO’s (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) limit for ideal population of 60 people / acre. The overpopulation in Bandung is mostly caused by immigrants (2.3 %) rather than its natural population growth (1.1 %). Immigrants come up to Bandung in reason of job vacancy and education (such as ITB). The higher the population density, the more public facility is required.

Due to the unstoppable development of urban areas, all sorts of buildings for commercial purposes are being constructed, leaving very little space for housing. As a result, the price of land soars, making it difficult for people to own a house. On the other hand, those who own houses are still faced with the problem of maintaining healthy and sanitary places to live in. Most people in the rural areas of Bandung live in a small house with no garage, but that does not matter because they do not have a car and the road in their neighborhood is not accessible to cars. Most of those houses in the inner city areas are old, run down, and damp. They need a lot