Urban Problems and Challenges

By: Haseeb Jamal / On: May 21, 2017

Excessive size both in population and geographical area  
Where the economic base of the cities is inadequate to cope with problems created by excessive size

Too many people occupying too little space and competing for too few services and jobs

Tremendous amount of land being gobbled up by sprawl of cites, especially giant conurbation.
The loss of agriculture land to urban/industrial sprawl is of grave concern.
Once loss this prime land cannot be replaced.

With too many people in the cities, Government are hard pressed to provide All the human services that are the residence would like or expect
Housing shortage occur worldwide
Typically, it is the poorest people who suffer the most  
Other basic services Such as piped sewage system hot and cold running water, decent telephone services, reliable city supply, adequate garbage disposal systems.
Educational, Health care and recreational system and facilities.

Slum are the area of authorized, usually older housing.
While squatter settlements are that unauthorized on land which the squatter do not owns.
The area of tends to lack the essential services of an urban environment such as sewage, water and lighting.
As a result, Squatter settlements commonly are areas of health problems

Traffic congestion is a service dilemma that is choking many cities to a standstill in term of movement of people and goods within the cities, with extremely seriously consequences of wastage of resources (Time and energy of people).

Employment probably top most people lists of serious urban problem.
Hundreds, even thousands of young people may apply for handful of job in a particular company.
The lucky ones may infect, end up with a job that is below their capability, in effect under-employment.

Unemployment and underemployment along with other factors, breed a variety of subsidiary problems related to racial and social issues.
These vary from region to region.

Pollution of air and water, excessive noise levels, the uglification of the landscape through lack of planning and urban poverty is another serious worldwide problem.
In MDCs people and government are doing something about it.
Thus, in general the degree of urban degradation is most severe today in cities of LDC.The cities with greatest air pollution

Improper sewage disposal contaminated city drinking water which triggered epidemics:

Flushed toilets and sewer systems existed by 1870’s but pollution remained due to;

A new political system is needed to cope with the new urban problems
Political Machines – informal political group that would provide essential city services in exchange for votes and political power
Offered things like – jobs, housing, food, heat and security

Party bosses would accept bribes from contractors  
Some dominated police department  
Sold permits to friends to operate public facilities such as railroads, waterworks, and power systems  
Example – A politician would find out where the city was planning to build a park – then buy the land and sell it to the city for a profit.