The sustainability of mega-cities

The paper compares the three largest mega-cities of the Americas (Mexico City, New York and São Paulo), in terms of population size, growth history, density and age structure, and in terms of access to water, conflicts over the use of water, and distance from which water is transported, in order to: identify the demographic components of water availability and sustainability of these urban regions; call attention to the primacy of population mobility and distribution as central issues; assess the prospects of achieving balance between population characteristics and access to water; and consider the case for ecological-economic zoning as a tool for sustainability.
The Americas, and their three most populous countries, are not among the world’s crisis zones in terms of water availability. The United States and Brazil, in particular, are water abundant; but even Mexico – at the national level – has reasonable water/population ratios. Their three largest mega-cities, however, illustrate a crucial fact regarding population and resources: where population is located vis-à-vis water supplies translates into periodic or long-term crises, and must be a fundamental issue to sustainability.

21st century witnessed a rapid shift of population from rural to urban area. The total urban population increase in 2030 of India will be 590 million 40% of India’s popn, where Tier 1 cities population will go up to 155 million, Tier 2 cities population will up to 104 million whereas the Tier 3 cities will have 331 million popn respectively. Presently, 32 percent of Indian population is living in cities, out of which about one fifth is residing in four megalopolis cities. Coupled with rapid urbanization each city consists of a number of supporting systems. Transport is one of them, which provides mobility, flexibility and accessibility to urban people. For all practical purposes, a sustainable transport system must offer mobility and approachability to all urban residents in safe, risk-free and eco-friendly mode of transport. Surely this urbanization trend is going to have fundamental impact on the politics, economics and social situation of the country.

The critical issue in urbanization is efficient transport, this paper deals with the metro rail answers the transit needs of urban areas most effectively and has the potential to bring all round benefits to business, to environment and multiple benefits to people in all walks of life. The scheme of this paper is to examine the extent of problems and suggest remedial measures.

Iran has beheld rapid urbanization since the Islamic revolution in 1978. Number of cities increased from 200 in 1956 to 1016 in 2006, while the urbanization rate increased from 31 to 69 percent. This study used Zipf’s law to investigate the Iran urban network changes during 1956-2006. Results showed that City-size dynamics in 1986-2006 periods has been decreased inequality in compare with the1956-1986 period. It could be concluded that there is a decrement Zipf index within Iran’s urban system and that the above mentioned changes in the “long decade of the 1978s” cause to increase cities number and enlarging other metropolitans except Tehran.
One of the main factors which are helping to balance the size-rank pattern of the cities in country is developing towns and cities because of existed problems and difficulties in metropolises and especially Tehran. Deduction process of population portion in metropolises and intense changes in economical, social, political and cultural structures cause an increase in immigration of people to towns and cities. Governmental support for towns and cities can be an effective step in balancing city rank chain of the country.

The well-advertised inclusive urban agenda in India in the past few years has severely questioned. The present study attempts to trace out the new forms of vulnerability and social insecurity faced by the poor and more crucially, the population bordering the poverty line in terms of increasing cost to afford housing and access to basic services. The NSSO unit level data pertaining to consumption expenditure, housing and other amenities are used to show the interdependence between poverty and availability of amenities for three consecutive periods (1993-’94, 2002-’03, and 2008-’09). Distribution of availability and adequacy of basic services have shown according to different ‘Relative MPCE Classes to the poverty line.’ Results of the analysis show three important facts. First, the possession of affordable housing and basic amenities has become essentially a service cornered by middle-classes. The next finding is that the validity of the present official poverty line appears to be also questionable that grants very minimal weightages to the basic services needs and the rising cost to maintain these needs in urban areas. The third factor underscores the growing informality in housing arrangements that is regarded as one of the main economic burden of the poor and marginally poor people.

Keywords: Vulnerability, Poverty Line

The core issue of Population Resources and Environmental Economics is how to allocate resources for material production and population production to meet the people‘s livelihood and reproduction needs, and as much as possible to protect the environment, promote people-centered sustainable development. Chinese population policy bases on the creed that social development needs moderate population. Reproductive choice thus transformed to national implementation of the "control population ， improve population quality". the current world fertility situation has undergone a fundamental change. From the World Fertility Report data we know that the level of fertility in developed countries has generally declined since the 1970s，this low fertility levels is unprecedented. China‘s total fertility rate is also below replacement level for many years and the demographic dividend will disappear soon. The current policy in the Eleventh Five-Year period sticks to “to stabilize the low fertility level”, and did not specify the standards to stabilize the low fertility level. Shanghai and some other

India is urbanizing rapidly and about 377 million people live in 7935 towns/cities(census, 2011) across the country which constitutes about 31.2 % of the total population. The number of towns has significantly increased from 5161 in 2001 to 7935 in 2011. During the fifties and sixties of the twentieth century, the country experienced rapid growth of its urban population. But during the last few decades India has experienced urban deceleration. The country has experienced a noticeable slowing down of the rate of urbanization and urban growth in the past two decades(1981-1991 and 1991-2001). But there has been an urban turn around in 2011 which reported an acceleration of urbanization. For the first time since independence, the absolute increase in urban population exceeded to that of the increase in rural population though 69% of the total population live in rural areas which is highly significant. There is high inequality in the distribution of the urban population by size class categories. About 70% of the total urban population(265 million) live in 468 towns which is also reflected in Gini Index and Lorenz curve. Against this background, the recently released 2011 census data provides an opportunity to explore and analyse this urban turn around.

The impact of growth of cities in the change of urban environment especially in the study of land use and land cover change has drawn research attention from scholars in the field of urban studies.
This research is focused on a set of three growing cities of India, Gurgaon, Ranchi, and Jaipur for the analyses of land use/land cover changes for the periods of twenty five years. The overall results show that the built up land has increased whereas the other categories of land have decreased. It is believed that this finding would provide insight to the planners and policy makers for the management of growth related problems of the city regions.
Key words: Urban Growth, RS, GIS, Land Use/Land Cover Change, India

This paper deals with the “human” dimension of sustainability in Indian mega-cities, specially the issue of social equity approached through the housing requirements of the urban poor.

Indian mega-cities are faced with an acute shortage in adequate housing, which has resulted in the growth of illegal slums or squatter settlements. Since the 1990s, the implementation of urban renewal projects, infrastructure expansion and “beautification” drives, in line with the requirements of globalizing cities, have resulted in many slum demolitions, which increased the numbers of homeless people. Delhi exemplifies such trends.

This paper’s main objective is to appraise the adequacy of slum clearance and resettlement & rehabilitation policies implemented in Delhi in order to address the challenge of slums. Do such policies alleviate the problem of lack of decent housing for the urban poor, or to what extent do they also aggravate their situation? We combine two approaches: firstly, a statistical assessment of squatters’ relocation and slum demolition without resettlement over the last two decades, completed by an analysis of the conditions of implementation of the resettlement policy; and, secondly, a qualitative and critical analysis of the recently launched strategy of in-situ rehabilitation under public-private partnership.

Though only 31.2 percent of the total population in India live in urban areas, in absolute terms, it is one of the highest in the world, only next to China. According to 2011 census, the size of urban population is 377 million, more than the total population of any country in the world except China. It is spread in 7935 towns and cities across the country. Out of the total 7935 towns, 468 towns/UAs belong to class I category(100,000 or more population) of which 53 UAs/towns each has a population of one million or above known as Million Plus Cities. The 2001 census reported 35 such cities and 18 more have been added during the last ten years. These 53 UAs/towns are the major urban centres of the country where 161 million population live constituting 43% of the total urban population . Many studies have projected that the number of such million plus cities is going to increase rapidly within the next couple of years which will be the focus of growth and development. Hence, the present study makes an attempt in analyzing the growth pattern, trend, characteristics, quality of life as well as future sustainability of those metropolitan cities.

Greater Mumbai is most populated mega city in India. Paper examines the migration and employment condition in the Mumbai metropolitan area using census and survey data. The study provides information on changing pattern of employment and workforce in the city during last two decades. City has observed shift from manufacturing sector to tertiary sector. The migration has always played significant role in economic development which is declining. The differences in industrial and occupational profile of workers in terms of sex, age and migration are examined.
Liberalization and globalization policy of India has resulted in many changes in Indian economic scenario. Due to opening up Indian economy many industries could not cope up the competition with multinational companies. It has resulted in loss of employment in Mumbai as well as neighbouring areas. Nearly fifty per cent workers reported lack of work in enterprises, in area and closure as main reason for quitting of jobs. Another major change observed is the increase in the self employed workers as compared to regular wage and salaried jobs. Work participation rate declined by 5 percent for males while for females increased by 12 percent during 1961-2001. Economic Census (2005) indicate decline in employment in Mumbai.