Urbanization and Foreign Aid

Urbanization and Foreign Aid

Introduction

Rapidly growing urbanization, the problems of sustaining a developed urban society, environmental deposition, and urban poverty are a few huge challenges for developing countries going urbanized. For this reason, foreign aid has been diverted to sustain urbanization. For harnessing the potential of the urban cities, it is necessary for the government to come up with policies and regulations to transfer the knowledge between cities to provide sources of success. United States of America has developed a mandate to assist rapid urbanization and acknowledge the issue by securing foreign aid for urban development and convinces the donor agencies to provide them with dollars to improve the living conditions of the slum dwellers. Urbanization is a process which is followed by several challenges as it becomes hard for the government to accommodate the growing number of citizens and provide them with the basic amenities of life. Here, foreign aid helps in fulfilling the needs of the people to some extent. The following paper discusses the positive and the negative impacts of urbanization and the actions that have been taken by the developing countries to secure foreign aid and reduce urban problems.

Discussion

The positive and the negative impacts of urbanization

It is a common practice observed that many slum dwellers leave the rural areas in search for a better standard of living. This movement from the rural areas to the developed ones is known as urbanization which is process in which the number of people in the urban settlements increases. Urbanization has numerous positive impacts, but it is followed by negative aspects as well (Shah, n.d). The positive or the negative impact of urbanization depends on the developmental level of the country and the economic, environmental, social and cultural factors. With its increased impact on the environment, the issue is highlighted at very instances (Shah, n.d). The advantages are more associated with improved education and a better economy, but it also takes away the land used for agricultural purposes and may contribute to poor living because of no employment (Shah, n.d).

Many people want to move to bigger cities thinking and hoping that they can acquire high-income jobs, get access to better health and education. For instance, Beijing which is known as a big urbanized city has given land to many Chinese citizens where many companies are located (www.unfpa.org). This has attracted many young people to move from the rural ...