🏙️ Urban Issues & Challenges

Global urbanisation

Urbanisation, the rising share of people living in cities, has passed 50% globally and is happening fastest in LICs and NEEs. It is driven by rural push factors, such as poverty, drought and a lack of services, and urban pull factors, such as jobs, schools and healthcare, and then continues through natural increase once young migrants settle and have families. Cities with more than 10 million people are called megacities, and most new ones are in Asia.

NEE city — Rio

Rio de Janeiro is a port and industrial city that hosted the Olympics, and it has grown through mass rural-to-urban migration. Some schools study a different city as this case study, but the same headings apply either way. Rio's growth has brought opportunities, including jobs, schools, healthcare and utilities that were often unavailable in the countryside.

Rio's challenges include hillside favelas, such as Rocinha, which are self-built and overcrowded, with patchy water and sewage systems, illegal electricity connections and gang control, as well as city-wide traffic and pollution. Responses include the Favela Bairro approach, which upgrades favelas in place by adding paving, pipes, legal electricity and ownership rights, alongside cable cars connecting residents to jobs and police pacification programmes. These responses are imperfect, but are considered far better than bulldozing the favelas.

UK city — London

London is the UK's financial, cultural and transport centre, and it continues to grow through both UK and international migration. Its opportunities include regeneration, such as the transformation of Docklands into Canary Wharf and the Stratford Olympic Park, a strong cultural economy, integrated transport including the Elizabeth Line, and urban greening, with around 47% green space helping to keep streets cooler and reduce flash flooding.

London's challenges include a housing shortage and high prices, sharp inequality between boroughs, traffic congestion and air pollution, pressure on the green belt, and pockets of deep deprivation where industry has declined. Regeneration can also push up prices and push local residents out, a process known as gentrification.

Sustainable cities

A sustainable city conserves water through meters and greywater recycling, runs on clean energy in efficient buildings, recycles waste thoroughly, and protects green space; Freiburg in Germany is a well-known example. Sustainable transport policy makes buses, trams and bikes the easiest choice, charges cars for entering the centre, as with London's congestion charge zone, and provides park-and-ride schemes, prioritising the movement of people over vehicles.