Urbanization & Associated Issues

Urbanism has been defined as patterns of culture and social interaction resulting from the concentration of large populations into relatively small areas. It is a way of life characteristics of cities and towns. It reflects an organization of society in terms of a complex division of labour, high levels of technology, high mobility, interdependence of its members in fulfilling economic functions and impersonality in social relations. Urbanization means the increase in the proportion of the population of a country who live in urban areas. It is caused due to the movement of population from rural to urban areas and transformation of rural areas into urban areas. It implies a cultural and socio-psychological process whereby people acquire the material and non-material culture, including behavioural patterns, forms of organization, and ideas that originated in, or are distinctive of the city. Suburbanization is the trend of people moving away from congested urban areas to cleaner areas outside the city in search of a better quality of living. Important suburbs develop around major cities and everyday thousands of people commute from their homes in the suburbs to their workplaces in the city. The conditions of life and the forms of social organisation as well as relations in urban spaces are transformed in following ways:

• Urban spaces provide a domain for modern individualism. In its combination of anonymity and the amenities and institutions, the city offers the individual boundless possibilities for fulfilment. This co-exists with development of group identities which are integral to strategies of survival, resistance and assertion.
• Urbanization affects not only the family structure but also intra and inter family relations, as well as the functions the family performs. The joint family is being gradually replaced by the nuclear family, the size of the family is shrinking, and kinship relationship is confined to two or three generations only.
• Caste identity tends to diminish with urbanization, with three kinds of fusion:

• On the job and in newer neighbourhood in the city, persons of different sub-castes and of different castes meet;
• Inter-sub-caste marriages take place, promoting a fusion of sub-castes;
• Democratic politics also fosters the fusion of sub-castes.

• Urban spaces also have transformed the role of women in society.

• The ‘husband-dominant’ family is being replaced by an ‘egalitarian family’ where the wife participates in the decision-making process. There is an increasing tendency toward individualizing the marital bond and decline of practices such as widow inheritance, marriage by exchange, polygamy etc.
• Middle class women get employed in the white collar jobs and professions, while lower class women find jobs in the informal sector. This has enhanced the social and economic status of women.
• The traditional and cultural institutions remaining the same, crises of values and a confusion of norms are visible. The personally and socially enlightened woman is forced to perform the dual roles – the social and the professional.

Thus, urban spaces are a melting pot of people with diverse ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds. However, there is a need for robust urban governance to organise and manage things like: housing and residential patterns; mass transit systems, arranging for the coexistence of residential, public and industrial land use zones and the public health, sanitation, policing, safety etc.