A visual representation such as Our World in Data illustrates how the world has become more urbanised and the speed at which this process will continue in the future, country by country and region by region.
Reflection is required, given the implication of these figures. City, synonymous with prosperity? Cities offer many benefits when they are developed successfully: strong economic activity, shorter trade links, better use of human capital, shared infrastructures, division of labour and specialization… A whole host of greater opportunities, employment and prosperity; these are just some of the reasons, among others, that make people move to cities.
Living standards are higher in urban populations than in rural populations, since access to electricity, sanitation or drinking water is higher in urban areas than in rural areas. But this abandonment of rural areas also causes, among others, poor air quality and other environmental problems in urban areas, as reflected by some studies conducted in China and which could be applied to other developing countries.
One of the variables that is taken into account to measure living standards is the percentage of the urban population that lives in substandard housing , poorly built and overcrowded houses that lack one or more of the following conditions: access to safe water, access to safe sanitation, sufficient living area and durable housing.
Fortunately, over time, most of these countries have seen a drop in the percentage of urban populations living in these shanty towns. The challenge is to revitalise rural services through innovation digital and social to improve basic services such as health, social services, education, energy, transport and retail.
Sectors that can also be improved in rural settings in pursuit of sustainability. These policies were designed to prevent the loss of rural labour force, which can have dramatic effects on the food supply chain both locally and globally.
As a result of this, the environment and quality of the services in cities depreciates considerably. So, how can we prevent this depopulation of rural areas? In Europe there are some initiatives that are achieving this. In fact, there is an entire network dedicated to the development of rural areas. An example of this rural development can be found in Lapland Finland , one of the regions with the highest level of rural depopulation.
Here, villages are enabling the creation of sustainable resources and boosting industrial development, curbing depopulation and giving the region new economic and social opportunities. Resource Paper 5. Washington, D. Saegert, S. Crowding: Cognitive overload and behavioral constraint.
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Journal of Applied Psychology , , 61 , — Predicting perceptions of crowding at the residence, neighborhood, and city levels by physical and psychological measures. Environment and Behavior , , 11 , — Schneirla, T. The concept of development in comparative psychology. Eliot Ed. Sherrod, D. Crowding, perceived control, and behavioral aftereffects. Journal of Applied Social Psychology , , 4 , — Sonnenfeld, J. Variable values in space and landscape: An inquiry into the nature of environmental necessity.
Journal of Social Issues , , 12 , 71— Stokols, D. On the distinction between density and crowding. Psychological Review , , 79 , — A social psychological model of human crowding phenomena. Journal of the American Institute of Planners , , 38 , 72— The experience of crowding in primary and secondary environments. Environment and Behavior , , 8 , 49— Influxes of students, migrants, and job hunters exert considerable pressure on city housing.
Maps generated from open data, like this example from New York, show that thousands of households across large cities are afflicted. Limited stock leads owners, landlords, and tenants to carve up buildings, packing in residents. In one house, a bedroom had been creased inside a walk-in freezer.
The majority of landlords adhere to maximum occupancy and zoning laws, but some unscrupulous individuals keen to make a quick buck exceed legal limits. Certain neighborhoods within large cities are full of people forced by circumstance to live in substandard conditions, causing distress to buildings, occupants, and neighborhoods.
Overcrowded and deteriorating buildings endanger residents. This tragic truth was recently illustrated by a house fire in Boston involving students living in substandard conditions. In New York, 19 of the 49 fires over a two-year period that resulted in fatalities occurred in buildings altered in a manner prohibited by zoning laws. Alongside the increase in fire risk, overcrowding also affects wellbeing: it is associated with respiratory disease , tuberculosis , mental health problems and higher mortality rates among women.
A study of the effects of overcrowding on children showed negative outcomes on math and reading achievement, behavior, and physical health. Finally, illegal conversions create problems for city government: they strain essential services , inflate property values and cause difficulties for firefighters by rendering building plans inaccurate. To get an accurate picture of which households are overcrowded, cities must work across agencies to collect data from multiple sources.
Datasets must be shared; otherwise, actionable information about overcrowding cannot be produced. Officials must seek to work across state, federal, and third-party boundaries, overcoming legal and organizational resistance to information sharing.
As an example, the forty agencies that operate in New York have traditionally focused on their individual data collection responsibilities for internal use only.
The prevalence of diarrhoea for this study was 2. This difference might be attributed to the fact that the communities that were surveyed in Cape Town were exposed to water with high levels of Ecoli for domestic use [ 25 ]. Higher prevalence of acute respiratory symptoms for this study was observed compared to the survey conducted in a similarly impoverished suburb of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa [ 26 ]. An exchange mechanism for disease transmission in overcrowded housing is through the air by droplets or aerosols when people are sneezing, coughing or talking [ 27 ].
Repeated bouts of diarrhoeal or respiratory ill-health may detrimentally affect the quality of life and resistance to other diseases, such as measles and meningitis, as well as incur high costs to both affected individuals and the health services. A health economics study undertaken at a local hospital in showed the mean hospital stay for cases of diarrhoeal disease from a rotavirus infection was 4.
The cost of in-patient treatment adjusted for South African inflation ranged from R to R [ Additional research and full cost accounting may reveal a much higher economic burden to the national budget associated with the prevailing levels of overcrowding in South Africa, especially in the light of the exchange range of diseases that have been associated with overcrowding, including tuberculosis [ 2 ], hospitalization for influenza [ 3 ], pneumonia and other acute respiratory infections [ 4 , 5 ], meningococcal disease [ 6 ], ear infections [ 30 ], skin infections [ 31 ] and rheumatic fever [ 7 ].
Further detrimental social and environmental consequences of overcrowded housing include exposure to noise, a lack of privacy, mental ill-health [ 32 ] and increased violence [ 33 ]. In the light of indications of the range of social, health and environmental consequences and costs of overcrowding, it is a concern that in , A failure to match the associated demand for housing, with appropriate housing delivery programmes, as well as a failure to address the existing housing backlog, may lead to sustained or exacerbated overcrowding in urban settings.
In turn, persistent overcrowding may aggravate the concomitant, avoidable burden of social, health and economic consequences for the country. This study has some limitations inherent to a cross-sectional epidemiological study design. Firstly, the study cannot provide any evidence of causality.
Thirdly, both acute gastrointestinal symptoms and respiratory symptoms are linked to poor hygiene, which was not assessed in this study. Fourthly, a 2-week recall period of the prevalence of respiratory and acute gastrointestinal symptoms over month prevalence was used in this study, as previous studies had shown that this definition is less susceptible to recall bias [ 35 , 36 ].
Lastly, the unwillingness of the respondents to provide honest answers or giving socially desirable responses should be taken into account in the interpretation of the results. In this study, conducted in two settings of poverty in the city of Johannesburg, South Africa, Action to reduce crowded living conditions would support Sustainable Development Goals 3 health , 10 reduced inequalities and 11 sustainable cities and communities , while a failure to address the prevailing levels of overcrowding maybe posing a significant drain on the South African economy, in terms of the concomitant health and social consequences.
We did not receive research ethics approval to share raw data field data publicly. Bonnefoy X. Inadequate housing and health: an overview.
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