Nature of Urban Problems: Land Use - KUET

Lecture-08:

Nature of Urban Problems: Land Use, Housing, Urban Transportation, Urban Environment and Urban Poverty.

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URP 4223: Urban and Regional Economics

Course Teacher:

Md. Esraz-Ul-Zannat Assistant Professor Dept. of URP, KUET

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CKNOWLEDGEMENT

These slides are aggregations for better understanding of the topic mentioned in the previous slide . I acknowledge the contribution of all the authors and photographers from where I tried to accumulate the info and used for better presentation.

N ^{ATURE OF} U ^RBAN P ^ROBLEMS :

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 Urbanization and land use

 Land Use and Land Use Change

 Population Growth, Urbanization and Pressure on Land Resources

 Use Change, Population Growth and Urban Environment

 Cumulative impacts of land use change on environment are as follows.

 Impacts on climate of the city

 Urban congestion and pollution

 Urban sprawl

 Loss of open space, greeneries and water bodies in urban areas

 Water runoff and flooding

 Loss of biodiversity

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RBANIZATION AND

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 Bangladesh is one of the countries of South Asia that are experiencing very rapid urbanization. Its cities are growing more than twice the rate of rural areas, and this rapid growth of urbanization is expected to continue till Bangladesh transitions from a low income to a middle income country. Only 28 to 30 percent of the total population living in urban areas is contributing approximately 60 percent to the national GDP.

 Land use is not one dimensional concept but rather a Land use is a complex mix of various characteristics of ownership, physical environment, structure and space use.

 Land Use is the use of a particular activity which meets a variety of human needs and to serve numerous and diverse purposes.

 When users of the land decide to employ its resources towards different purposes, land use change occurs producing both desirable and undesirable impacts. Land use and its changes leads to create different urban problems.

 Land use change is significant to a range of themes issues central to the study of micro-climate and finally global environmental change.

 Besides their long-term global cumulative dimensions, changes in the land use can have profound regional environmental implications during the life span of the current and future generations such as the lowering of ground water tables, land and water contamination, etc.

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 Land use is tied to our evolution as a nation and our population growth. As population has grown, so has our demand for raw land.

Land use determine how we live. How we use land affects our quality of life and the quality of our environment.

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POPULATION GROWTH, URBANIZATION AND PRESSURE ON LAND RESOURCES

 Cities in Bangladesh are growing in unprecedented rate, creating extensive urban landscape. Many of the farmlands, wetlands, forests, and deserts have been transformed during the 100 years into settlement.

Everyday we can perceive without a clear understanding of their impacts.

Table shows distribution of population in major cities and their rank.

POPULATION GROWTH, URBANIZATION AND PRESSURE ON LAND RESOURCES

 Cities face the growing problems of urban sprawl, loss of natural vegetation and open space, and a general decline in the extent and connectivity of wetlands and wild habitat.

 Cities have changed from small, isolated population centers to large, economic, physical and environmental features.

 In the last two 200 years, world population has increased six times, stressing iconological and social systems. Over that same time period, the urban population has increased 100 times; concentrating more people on less land and even as the total land devoted to urbanization expands. Yet the temporal and spatial dimension of the land use changes that shape urbanization are little known.

USE CHANGE, POPULATION GROWTH AND URBAN ENVIRONMENT

 Impacts of land uses is linked to changes in the extent of urban, agricultural, and forested lands, and transportation system. Land use change at the level of a settlement may have a number of local, direct, short-term impacts – environment (e.g. air pollution), economic (e.g. changes in land values, tax base), social (e.g. disruption of social cohesion)

USE CHANGE, POPULATION GROWTH AND URBAN ENVIRONMENT

 These same changes may produce supralocal, indirect and longer term impacts; i.e impacts at different levels of the spatial, temporal and social scale, which include negative environmental impacts on agricultural production in neighboring areas, increased demand for exurban space (caused by increase in urban land values), population and jobs migration.)

 At the regional level, land use changes impact not only on regional climate, economy and social structure in the short run but also on individual landowners (e.g. farmers) or on the larger national level both in the short and in the long run. Exploitation of forest and other natural resources cause impacts on the hydrologic balance, soil quantity,

USE CHANGE, POPULATION GROWTH AND URBAN ENVIRONMENT

 Urban system is not different from other eco-system and is subject to the principle of environmental unity. Therefore, all the elements and processes of environment are interrelated and interdependent and a change in one will lead to changes in the others.

 For example, increased runoff and erosion usually follow, burning and removal of vegetation.

 Cumulative impacts of land use change on environment are as follows.

 Impacts on climate of the city

 Urban congestion and pollution

 Urban sprawl

 Loss of open space, greeneries and water bodies in urban areas

 Water runoff and flooding

 Loss of biodiversity

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^{MPACTS ON}

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 Urbanization changes the physical surface of the land notably by constructing many buildings and paving much of the ground, increases the water runoff and flooding;

reduced vegetated surface increases the thermal admittance and roughness effecting changes in wind patterns, increases the heat production through cities; functions and introduces great quantitates of fine particles into air effecting turbidity.

 In cities, energy use is so high that the heat generated by the people, directly and indirectly injecting heat into the atmosphere is equal to the heat of one hundred 100 watt light bulbs. The buildings, paved streets, parking lots, absorb heat and obstruct cooling winds. Due to loss of

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 The effects of this atmospheric heating is felt in most cities and termed as “Urban Heat Islands”. Urban Heat Islands describe a city environment that experiences higher average temperature than its surroundings because of human alteration of the landscape. The effect is most felt in summer, when temperature are already high. It depends on several factors including the regional effects. By considering these environmental aspects in urban planning, city planners can improve the quality of life in this cities.

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 Most generated traffic is due to land use and structural changes such as sprawl development, agglomeration of services, increased auto ownership, and reduced transportation choices. These land use and structural changes tend to have synergetic effects, such as diseconomies in transit services, resulting in increased automobile dependency that lead to create traffic congestion. As a result of the traffic congestion, air, sound and noise pollution will be occurred more.

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 The amount of land developed per capita will increase as a result of the auto-oriented sprawl development that the highway expansion will encourage. The landscape will be degraded by the attracted highway-oriented commercial strip development. The scattered, low density residential development will create auto-dependent land use patterns that increase auto use, continuing the driving/sprawl cycle.

LOSS OF OPEN SPACE, GREENERIES AND WATER BODIES IN URBAN AREAS

 Urban Plans should provide for adequate open space, greenery and water bodies (rivers, canals, lakes, ponds and tanks). Need for neighborhood parks and playgrounds should be emphasized. There can be clusters of varieties of trees in traffic islands. Legislation have been passed to conserve water bodies, but these legislations require enforcement.

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ATER RUNOFF AND FLOODING

 As cities grow, their water demand increases, depleting the surface water in rural and wild areas and sometimes it even depletes underground water faster than it is replenish.

Covering land with buildings, asphalt, and concreate reduces the rain water entering the earth’s surface. Instead, it runs of quickly runoff overloading storm water drains and contributes to water pollution and flooding in cities.

As cities have high concentrations of people and buildings, they suffer more flood drainage than rural areas.

Most of the coastal cities may flooded in the next century due to enhanced greenhouse effect effecting increase in average sea level.

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 Population increase and land use conversion reduces biodiversity. The impacts due to loss of biodiversity can be categorized as loss and degradation of natural ecosystem, loss of species and loss of genetic material.

 Pollution of Bangladesh’s soil, air, and water has escalated over the last two decades and makes up a significant threat to biological diversity. Global warming is already changing habitats and the distribution of species. Scientist warn that even a one-degree increase in the average global temperature, if it comes rapidly, will push many species over the brink. Disrupting biological diversity could seriously disrupt our food production.

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 Urbanization and land use

 Land Use and Land Use Change

 Population Growth, Urbanization and Pressure on Land Resources

 Use Change, Population Growth and Urban Environment

 Cumulative impacts of land use change on environment are as follows.

 Impacts on climate of the city

 Urban congestion and pollution

 Urban sprawl

 Loss of open space, greeneries and water bodies in urban areas

 Water runoff and flooding

 Loss of biodiversity

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^ISCUSSION

 Land use and land use change is one of the primary urban problems to which all other problems (from associated issues) are linked to some extent or at great extent.

Associated issues are as follows:

 Housing

 Urban Transportation

 Urban Environment

 Urban Poverty

 Energy Consumption

 Urban Pollution

 Urban Health

 Urban ecology

 Municipal services and utility facilities

Find out the relationships between land use and other issues and

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 Understanding of urban land use and land use change and its impact on urban system.

What Next?

Lecture 9:

Nature of Urban Problems: Land Use, Housing, Urban Transportation, Urban Environment and Urban Poverty.