The American Experience

The American urban migrants of the past were European migrants (especially Italian, Irish, German) and poor rural workers, many from the South following the Civil War devastation, seeking opportunity industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest. Over 100 million Americans can trace their ancestry back to immigrants that entered through Ellis Island.

New York City may have been the exception during the late 19th-century and early 20th-century when it experienced mass migrations. The city struggled to house the growing immigrant working class, but (most of) the city had already been laid out in an efficient grid system by the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811. Within the grid, crowded tenement buildings were erected. They provided the minimum amount of air and light required by law so as to maximize the number of tenants in the building footprints. For decades, the quality of life in these buildings were sub-standard, and laws were eventually passed to reform the quality of living spaces in the city.

For most of the 20th century, New York City urban planning was under the control of planner Robert Moses. His commission bulldozed many of the dense tenement neighborhoods to give way to housing projects that, at least on paper, were designed to provide adequate light, air, and hygiene in high-rise complexes that occupied several city blocks at a time. The concepts behind such projects were that the large-scale problems required large-scale solutions. Ironically, the buildings attempted to resolve the small-scale issue of the apartment building while disregard-ing the most effective and resilient large-scale plan in New York City – the grid (particularly decimated in the Bronx and Lower East Side). Today, many of these former tenements are posh dwellings for trendy urbanites while the poorer residents were either pushed out of the island into

outer boroughs or pushed into the now-isolated and outdated housing projects of the mid-20th century.

The history of housing in New York City is a long story on its own, but a key lesson to take from it is the resilience of the city grid and, more broadly, good city planning, and the dangers of inadequate planning.

2.6.1.Developing World Urbanization

Rapid urbanization is not only a socio-economic phenomenon but also a conscious policy decision by leaders in developing countries. India and China, the world’s most populous countries, see the creation of a network of new cities as a catalyst for industrialization, which is itself a catalyst for development and wealth (Seto, 2009).

Intense urbanization presently takes place primarily in Africa and Asia. South American cities are home to 80% of the population, European and North American cities house 75-78%

while African and Asian cities are still under 40%. The United Nations Centre for Human Settle-ments (UNCHS) predicts that over the next two decades the urban population in Africa and Asia will increase to more than 50%, and a majority of the new urban residents will be poor. The UNCHS (2002) estimates between a quarter and a third of urban households in the world live in absolute poverty. Just as most Latin American countries attempted in the 20^th century, Africa and Asia’s poorer regions are attempting to catch up to the levels of development in richer nations by following the patterns of development seen in the recent past. These patterns include industri-alization at the cost of increased pollution and urban sprawl at the expense of reducing agricultural or virgin land.

In 1956, Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek declared a development plan called the Plano de Metas, setting development goals for the coming five years, including a brand new capital city. He described the plan as “50 years in 5”, implying that the country would develop the equiv-alent of half a century in just five years. Many programs were successful during that time, and GDP increased extremely rapidly. Still, condensing decades of urbanization and development into few years removes organic growth out of the equation. Similar strategies are evident in booming cities in China, India, and the Arab Gulf, resulting in a new set of urban issues from unprecedented growth.

2.6.2.Planning for Sustainable Growth

Robust intelligence on urban growth and the environment is only useful if applied to policy and city planning. Information about the likely locations of urban expansion is critical for fore-casting impacts of future growth on natural resources, food security, and biodiversity (Seto, 2009).

Predicting development trends from spatial data can allow for planning of resource management and formalization of the urban infrastructure to accommodate growth before a region faces re-source shortages and informal development.

Caparros-Midwood, Barr, and Dawson (2015) set five sustainability objectives: the mini-mization of (i) risk from heat waves, (ii) risk from flood events, (iii) travel costs and transport emissions, (iv) expansion of urban sprawl, and (v) development on green spaces. Each of these issues is connected to land use and land cover. The expansion of urban sprawl and development on green spaces reduces the pervious surface area in cities, which creates larger urban heat islands

and increased strain on water drainage systems, which often flow into bodies of water.⁶ The risk from flood events in urban areas is increased two-fold by rapid growth - the additional flow of water into watersheds from impervious runoff and the development of flood planes through infor-mal settlements. The poorer and vulnerable populations of a city are the likeliest to inhabit flood-prone regions, which then magnifies the damage from any given flood event.

While Caparros-Midwood list risk factors and issues of fast urbanization, Raju and Ghosh (2003) list five elements of sustainable development strategies. They are (i) water and sanitation, (ii) energy, (iii) agricultural productivity, (iv) health, and (v) biodiversity and ecosystem man-agement.

6“The term "heat island" describes built up areas that are hotter than nearby rural areas. The annual mean air tem-perature of a city with 1 million people or more can be 1.8–5.4°F (1–3°C) warmer than its surroundings. In the evening, the difference can be as high as 22°F (12°C). Heat islands can affect communities by increasing summertime peak energy demand, air conditioning costs, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, heat-related illness and mortality, and water quality.” (EPA Website)