Advantages and Disadvantages of Urbanization

Urbanization as the name suggests is the process where people from rural or semi-urban areas move to metro cities in search of better opportunities for growth and income as when the GDP of the country is growing then cities grow much faster than villages and people want to take benefit of this divergence in growth in cities and villages. In order to get a better idea about the concept of urbanization one should look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of urbanization –

Advantages of Urbanization

1. It helps in the overall economic development of the country because due to urbanization local talents get chances whether it is in sports, business, entertainment and by using the talent of these people many industries, as well as companies, are getting better and bigger which in turn is helping the country in achieving its target of economic growth and also enabling the country to have the competitive edge in global markets.
2. People who are from rural areas are deprived of basic amenities like schools, hospitals, banks, and so on but due to urbanization, these people get these facilities, and hence it helps in improving the overall living standard of people.
3. Due to urbanization foreign companies having international presence come to set up their companies because these companies want all facilities and in rural or semi-urban areas these facilities are not present and hence urbanization promotes foreign direct investment which in turn helps in improving the foreign exchange reserves of the country.
4. Since people in rural areas are more superstitious and follow old age traditions like child marriages, black magic, gender bias and so on which leads to many problems but due to urbanization when these people come to cities slowly they began to come out of their regressive attitude.

Disadvantages of Urbanization

1. Due to urbanization many people benefit but not all get the opportunities that result in those people doing illegal things like robbery, kidnapping, murder, etc…, and thus one can say that urbanization is one of the reasons behind the increasing crime rates in big cities.
2. Since many people migrate to cities it results in scarcity of houses which in turn results in the development of slums and since in these slums many people live in small areas (which is unhygienic) it results in these people contracting many diseases.
3. Urbanization leads to shift of the working population from agriculture to industries and due to this there is a fall in agricultural production which results in a fall in food production and that in turn results in inflation as there is more demand and less supply of food products.
4. Metro cities due to urbanization are not prepared to face natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, tsunami and if faced with such disasters it can cause loss of both property and people.

Hence from the above one can see that urbanization has got benefits as well as it has its limitations, but if the government is awake then it can eradicate the disadvantages of urbanization and take benefit from it to build a better nation.