Community Development

1. Living patterns in the Baltic Region – moving to the cities

For each person in usual sense a home is a flat or a house. If we look a little wider it means neighborhood, village, city and community. In context of sustainability individual home and community in general may affect resource use.

For 20^th century habitation underwent huge changes. So in the Baltic region the modern degree of urbanization has reached some 70% in the east and 85% in the west (see Tabl. 7.1.).

Of course the process of urbanization has manifold problems. The problems are especially obvious in the east. For examples, transport problems, low quality of buildings and planning does not meet the social problems of the inhabitants.

Rural and urban development

Cities are far from sustainability. So at the same time we have twofold problem (see folia): that of urban development and that of rural development.

Rural development addresses to question of economy even if environmental issues start to be recognized. Therefore reforming agriculture and forestry brings farms to economic profitability and sustainability.

Urban development, on the contrary, focuses on the environment. It is understandable.

In the context of sustainability its clear become relation between rural and urban developments. To reach physical sustainability in human habitats we shall have to create more efficient links between urban and neighboring rural areas. The issue is to avoid growing of the following process

Increasing urbanization

Fast and “uncontrolled” urbanization is the greatest problem of habitation in developed as well as in developing countries today. Statistic figures show us that between 1950 and 1990 the world population of the world’s cities grew up from 200 million to over two billion, with three billion expected by 2025.

Of course, urbanization is affected by industrial development in Europe as well as in North America too. To understand why fast and “uncontrolled” urbanization does not meet sustainable context we have to look at figure 7.1.

The real problem of world-wide urbanization is a rising poverty level. There are over 100 million homeless in cities, mainly in developing countries, and the number is growing. Housing and infrastructure problems are underestimated in many countries.

In general there are four groups of problems of world-wide urbanization (see folia):

• Housing. Question is how to house the growing population? Especially in developing countries the proportion of slums and uncontrolled settlements in the poor cities can be over 50 %. The problems are poverty in slums, crumbling tenement buildings, overcrowding, poor sanitation, drugs and crime, risks of diseases.

• The overall quality of daily life is the second group of problems of fast global urbanization.

• Insufficient administrative control. The third problem might be the weakest link in solution of problems regarding housing, water provision, sanitation and electricity services, schooling and medical services, and traffic control.

• Environmental considerations constitute the fourth group of problems which global urbanization dealing with. In fact many megacities are heavily polluted.

The processes of urbanization

Urbanization is affected by series of interrelated processes of change as following (see figure 7.1.)

Economic change. Economy encompasses capital flows, raw materials, labor markets, commodity markets, information, management are internationalized and fully interdependent throughout the planet.

Demographic change and urbanization. Cities are product of their people. The condition of cities can in turn influence following characteristics: crowded and degraded slum environment, higher death rates in less developed countries; on the other hand cities with good amenities tend to attract particularly large numbers of migrants

Cultural change. The broad cultural shift from modern and post-industrial society that began in the 1970s and 1980s brought among other things a renewed interest in the past that has found expression in urban form. Historical preservation and the recycling of past architectural styles has increased in importance.

Technological change. Many technological changes have been important preconditions for change.

Suburbanization

Suburbanization is one of the main consequences of urban growth. The process has two main perspectives (see folia):

• Suburban development is a natural and evolutionary process of accommodating growth by extending the urban margin;

• Suburbs are means of escape from the health and environmental problems of the city;

The problems of suburbanization are:

• Polarization: good areas, bad areas and ugly areas lead to segregation in society.

• Social problems: selective population, ‘community weakness’ of inhabitants;

• Leisure-time activity problems of young people, problem of human relations at home;

• Environmental problems: dense mass of buildings, monotone grid plans, few green areas, high car ownership rates;

• Problems of physical structure; the short age of panel houses.