Urbanization has transformed the landscape of many cities and even whole nations. What is the relationship between urbanization and deforestation, and the relationship between urbanization and desertification? Are they destined to be happen at the same time?

 

Definitions and examples:

“Urbanization refers to a process in which an increasing proportion of an entire population lives in cities and the suburbs of cities.  Historically, it has been closely connected with industrialization. When more and more inanimate sources of energy were used to enhance human productivity (industrialization), surpluses increased in both agriculture and industry. Larger and larger proportions of a population could live in cities. Economic forces were such that cities became the ideal places to locate factories and their workers.”

(http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so11/population/urbanization.htm)

Both desertification and deforestation refer to the degradation of land. In one urbanized society, roads were paved penetrating through out cities so people can transport easily by automobiles, motorcycles, buses, and so on. The development of Singapore exemplified this phenomenon. When we looked at the documentary of Singapore, we can see that Singapore was transformed from a tropical forest to a modern city. A few decades ago, almost all of Singapore was covered by trees. Comparing with the view of Singapore right now where trees were planted neatly along the roads, the face of Singapore is no longer the same as before. Besides, in ancient times, many forests were deforested for the pastures and agriculture, in order to feed ever growing residents in cities. A good example is the situation in Scotland where should have been covered by rich forest, instead, there are pastures every where right now; Still another example is the desertification in Beijing. People were encouraged to grow grains. The result is overusing of the land, so the land is desolate and became one of the victims of desertification. Thirdly, many countries became urbanized because of the exploitation of forest. Aside from food, a city also needs energy to develop its industry, so people chopped down the trees and then accumulated wealth. In early days, people chopped down the trees of their own country, but after entering 19 century, many places were colonized. Colonizers became to “import” raw materials from colonized countries. The rainforest in Amazon is a prominent instance.

 

Is it possible that a place is becoming urbanized without deforestation and desertification, neither in their countries, nor in other states? While the premise of an urbanized city is to be well planned, all the nature places in cities have to be considerately schemed as well. More over, since a city need to have energy to be urbanized while the city itself is not able to provide the need to its citizens and industries, the city becomes eager for the materials from foreign countries, the cheaper material the better. Last, through out history, we can’t find even one example of being urbanized without exploiting the environment. In my opinion, at least in a short run, urbanization is still proceeding along with deforestation and desertification.  

Does a government have the right to force some ethnic groups to be assimilated into the mainstream and to abandon their group identity thus they can get more chance to get a good job or to get the equal right as other citizens? Different ethnic groups might live in the same community. Thanks to globalization, it became easier for people to move from one place to another, so almost every society in this world is becoming more and more diverse. In many cases, minority groups keep their own customs and traditions which are quite distinct from that of the majority groups. And the minorities are discriminated simply because of these differences.

 

Identity is formed on the basis of our interactions with others. What people say about you and how people treat you have effects on your identity, then this identity starts to affect the way you think and act. In today’s world, there are usually one more groups in one society. And usually there exists one dominant culture. Take The US for example. The US is a society consists of different ethnic groups like Anglo-Saxons, African Americans, Italians, Irish, Chinese, etc. What dominant group, Anglo-Saxons, think about their society is that different people can be assimilated in the mainstream and the mainstream culture can also absorb new elements from other cultures, and at the end the US can create a unique culture. The American society can be a “melting-pot”.

 

Being assimilated means the people from ethnic groups have to give up their original identity while the ethnic groups might not be willing to do it. Abandoning one’s identity makes one lose his/her “roots”; identity might change, but the precondition is that assimilation happens under one’s willingness. If a country keeps insisting in assimilating different cultures into the dominant culture, this should be called repression instead of assimilation, and the result will probably be the conflicts among ethnic groups.

 

No matter an ethnic group is assimilated into a society or not, since they have already lived in a society for a very long time, they pay the tax, they have got the citizenship, and they fulfill the obligations of being a citizen, they ought to acquire the equal rights as others. Why can’t an ethnic group get the equal right since they have already fulfilled the obligation of being a citizen? A government should not have the right to force ethnic groups to abandon their own identity so they can get certain rights. It is against human right. Every human being is guaranteed of having the right of expressing their own opinions, and every human being is guaranteed the freedom of choice. Singapore is just a good example of not assimilating different groups into the mainstream while each group still has equal rights. As we can see from the instance of Singaporean society, keeping a society plural is also feasible. 

In this week’s lecture, we watched a short movie talking about the successful urbanization of Curitiba, the capital city of the Brazilian state of Paraná. As many cities in Brazil, Curitiba faced a lot of problems of globalization and urbanization. People began to flock into Curitiba while there were not so many jobs provided in the city. From 1950 till now, the population of the city has increased by upwards of 1.4 million. Those unemployed people then moved into the peripheral areas of the city. Slums were formed.

 

Under the reign of Jaime Lerner, ex-mayor of Curitiba, this capital city started its makeover and its transformation. New transportation and bus system were built; the city is covered by more and more parks; new educational system was established, etc. Curitiba is one of the most livable cities in the world now.

 

Besides the successful transformation of Curitiba, what also caught my attention was the statement made by a man in the last scene of the movie. In his point of view, one of the reasons which made the city such a livable place was dictatorship. Jaime Lerner was appointed by the military dictator in 1960s, and Jaime Lerner seized the power for about 12 years. Consequently, the decision of transformation of the city was actually lack of citizens’ participation. However, since leaders of the city didn’t need to concern about the slow democratic process, they carried out their transformation plan not only efficiently but also immediately. A very good example was the accomplishment of making the blocks into pedestrian zone in three days under the command of Jaime Lerner.

 

If we compare Curitiba with Singapore, we can find some similarities. The most prominent one is that Singapore started to implement its urban planning without the democratic process, just like the situation in Curitiba. And if we analyze the urbanized process in other countries, we would probably find a lot of problems relating to urbanization. For instance, the slums, pollution, sanitary problems, high crime rate, etc. In democratic countries, governments are not able to solve these problems, because if the government wants to implement a bill concerning the development of a city, this bill has to get the approval of legislative body, and if its people are not satisfied with this plan, they protest. Thus this made me think about the relation between urbanization and democracy.

 

We can’t deny that urbanization brings more opportunities. Rural places evolved into cities, so civilization was produced, and this made a big leap in human history. While urbanization brings hopes to many people, it also brings desperations; it can be positive experiences to some people like the urbanization process in Curitiba, but it can also be negative ones like Lagos where there are a lot of slums. In my view, a visionary dictator might help the city or the country to develop and to be in order, but after that, the people have to educated and socialized, so they will realize the truth of urbanization, so they will not care about their own profits only. Finally, Urbanization will bring advantages to all human beings.

                   

  

Su, Tzu-Jung

Venus

AIDS is a serious problem worldwide; the number of people infected multiplies every year. China is one of the countries with big population living under the shadow of AIDS. How did ADIS become such a serious problem, and how has AIDS become more and more serious? What is the Chinese government doing? What policies have the implemented? Are these policies beneficial to its residents? 

 

Epidemic diseases have become more powerful and have been able to reach different parts of the world. Due to globalization, transportation is much convenient than before. People can move easily without spending a lot of time. They travel, immigrate, and work in different places around the global village, while they also bring virus with them to everywhere they go. In 2003, the panic aroused from SARS was prevailing. But right now, SARS is within our control. However, AIDS, with more than 40 million infected in the world, claims about 8 thousand people’s lives everyday. There are more than 1 million AIDS patients in China in 2001, and the number keeps increasing.

 

There are “3 kinds” of AIDS in China. These “3” are differentiated according to different ways of contracting AIDS. The first one is called “GuangDong” Model: Patients are infected because of sex industry. The second one is called “YunNan” Model: People contract AIDS attributed to using drugs and sharing needles. The last one is called “HuNan” Model: People got the disease while selling blood. People in GuangDong Province engaged in sex industry because they are poor, especially female. People grow poppy and are willing to take risk to sell drugs to drug dealer in YunNan Province because they have no other doors to wealth. This made YunNan a importance stop in trafficking route. Many residents in HuNan province became blood donors, or, more precisely, blood seller. People sell their blood in order to make a living. Poor people are prone to getting AIDS.         

 

In order to control AIDS, Chinese government has implemented several policies. Chinese government has reinforced sanitary education in schools. But there are no sufficient qualified teachers; there is even no school in many rural areas. Chinese government has advocated using condoms. But many condoms on market are under quality standard. Chinese Government has also provided access of testing and counseling for pregnant women in order to prevent mother-child transmission of AIDS. But in many poor villages there is no hospital, and no doctors. Chinese government didn’t realize the root of the problem, that is, poverty.

 

People engage in the industry with high risk of contracting AIDS mainly because they are poor. Sex workers have no other choices but “sell their bodies”; Blood donors keep “donating” their blood using the same needle with other blood donor; farmers can not give up growing poppy to make profit. We saw inequality between the rich and the poor when talking about disease. If Chinese government fails to provide more working opportunities the poor people and fails to develop rural areas, the government can never defeat the disease successfully.