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Different solutions to poverty in urban areas 1. Introduction: Poverty can be defined in two ways, which are absolute poverty and relative poverty. In terms of absolute poverty, Murray (2004:2) suggests that the lack of an adequate income and cannot gain access to basic necessities to provide for basic human needs-food, clothing, warmth and shelter- are a clear indication of poverty. In a relative way, there was an assumption that a certain standard of living was normal, and that those living below this, while they might not be starving or homeless, were certainly poor, which are called relative poverty (Murray, 2004).
Nowadays people are in the more industrialised and technologically advanced societies. However the global poverty is slowing changing recently then taking on a more urban face. (Watkins, 1995). In many countries, the reason why the urban poverty happened is that the rapid population growth, agricultural modernisation, and inequalities in land ownership. As urban population increases, urban poverty is becoming increasingly serious. For example, children playing in open sewers or of women picking their way through huge rubbish dumps is no longer shocking (Practical Action Consulting, 2009).
Additionally, form 1970 to 1990, the number of urban poor in the United States rose from 44 million to 115 million, compared to 75 million to 80 million in rural areas (World Resources 1996-97: 12). All of these illustrates that urban poverty is rapidly becoming one of the most complicated challenges. There are several problems associated with urban poverty. With the problems of housing, urban services, community development, employment generation, micro-enterprise, nutrition, family planning, and education, it becomes increasingly clear that have a great influences on the whole society. Of the problems to be ameliorated, poverty is perhaps the most basic. “(Allen and Thomas, 2000:10). Consequently, the urban poverty problem is urgent needed to solve. The purpose of this report is to discuss and evaluate the different solutions of urban poverty. The first way is accessing to sanitation. Next, investment in education would be introduced. The final way is to improve the standard of housing. 2. Solutions: 2. 1 improve sanitation standards: To start with, the government should focus on sanitation problems exist in urban poverty. Practical Action Consulting, 2009) Masika (1997) suggested that physical infrastructure problem of housing, sanitation, water, which is a tradition policy approaches to urban poverty. Furthermore, lack of sanitation should be concerned for solving the urban poverty. Because the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2006) indicates that in excess of 13 million deaths per annum are due to preventable environmental causes. Also environmental causes approximately one third of death and disease in the least developed regions.
Better environmental health management can prevent two of the world’s biggest childhood killer. It is serious that over 40% of deaths from malaria and a projected 94% of deaths from diarrhoeal diseases (Practical Action Consulting, 2009). Urban poverty do not have access to basic services like sanitation or water . For example, in India about 54. 71% of urban slums have no toilet facility. As well as because of the lack of maintenance most free community toilets built by state government or local bodies are unusable (The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Government of India, 2009).
Which also means it is necessary to solve basic service especially like sanitation. As a result, in India urban poverty report discuses that to improve sanitation standards, “it is suggested to construct community toilets, to extend sewerage networks to slum areas and connect toilet outlets with that, and community management of toilets in common places” (The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Government of India, 2009). It is believed that the best least cost and high impact and improve well-being of the poor people approach to reduce poverty is improving environmental health.
More specifically, the provision of environmental health infrastructure and service are creating income and employment (Practical Action Consulting, 2009). “Good health, mental and physical, is an important determinant of employment, productivity, and income” (Watkins, 1995). In addition, improve the standard of sanitation would save the lives of 2 million children a year from diarrheal diseases and dehydration (Perlman, Hopkins and Jonsson, 1998). Therefore, improve standard of sanitation is quite effective to solve urban poverty. 2. 2 investments in education: Investment in the education of poor people can reduce their vulnerability and expand their opportunities” (Watkins, 1995). Moreover, Investment in education can provide the poor people opportunity to have job and learn the skill, which might be useful to reduce urban poverty. Obviously, the low income of poor people is partly a consequence of their low levels of skill and literacy (Jespersen, 1994). When the poor people are educated, the earning capability and employment prospects are increased also would bring wider benefits for society.
For example, the share of public funds allocated to higher education in South-East Asia has averaged around 15 per cent for the past three decades, but in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa it has averaged 24 per cent (Watkins, 1995). These are raising the skills-base of an economy, reduce poverty and inequality, and promote growth. Therefore, education is also a good way to increase the skill of poor people, which can provide them opportunity to get job and then reduce the urban poverty. 2. 3 improve the standard of housing “Lack of access to secure and safe housing is a central feature of urban poverty” (Masika, 1997).
In Africa, Asia and Latin America there are at least 600 million urban dwellers live in housing that is so overcrowded and of such poor quality, that their lives and their health is continually at risk (UNCHS). Urban areas are about 60 per cent of the total urban development occupied by squatter developments in large Latin American cities and today cities find it almost impossible that the urban poor is satisfied by the enough providing of urban services (Giusti and Perez, 2008). Therefore, it is necessary to solving urban poverty through improving standard of housing.
For example, in last decades, it is a great challenge for government to plan and deal with the living problems deeply and widely. In the last 2 decades, it was planed by urban planners in Venezuela suggest that squatter settlements would set up a special and formal improvements, such as the infrastructure and the roads build. City is probably regarded as a whole by legislation for national, regional, and local plans. It is possibly to develop the barrio areas as same rules and ideas as other urban areas were applied, included to develop barrio areas probably should be designed specially.
It seems that in this special program, the order of the existed areas should be damaged to create a completely new one (Giusti and Perez, 2008). Thus, this example shows that improve the standard of housing can be used to solve the urban poverty. 3. Conclusion: To sum up, urban poverty is rapidly becoming one of the most serious problems. Several solutions are found to solve urban poverty, which are improving the standard of sanitation, investment in education and improving standard of housing. It is evaluated that all these solutions are effective for urban poverty.
It is certain that the government and local community both have response to solving urban poverty, which the situation can be improved greatly in the future. [Words: 1236] Reference: Allen, T. , & Thomas, A. (2000) Poverty and Development into the 21ST Century. UK: Oxford University Press INDIA: URBAN POVERTY REPORT 2009 [Online]: http://data. undp. org. in/poverty_reduction/Factsheet_IUPR_09a. pdf. [access: 11th April 2010]. Perlman,J. ,Hopkins , E. and Jonsson, A. (1988) ‘ Urban Solutions at the Povrety/Environment Intersection ‘. The Mega-Cities Project Publication, MCP-018. Online]: http://www. megacitiesproject. org/publications_pdf_macp018solutions. pdf Practical Action Consulting, (2009). [Online]:http://practicalactionconsulting. org Masika, R. (1997). Urbanisation and Urban Poverty : A Gender Analysis . University of Sussex: Institute Of Development Studies Murray, P. (2004). Poverty and Welfare. Wathkins, K. (1995). The Oxfam Poverty Report. UK and Ireland :Oxfam World Resources (1996-1997) The World Resource Institute et al. , New York, 1996 Jespersen, E. (1994). Mobilising Resources for Children in the 1990s, UNICEF staff Working Papers