Neighbourhoods Remaining Poor - Essay Example

Neighbourhoods Remaining Poor Introduction Development is associated with eradicating poverty, where poverty may be inter-connected to other issues of underdevelopment (Jerome, 2011, p. 14). The levels and definition of poverty may be different for the communities that live in rural and urban areas as in the urban areas; people usually have access to healthcare and education but most of the issues resulting from poverty as worsened such as overcrowding, unhealthy condition and pollution among others. As the main aim of development is alleviating poverty, the various ways of measuring poverty must be understood as development implies there are improvements, which are measurable. Poverty may be measured through setting monthly averages termed poverty line, on which a household can survive and if a household has a monthly income below this line, the family is considered to be living in poverty where the poverty line changes based on the size of the family and its age as well as its composition. This essay seeks to put across the reasons why some neighbourhoods in the more developed countries remain poor through considering aspects like the economy, social residential sphere as well as interactions of various neighbourhoods. The main theme of the essay will be the connection between parts or aspects of localities since the vital role of local administrations is centred on the development it brings nearer to the population. Definitions of Poverty There are no clear definitions of poverty as a result of varying alienations and deprivations (Mingione, 2008, p. 279). Adam Smith considered poverty as a monster that threatens the survival of man and no societies that can be successful if most of its member will remain poor (Witzsche, 2005, p. 476). Other people define poverty as not having adequate food, lack of drinking water, poor sanitation and high infant mortality rates among others, nonetheless, there are three approaches that best explain poverty: absolute and relative poverty as well as Human Development Index. Absolute poverty is considered as a theory of poverty line that is founded on per capita income of the population or the consumption of households in a particular area. This may be defined as the cut off living standard with those below being regarded as poor. This means specific conditions may be considered absolute in the event that the consumption of the household goes below the permissible minimum that was set over time as a worldwide standard for significant human existence. Relative poverty emphasizes on social exclusion from typical patterns of life in various societies using lack of income. This is measured in three different ways like low income family statistics, income and disposable income. Measuring poverty low-income family statistics involves taking the governments degree of income support as well as allowances for housing as guidelines. The main reason behind this is that income support reflects the minimum degree of income the government considers as rationally possible to survive on. In this case, measuring of income is done through drawing a line at a specific percentage below which the population is considered poor. This line may be drawn at fifty percent or eighty percent of the mean income of the population. Causes of neighbourhoods remaining poor The main aspect of global economic development in the last several years has been a progressive march to urbanization and development in terms of mega-cities all over the world (Singh, 2006, p. 5). The percentage of global population that resides in cities has experienced growth from less than a third in mid-twentieth century to more than fifty percent today. Both economists and urbanists have typically considered the progressive urbanization to be a positive aspect and the long history of global cities including ancient Rome all the way to London and New York in the present times is an account of increasing growth and prosperity. The people who are concerned with the Global South have correctly pointed to the tenacious poverty in a number of large and dense cities in various continents in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The question has always remained that if urbanization assists in driving economic development, then why do most of the cities remain in poverty? There has been a recent surge in poor nation urbanization and in 1960, the nations that were considered as the poorest were also seen as the most rural (Mott, 2004, p. 272). The rates of urbanization were less than ten percent in most of the countries, which had per capita incomes of less than one thousand dollars. However, there are no poor nations associated with such kinds of low rates of living especially in the urban areas today. In the period after the sixties, there has been a considerable rise of cities such as Karachi and Dakar where the significant swelling of cities points towards specific patterns where the poorer countries typically experience urbanization concentrating on one mega-region (Roy and AlSayyad, 2004). Infrastructure is a principal aspect that demonstrates the priority that is accorded to the access of services especially water supply, which is a critical issue. Sanitation issues increase when the conditions of slums deteriorate and densities as well as overcrowding increase to force families to share insufficient facilities. Even though local government focus more on the alleviation of health hazards, their knowledge of wider environmental problems has increased because of various organizations that promote protection of the environment along with conservation. In the context of the increasing disparities coupled with economic crises, promotion of local development must involve the requirement of creating employment and opportunities to generate income for the populations that are affected by poverty. Interconnected multi-sectoral initiatives are required to deal with these issues and the local authorities are the levels of government that are involved in the most direct manner even in the cases where national are accessible for the support of sectoral initiatives. By mid-twenty-first century, only two world cities, namely London and New York had populations of more than ten million people (Kuper, 1996, p. 240). Presently, fourteen cities have populations of more than fourteen million and the number keeps increasing with estimations indicating they are likely to reach twenty-seven in 2017. Even though populations in the urban areas are stabilizing, or getting smaller in the developed countries, they are rapidly increasing in the developing countries. In the seventies, almost a half of the people who lived in cities in the globe were from developing nations, but by mid-nineties, the figure had reached sixty-five percent, with the figures being projected to reach eighty percent in 2015. Contrary to common opinions, migration from rural areas to urban areas is not the only cause of larger cities expanding in as a significant percentage of the increase in population is as a result of natural growth. The relatively smaller cities are considered as having more opportunities to expand and thus have more risk of experiencing migrations from rural areas. In most of Latin America, which has gone through rapid industrialization as well as urbanization in the last several decades, approximately seventy to eighty percent of the population is already living in the cities. Unemployment Most of the unemployment in the big cities is in the form of underemployment whereby the population is obliged to take part in any economic activity that is available regardless of whether it is poorly paid or unproductive, as social safety nets do not exist (Benyon and Dunkerley, 2014, p. 277). There is also a relative lack of alternatives in regard to unemployment insurance or job trainings for the formal sector. Cities in the developed nations have been affected disproportionally by de-industrialization, as initially, a big percentage of manufacturing was located in the cities and in the last few years, the mean decrease in manufacturing employments in G7 nations was at fifteen percent. As far as the larger European Union countries are concerned, the UKs share of employment in the manufacturing industry decreased by forty-three percent with France and Germany decreasing by lesser margins. Most of the EU nation struggle with high unemployment figures that lead to social exclusion, which was initially rare in the western parts of Europe, but has become more widespread in the larger cities and towns (Addison and Welfens, 2003, p. 1). On the other hand, the levels of unemployment are low in the United States, but the average real wages have plateaued in the last several years with high pockets of unemployment existing in some of the larger cities of the US. The worldwide economy as well as contemporary technology has led to an increasing percentage of the population of the world being unemployed or getting jobs in alienating and underpaying environments. Valuable resources such as top soil and forests, which initially sustained indigenous communities, now focus on producing commodities that are sold to overseas markets. This form of production has had a detrimental effect on ecosystems that has resulted in impoverished shantytowns and a hungry population. In other instances, hazardous waste is dumped in the impoverished areas, as the people living in these neighbourhoods are willing to trade their health for immediate and easy cash. There have been projects in some of the urban neighbourhoods that have tried to change the fortunes of the people living in poverty but most of them have not be successful in making the economic situations better for the populations. For instance, a project in metropolitan Chicago involved the inhabitants of a local ghetto utilizing accessible resources and labour to come up with greenhouses on roof. Through the project, they were able to provide fresh vegetables that were important in addressing the nutritional deficiency suffered by the local residents. Its main aim was converting the lost energy on the roofs into a commodity that could be used for their sustenance and consequently develop to become a form of empowerment since the project had resulted from the organization of the community. However, the big multinational corporations often endorse plans for community development in the urban areas that are deteriorated and these planned enterprise zones are supposed to offer tax breaks as well as temporary paying employment whose remuneration is below the minimum wage. Enterprise sectors demonstrate the agreement between companies and the administration, which are entirely against the planning endeavours that come up from the population participating in the masses. Evolving social fabrics Rapid social changes have led to people being less embedded in their families, localities and workplace as the basic bonds that exist in these environments, considered as organic solidarity, become weaker (Orford, 2008, p. 345). Before agriculture was developed, the development of indigenous cultures was centred on the primary associations that were created from necessities if daily living. However, changes have been taking place to the sense of community especially in the urban localities and in comparison to the previous decades, nuclear families have shrunk in size, become less permanent and are more separated from their extended kin. It is common to find households with one parent while other have a single person, with the locally owned shops being replaced by franchises of global chains. Presently, the family is not particularly certain about its support for its members who are young, old ill or disabled, the needy people continue to be isolated, and more separated from the resources they require. The community has developed to become a source of fear and has developed a formal boundary for the assessment of local taxes, which may not be sufficient in the provision of the required services. Further, the increase in mobility has also eroded the psychological sense of community with data on interpersonal relations in the urban areas demonstrating that contacts are not reliant on long-term ties in the workplace or of kinships. Rather, most of the relations among people result out of opportunity, are pursued by choice are depend on transportation and communicative resources and this does not include most of the people. Since the supportive network of indigenous relations has become thinner, the identity of people continues to be determined by their marketability as transformation and information technology demand that this marketability exist within a worldwide economy (Rodríguez Garavito and Santos, 2005). Both competitive and acquisitive success have developed to become the measure of security in order to avoid being left out of the benefits of living as a huge number of people with limited market value find themselves left out (Gough, Eisenschitz and McCulloch, 2006, p. 12). The people who are neglected by the once tight community are forced to accumulate in deteriorating single rooms and temporary occupancies among other places. This continues to increase poverty in various parts of the cities as the people who the community has left out do not have any source of income and have no one to take care of them. These conditions make it harder for the people to come together and address their problems in order to come up with actions that might make their lives better. Transnational control on local resources Since grassroots organization of the populations living in poverty in the urban areas mainly involves obtaining a share of the available resources, it is important to assess the amount of wealth that can be distributed. For instance, in the US, one percent of the entire populace controls thirty-seven percent of all the wealth in the country while ten percent control more than eighty-six percent. This therefore implies that ninety percent of the population have to compete for the remainder of the wealth. There have been arguments that the resource pie has a comparatively fixed proportion meaning that if some of the entities get more, others will be forced to get less. Various levels of administration are indebted to the entities that supply capital that allows them to come into power where the corporate managers of capital are meticulously connected through intertwining personal and financial engagements with the key private financial institutions and the government administrations. These large conglomerates continue to increase their operations worldwide as a result of contemporary transportation and communication enabling them to become unrestricted geographically and to operate in various different sectors. The corporations therefore have enough resources to go all over the world and identify opportunities while coming up with huge amounts of capital in a short time. In the process, they demand for tax favours, zoning allowances as well as subsidies among others through obtaining contracts and selling bonds by the administration. The advantages associated with the activities of this companies lead to temporary advantages for the regions affected as jobs such as those in construction are available for a short time while the retail jobs pay low wages with minimal or no benefits. Additionally, when these large firms move, they leave behind a population who do not have any other source of income and their work identities in areas that will have a reduced foundation for support services. Even though others may express anger at the large companies for the consequent despair, the assumptions that it is a bad anthropomorphic body, which may decide to act in a different manner, is not founded correctly. Transnational companies survive through seeking the highest returns and this strategy has resulted in the companies making the local workers bear the burden of competitive success. Conclusion There is inequality and poverty all over the globe where inequality exists between different classes of people in every country, between different areas and different regions of the world (Firebaugh, 2003, p. 12). In all the cases, the main cause of poverty is a lack of access to some resources as well as power. In many nations, there is some level of disparity between various regions in most cases the metropolitan and countryside localities. Rural trends tend to focus more on primary economic activities like farming and mining while secondary and tertiary sectors like manufacturing mainly exist in the urban areas. The urbanized areas get their materials from the rural before adding value and selling them for a higher price. Income for the households in the urban areas is typically higher than in rural areas with the same inequalities existing between various parts of the globe. Numerous researches have come to the realization that the local issues associated with poverty that they address have a wider context. Regardless of profound respect for psychological empowerment together with local control, most populations are still dependent on organizing expertise and sophisticated communications. Populations cannot be considered poor or powerless simply because they lack in competence and opportunities to be competitive as some people may be poor as a result of others being rich. Grassroots organizing at the local level works in the same manner as therapeutic expert interventions that are labelled appropriately as Band-Aids. In the event where the main causes of poverty cannot be predominantly identified in an individual, it is highly likely that they may not exist when the rest of the community is considered. Bibliography Addison, J. and Welfens, P. 2003, Labor markets and social security, Springer, Berlin. 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