Urbanization by implosion

ARTICLE IN PRESS Habitat International 28 (2004) 1–12 Guest Editorial Urbanization by implosion Abstract Urbanization has been primarily a phenomenon of the growth and expansion of cities. Yet there is another form of urbanization that is proceeding, largely unacknowledged, in rural parts of vast regions in the Third World. The in-place growth of population in these areas is producing densities that equal or surpass the urban threshold, i.e. 400 persons per km2. These are mega rural regions whose densities are comparable to the population concentrations found in exurbs of Los Angeles, New York or Toronto. This level of density transforms spatial organization and land market, both for agricultural and residential lands, as well as precipitates thresholds for community infrastructure. It may or may not bring about social, economic or local government institutions associated with the urban living, but it surely recasts settlement patterns, land tenure systems and demand for facilities and services in urban modes. This spatial urbanization comes from the process of implosion, i.e. in-place growth. It is building up another urban crisis outside the cities in many parts of the Third World. Yet it remains unnoticed by the planning and policy disciplines as well as organizations. It is another frontier opening up for urban planning in the 21st Century. r 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. Keywords: Urbanization; Ruralopolises; Densities; South asia 1. Two types of urbanization Exploding cities is the familiar metaphor of the current form of urbanization. Cities and towns, growing in population and spreading into the surrounding countryside, spawning suburbs and swallowing up farms and villages, are the idioms of modern urban growth. This expansion of cities has been long sustained by the migration of populations from rural areas. Yet there is another form of urbanization that is proceeding, almost unnoticed, in villages and countryside of the Third World, through the in-place population growth. In-place population growth in rural areas is leading to the expansion of villages, multiplication of homesteads, and sprouting of homes amidst fields and barrens. With this form of growth, population densities in vast rural regions exceed the threshold for defining urban settlements. It is happening in vast stretches of rural India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Egypt, Rwanda, Burundi, Nigeria and other countries of the Third World. This is the phenomenon of urbanization by implosion, which builds up urban spatial organizations through the densification of human settlements. This is a new form of human settlement, made up of diffused development stretching over vast regions. Where one village ends and another begins is often hard to differentiate in this settlement. 0197-3975/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. PII: S 0 1 9 7 - 3 9 7 5 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 6 9 - 3 ARTICLE IN PRESS 2 Guest Editorial / Habitat International 28 (2004) 1–12 Its form may vary from region to region depending on the historical settlement pattern, namely homesteads versus nucleated villages, but the density-induced physical urbanization gradually creates linear bands of development made up of homes, paths, hamlets and villages. The in-place growth of rural population generates urbanization that has not been recognized or acknowledged. This is urbanization by implosion. To illustrate urbanization by implosion, I have mapped the rural population densities of the three countries of South Asia, i.e. Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The rural density here refers to the total rural population of a district divided by its total rural area, including the settlement, agricultural and uncultivated lands. Applying the almost universal criterion, for defining urban settlements, of 400 persons per km2 (or 1000 per mile2) to these countries, I have found that most of rural Bangladesh has urban level densities (Fig. 1). Similarly, in India, from West Bengal to the outskirts of Delhi is a band of territory, about 311,200 kms2 in area, that has rural densities exceeding the urban threshold. Also, the coastlines of Kerala and Orissa provinces are equally dense rural regions (Fig. 2). Pakistan, largely a semi-arid but irrigated plain, has its share of the contiguous high-density rural districts, spread over 56,000 kms2 along a north–south axis beside its eastern border with India, and another band of similar territory in the Peshawer Valley (Fig. 3). I have called these regions ruralopolises, a hybrid settlement system that is spatially urban but economically, socially and institutionally rural rather agrarian (Qadeer, 2000, p. 1584). 2. High density rural regions in the Third World These rural regions of high population density, ruralopolises, are not primarily constituted by metropolitan fringes or exurban parts of urban fields. They are vast bands of territories beyond urban regions, extending over thousands of km2, but studded with cities and towns. Often agriculture and household production are the bases of their economies, but they are not insulated from the technological and social currents of modernization. Poverty is endemic in these regions and the population pressure is transforming their land economy and spatial organization.1 It is the combination of agrarian economy and high density that defines these regions and differentiates them from the high-density countryside of developed countries, such as Japan, the Netherlands, and the Megalopolises of the Eastern Seaboard and the Great Lakes region of the US.2 3. Density and spatial transformation High density is the transforming force that invests rural regions with urban spatial characteristics. A high concentration of population in a locality is almost universally taken to 1 The poverty of these (Third World) countries sharpens the uniqueness of the high-density rural regions. Here urban densities are found in conditions of economic underdevelopment. In South Asia, for example, the per capita GDP was $470, $440 and $350 respectively for Pakistan, India and Bangladesh in 2001. 2 The Netherlands and Japan are densely populated countries (456 and 333 per km2 in 1990, respectively), yet they are rich and industrialized. ARTICLE IN PRESS Guest Editorial / Habitat International 28 (2004) 1–12 Fig. 1. Ruralopolises in Bangaladesh, 1991. 3 ARTICLE IN PRESS 4 Guest Editorial / Habitat International 28 (2004) 1–12 Fig. 2. Ruralopolises in India, 1991. ARTICLE IN PRESS Guest Editorial / Habitat International 28 (2004) 1–12 5 Fig. 3. Ruralopolises in Pakistan, 1998. be an indicator of urbanity. Census definitions of urban areas rely on the density criterion, with a remarkable degree of convergence around the norm of about 400 persons per km2. Wirth (1938) identified density, along with heterogeneity and size, as the defining elements of urbanism and connected them with the culture and social organization of cities. Although the sociological characteristics of cities identified in his theory have ARTICLE IN PRESS 6 Guest Editorial / Habitat International 28 (2004) 1–12 been disputed in recent times by Rex and Moore (1967), Harvey (1985) and Castells (1977) and others, density as an indicator of urbanism remains undisputed. High density in rural areas of the Third World may or may not bring about sociological changes associated with urbanism, but it transforms spatial organizations in three ways: (1) infrastructural needs; (2) changes in the landscape and settlement system; and (3) restructuring of land economy and land uses. High density precipitates thresholds for communal facilities (water supply, drains, waste disposal, streets, fire protection and public health measures, etc.), intensifies interdependencies among land uses and realigns property rights in ways long defined as urban. These are the physical and spatial changes that occur independently of the social, economic and cultural characteristics of urbanization. It is in this sense that density has a transformative influence on the spatial organization of an area. High density lays the ground work for spatial urbanization. This is the crux of my argument for the urbanization of high-density rural areas by implosion. This argument will be elucidated through examples of changes in the spatial organization of high-density rural regions in the three countries of South Asia. 4. Precipitation of needs for community infrastructure To illustrate the precipitation of thresholds for community facilities and services, I will trace the evolution of the need for latrines and waste disposal systems in the rural parts of South Asia. In villages and homesteads, traditionally houses do not have latrines. The most common practice is to ‘go to fields’, behind a bush to relieve oneself. As the population increases, the number of houses multiply and villages expand into fields and common lands, thereby reducing the privacy for purposes of relieving oneself. In vast stretches of high-density rural regions, beyond cities, a common sight from trains or buses is people squatting in view of each other and passers-by, their faces covered and bottoms bared. It is a sight of considerable embarrassment for the people, though they have little choice. The concentration of houses necessitates in-door latrines, which in turn require some mode of transporting waste out of a house regularly, namely rudimentary sewers, drains, holding or septic tanks. This progression towards (community) infrastructural thresholds continues as the density increases. Although local conditions may vary with the soil quality and topography, septic tanks are useful only at the lower end of the development density. For example in North America, septic tanks are adequate up to 15 houses per km2, beyond that density communal systems of waste disposal are necessary to avoid contamination of soil and water (Canter & Knox, 1986, p. 3). In Canada, the rule of thumb is that septic tanks are useful only up to a density one dwelling unit per acre. Beyond this density, some form of communal water and sewerage system is necessary (Ontario, Canada, Ministry of Environment, 1997). South Asian thresholds may be different, though unknown, but widespread land pollution and stagnant pools of dirty water suggest that they have been long crossed. Similarly, the need for progressive collectivization of facilities and services and the realignment of norms and institutions can be observed for water supply, streets, roads, building codes and even burial practices and cemeteries. As the density of development increases, collective modes of infrastructural provisions are required. This is the path of urbanization that rural Europe and ARTICLE IN PRESS Guest Editorial / Habitat International 28 (2004) 1–12 7 North America has followed.3 It is now being precipitated in the densely settled parts of Asia and Africa. The point of this illustration is that the increasing density of houses and settlements leads to the physical and institutional structures that are essentially urban in character. Of course, there is a lag between the precipitation of urban infrastructural needs and their fulfillment. High-density regions of South Asia are severely lagging in the provision of such facilities and services. In 1990–1991, most rural housing were without inside latrines, about 38% in Bangladesh and 85% in Pakistan, as were about 15–20% of urban housing. The provision of other facilities and services were equally lacking, though they were needed all the same. High density brings about conditions requiring collective provisions of infrastructure and urban regulatory regimes, but they may not be provided. Yet despite the lack of these facilities and institutions, their needs lay the bases for an incipient urbanization. 5. Changes in settlement patterns and landscape Another way in which high density transforms a rural area is through the changes in its settlement pattern, specifically in the spacing and sizes of villages, hamlets and homesteads across the land. As the population in a rural area increases, new households are formed, spawning new homes and businesses, resulting in the expansion of existing villages, formation of satellites and new settlements and building of homes in the middle of fields. Incrementally, the landscape comes to be dotted with settlements and homesteads, reminiscent of suburban sprawl. The feelings of solitude and the serenity induced by bucolic rural settings give way to a sense of crowding with human presence all around. This feeling is captured by an observer of the rural scene in Bangladesh: ‘‘there are few horizons which are devoid of settlement, but where they begin and end is often impossible to judge’’ (Gardner, 1995, p. 23). My childhood memories of traveling across what now is a band of high-density rural districts in Pakistan bring out the thrill of seeing vast tracts of golden wheat fields and wilderness, accompanied by a city boy’s sense of awe of not seeing many humans across the horizon. Now in the same region, one feels as if one is passing through a suburban corridor, lined with homes, sheds, stores and villages alternating with fields and denuded lands. The visual distinction between town and country fades in the high-density rural districts. 6. Evolving residential land economy and the land question Finally, high density realigns residential land rights and tenures as well as restructures land use patterns, engendering new needs for public spaces, non-existent before, for streets, paths, playgrounds, drainage ponds, schools, etc. Of course, there is no one model to fit all the explanations of these changes, because land economy, including tenurial arrangements and land 3 In the late 19th century, European and North American cities were plagued by cholera, typhoid and malaria epidemics, fire hazards and other symptoms of the absence of public health, safety and welfare. The answer to these problems came in the form of public utilities, town planning and welfare services. Even burial practices had to be regulated to ensure proper disposal of the dead bodies. Similar situations are arising in Third World cities and highdensity rural areas. ARTICLE IN PRESS 8 Guest Editorial / Habitat International 28 (2004) 1–12 uses, depends on property systems, land development processes and land use practices, which vary from locality to locality and region to region. Even within the ruralopolitan districts of the three South Asian countries, settlement patterns range from nucleated villages to free-standing homesteads; land tenures include community or public ownership of residential land, customary entitlements to the residential use of village commons, family joint freeholds or altogether individual ownership. These variations in the parameters of the residential land economy affect demand, supply, prices and uses of land, tenurial institutions as well as the transactional practices, giving rise to varying structures of local land markets, particularly in the residential sector. How the population growth and consequent high demand for homes and settlements affect varying residential land economies can be glimpsed from the observations of high-density rural regions of South Asia. In Bangladesh, dispersed family/clan compounds (Baris) divided into quarters for individual households are the predominant form of rural housing. The ‘market’ for residential land is circumscribed within family bounds and regulated by customary entitlements. The indigent members of a clan have a sort of entitlement to live in family compounds as uthuli residents, a form of obligatory charity (Indra & Buchignami, 1997). As the number of households increase, homestead land is divided and subdivided to the point of saturation. Thereafter, new homesteads are started in fields, incrementally carving new paths and streets, installing (tube) wells and building ponds, thereby expanding settlements and converting farmland or village commons to residential uses. As the population density increases, the pressure on land increases in parallel, resulting in more and more land being put to residential use. The agricultural land is lost and open spaces, commons or even flood plains are carved up. The rural density in many parts of ruralopolitan Bangladesh can be as high as 3000–5000 persons per km2, resulting in as much as 10% (or more) of the total land area of a village/locality taken by the residential uses. Even at densities of 400– 1000 persons per km2, about 3–5% of a village land area is consumed by its settlement (Khan, 2000, p. 46). The pressure on land further adds to the misery of the landless, leaving them without, even, any land to live on (8–9% residential landless in rural Bangladesh) and dependent on their family/clan’s charity for shelter. In ruralopolitan regions of India and Pakistan, except Kerala, nucleated villages, divided in caste/clan quarters, are the predominant form of rural settlement. Often provincial land laws and customary norms delineate village sites, set aside commons and define households’ rights of access, use and conveyance. There is rarely an open market in residential lots, though some monetary transactions or barter of property/services may accompany use and transfer of land among clan members. The population pressure, and consequent high density, leads to the division of family compounds, building over village commons and implantation of satellite villages and homesteads on farms around a village (Qadeer, 2000). This process steadily transforms farm villages into mini towns and pockmarks surrounding fields with clusters of homes, paths, storage sheds even shops. The compact village as a form of settlement gives way to sprawled residential clusters surrounding an overgrown village. The countryside takes the appearance of a leap-rogged sprawl. High density also necessitates the development of some rudimentary forms of the external elements of homes, namely streets/paths for access, drains and wells, spaces for bus and carriage ARTICLE IN PRESS Guest Editorial / Habitat International 28 (2004) 1–12 9 stands, as well as animal pens and storage sheds. These external elements may be incrementally built up, but they require additional land (apart from the capital), which may add up to 10–25% of the area of house lots. These are the manifestations of creeping urbanization. High density and sprawl precipitate issues of land use compatibilities and efficiencies (by land and service costs) of development. Some of the common sources of conflict in these ruralopolitan regions are the drainage of waste water from homes on surrounding lands and difficulties of rights of way. The point is that the increased density of development leads to the need for land use regulations, systematizing of paths, streets and drains, albeit land use planning, which in turn necessitate a formal system of local governance, community decision-making and land use regulations—all being steps towards the emergence of an urban land economy. 7. Summing up I have argued, with illustrations from South Asia, that the population of growth in large rural expanses of many Third World countries is leading to the formation mega rural regions that are spatially and environmentally urbanized. The transformative force is the urban-level density of population. These high-density rural areas may continue to be economically, socially and administratively rural in character, censuses may continue to classify them as rural, but their settlement patterns, residential land markets and infrastructural needs are increasingly urban in form and scope. This combination of the institutional rurality and the spatial urbanity is a new phenomenon, particularly in its regional sweep that is creating another idiom of urban development—namely, ruralopolis. It is a form of urbanization that emerges with large institutional deficits or lags between needs and provisions for facilities, services and resources as well as administrative organizations on the one hand, and spatial-environmental structures and community institutions on the other. The following is a summary, albeit in general terms, of the structural elements of this urbanization, though these features of the emerging settlement system should be treated as hypotheses at the present state of our knowledge: * * * * * * * * emergence of a sprawl-like pattern of villages, hamlets and homesteads, alternating with farms and open spaces and linked with cities and town, forming a landscape of diffused development; realignment of the size, form, spacing and functions of settlements with increasing density; precipitation of thresholds for such community/collective facilities as water supply, drainage, waste disposal, paths and streets, police stations and playgrounds, and for the corresponding institutions for their development and management; emerging conflicts among land uses within settlements and between residential activities and agricultural, open space and ecological uses, land use planning and regulations direly needed; loss of agricultural lands, (sub) division of community commons and forests; upcoming crisis of land scarcities for farming as well as settlement purposes, need for the economical use of land resources; residential land scarcities and erosion of customary entitlements for residential use in villages, particularly affecting the poor; gradual shift from the familistic/community-based to individualistic systems of tenure in the residential sector, incipient commodification of residential lots, rural housing shortages; ARTICLE IN PRESS 10 * * * Guest Editorial / Habitat International 28 (2004) 1–12 increasing landlessness for residential purposes, potential homelessness of the poor, squatting an increasing reality; public lands needed for provisions of community infrastructure and external elements of houses, about 10–25% of residential uses; the expansion and densification of lower tier settlements builds up thresholds and demands for higher-level activities (e.g. dispensaries, hospitals, shops and stores, municipal governments) in upper tier towns and cities of district settlement systems. Cities expand and towns grow, partially, as a secondary impact of the rural growth. The urbanization by implosion gives new stimulus to the expansion of cities. 8. Implications for research and policies The phenomenon of high-density rural regions is quietly building up land scarcities and infrastructural deficits, both for farming and residential uses, though in this article the concern is with the land for settlements. The combination of high density and rurality is intriguing theoretically, because one of the defining characteristics of urbanity, namely high density, is found in agrarian and economically poor rural regions of the Third World. Futhermore, such densities are not limited to a few districts or small swaths of rural territories, but they extend over mega regions, hundreds of kilometers long and wide. This paradox suggests that these regions are a new form of settlement system that may not be explained by the conventional urbanization theories. Unraveling the structures and processes of these regions is the challenge for students of urbanization and land economy. The immediate task is to understand, through research, what changes high density induces in the residential land market, tenurial system, modes of supply, prices and distribution, patterns of land uses and dynamics of development, albeit various parameters of the residential land economy as well as the infrastructural thresholds. Listed above are some hypotheses gleaned from observations of South Asian high-density rural regions. These are the broad indicators of the emerging structural changes in the land economy, spatial organization and institutional bases of high-density rural regions. Perhaps an equal, nay larger, issue is the emergent scarcities of agricultural land, as settlements swallow up farms and uncultivated tracts. Public policies and planning in these regions will have to reconcile and balance these competing demands and maintain the economic and ecological sustainability of local communities. It will be a new frontier for regional and community planning. A series of parallel studies are needed in different parts of the high-density rural regions in the Third World. It is unlikely that one overarching model will fit all high-density localities and regions of varying geographical, social and economic characteristics. There may be common tendencies and themes, but the structural and institutional configurations are likely to be specific to regions and, even, localities. Issues raised by the increasing densities in rural regions, ruralopolises, recapitulate the familiar ‘urban crisis’ of the Third World across whole or large parts of those countries. Among such problems may be the pressure on land, the erosion of entitlement-based distribution of land for living and increasing ‘marketization’ of this basic need, increasing landlessness and consequent homelessness in rural areas; loss of wilderness, village commons and farm land, uneconomical ARTICLE IN PRESS Guest Editorial / Habitat International 28 (2004) 1–12 11 settlement patterns, land use conflicts and pressing needs for urban-type facilities, services and institutions, including land use planning. These conditions are leading towards major upheavals in the environmental, spatial and agricultural land sectors of the rural regions, where densities are increasing up to or beyond urban levels. The Land Question comes to the fore at an unprecedented scale. To illustrate the scale of problems that are likely to arise, we have only to refer to the rural population forecasts for Bangladesh, where rural density for the whole country already has exceeded 400 persons per km2, while the overall (including urban) density is about 900 persons per km2. In 2000, it had a rural population of about 103 million, which though growing slower than the urban population, will top 124 million in 2030 (United Nations, 2002). About 8–9% of the rural population had no residential land to live on in 1990 (Qadeer, 2000, p. 1594). The majority of rural houses in rural areas lacked inside latrine, sanitation and clean water. With such a housing and environmental backlog, the next 30 years will witness the need for additional rural housing for about 21 million people, approximately 4.5 million homes, requiring about 100,000 ha of land for residential uses. Farm holdings are already among the lowest in the world. Bangladesh is an extreme case of land scarcity. Its total land area is 144,000 km2. Yet even Pakistan and India will experience severe pressures on rural lands and environments from residential demand, requiring an estimated 10 million and 23 million additional rural homes, respectively, in the period 2000–2030. Urban implosion in the countryside is marching towards cities that are expanding out. It is enveloping the exploding cities to turn almost whole countries into swaths of urban territories. This situation poses policy challenges of Malthusian proportions. Urban planners, policy makers and urban researchers have to simultaneously understand and respond to this second wave of urbanization. Their ingenuity and professional skills will be challenged as never before. Acknowledgements This article traces the practical implications of the theoretical argument developed in my previous article (Qadeer, 2000).The three figures included here were initially published in the earlier article and are being reproduced with the permission of the Editor, Urban Studies. References Canter, L. W., & Knox, R. C. (1986). Septic Tank System: Effects on Ground Water Quality. Chelsea, Michigan: Lewis Publishers Inc. Castells, M. (1977). The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Gardner, K. (1995). Global migrants, local lives. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Harvey, D. (1985). The urban experience. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press. Indra, D. M., & Buchignani, N. (1997). Rural Landlessness, Extended Entitlements and Inter-household relations in South Asia: a Bangladesh case. Journal of Peasant Studies, 24(3), 24–65. Khan, S. (2000). Spatial organization, residential land and housing conditions of high-density rural areas in Homna Thana. Bangladesh Research report submitted for the Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning Degree, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. ARTICLE IN PRESS 12 Guest Editorial / Habitat International 28 (2004) 1–12 Ontario, Canada, Ministry of Environment (1997). Guidelines for ‘‘Provincial Water Protection Fund,’’ August. Ministry of Environment, Ontario. Qadeer, M. A. (2000). Ruralopolises: the spatial organization and residential land economy of high-density rural regions in South Asia. Urban Studies, 37(9), 1583–1603. Rex, J., & Moore, R. (1967). Race, community and conflict: A study of sparkbrook. Harmondsworth: Penguin. United Nations, Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2002). World Urbanization Prospects. The 2001 Revisions. ESA/P/WP 173. Wirth, L. (1938). Urbanism as a way of life. American Journal of Sociology, 44, 1–24. Mohammad A. Qadeer* School of Urban and Regional Planning, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada K7L3N6 E-mail address: mqadeer@hotmail.com * Corresponding author. Tel.: +416-778-9700.