Essay on urban livelihood
Answers
Urban areas mean places where modernisation has occurred and where there’s a huge population. Examples of urban areas are large mega cities like New Delhi and Mumbai, or smaller cities like Jaipur, Bhopal or Pune. “Livelihoods” means what people do for a living and the lifestyles they have. Thus, in this article we shall learn about the different types of urban livelihoods in India, that is, the types of jobs in the city and the lifestyles people lead.
Type of urban livelihood
urban livelihood in street workers:-
In towns and cities, it is easy to spot many people working in the streets. Some examples are those of vegetable vendors, ice-cream sellers, cobblers, rickshaw pullers, etc. These workers are self- employed people. Another special feature is that there may be no permanent shop for them to carry out their occupation. Some live and sell their products in shacks, some move around in bicycles and millions are left to sleep beneath highway roads.
Most of these workers have migrated from rural areas in search of earning more money, but alas, the city life engulfs them. It is their basic right to earn a living and thus, the government has started with many schemes to ensure their protection.
2] Self Employed Businessmen:-
These people are businessmen who have started their own enterprises. Some businessmen are worth billions- like the owners of multinational companies, or some are small enterprise owners, (like the owner of a sweet shop).
Some businessmen fall into the category of organised sector, where their accounts and businesses are recorded. However, small businessmen are self- employed in the unorganised sector too. They invest some money into starting on their own and slowly make profits. Business is a risky deal and it takes courage and creativity to run a successful one
Urban society is characterized by a sharp economic disparity between a small number of wealthy families and a large number of petty traders, artisans and the poor. Urban planning is, therefore, necessary to reduce this disparity. Urban, city or town planning deals with the design of the built environment from the municipal or the metropolitan perspective. It is also concerned with the smaller scale of development in the city or town including architecture and urban design.
The Greek Hippodamus is often considered the Father of City Planning for his design of the city called Melitus, though examples of cities permeate antiquity. In India, people built planned cities right from the ages of the Harappan culture. But all these cities of antiquity were based on agricultural income and were built mostly because of the rise in population. Gradually, the nature of settlements or urban centres underwent a qualitative change, a transition from a locally focused, isolated, economically and socially self-contained, and basically agricultural community to global, economically and socially dynamic and basically industrial or service-oriented community.
Society
Tday’s urban centres are the basis of economic activities. People mostly migrate to these centres to earn their livelihood. Among the migrants, some settle down and some others move on to larger cities or towns in search of better opportunities. To improve the economic and physical infrastructure and also to provide essential services and facilities to the existing and forthcoming population, planning is essential.
Planning is also required to condense the load of larger cities or towns including metropolitan areas as it is observed that people usually migrate from rural areas to small urban centres, from small and medium towns to larger cities or metropolitan centres in search of livelihood. This can be done by providing similar employment opportunities and standard of living in the smaller towns and cities.
Urban planning is mostly concerned with the physical development process; spatial planning plays a significant role in the identification and development of new areas. It helps in creating a new spatio-economic order leading to the rational use of land and other resources. From the late 19th century, modern urban planning started placing stress on the socioeconomic aspects of the urban centres.
Therefore, nowadays, planning includes both the social aspects such as segregation, culture and social change, and also the physical aspects of the urban land. In addition, todays urban plan is also forced to comply with rapid economic changes that may come about due to liberalization and globalization processes. Thus, urban planning for all sizes of the towns and cities has become compulsory in today’s urban centres.
To understand what city planning is, it is necessary to understand first what planning is. Planning is future-oriented; it is doing things now consciously, and deliberately to shape the future welfare, environment and condition of humans and/or non-humans. Myerson and Banfield describes a plan as ‘a course of action which can be carried into effect, which can be expected to lead to the attainment of the ends sought, and which someone (or organization) intends to carry into effect.’
Urban or city planning is a process for rational, controlled physical and social change in relation to socially and corporately determined goals and objectives rooted in societal or community values. Ideally, an urban plan is based on the best social, economic and physical data available and the best professional, technical and intellectual ideas available. Realistically, it is mitigated by political and cultural considerations.
There are two aspects in urban planning—social planning and physical planning. Social planning involves the changes in and control of social institutions and human communities, while physical planning involves the changes in and control of land uses and building design and determining the shape and pattern of urban spaces, with the use of zoning laws and building and subdivision regulations. Planning also sometimes includes social policies announced by the central and state governments such as housing, education, mental health, criminal justice, community organization and community development.