Environmental Science, 10th Edition (Cunningham)

Chapter 22: Urbanization and Sustainable Cities

GE Exercise: Shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Mumbai, India

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Take a virtual field trip with Google Earth!
Google Earth is a free, online application that uses satellite imagery to allow the user to zoom across the globe in a realistic, virtual environment. Downloading Google Earth is free at http://www.earth.google.com.

An overview manual is available by clicking here... Google Earth Overview (342.0K)

To continue:
- Make sure you have the Google Earth software installed and running.
- Copy the following latitude and longitude and paste into the "Fly to" field under the Search tab.
- Hit "Enter" for Google Earth to take you to the specified coordinates, then come back here and read the following overview.

Latitude/Longitude: -22.8503, -43.2856

Overview: Shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Mumbai, India, p. 503

Shantytowns, slums, and other informal urban areas are common in fast-growing cities of developing countries. While these are often unsafe places to live and raise children, residents stay because they cannot afford to go elsewhere. Thus, these neighborhoods continue to grow, as urban populations grow, and as migrants move to the city from impoverished rural areas. These areas have little access to public services, such as water, sanitation, garbage removal, transportation, police, or infrastructure maintenance. Many factors contribute to these problems.

Shantytowns exist in many areas. Here are three examples in some of the world's largest cities. The Dharavi slum in Mumbai is one of the most densely crowded shantytowns in the world, with more than 45,000 people per hectare. An estimated 700,000 people live in the Kibera area of Nairobi, but that number is growing rapidly. The Rio place marker marks one of many informal neighborhoods in Rio. Zoom in near the marker to see the clustered housing and irregular streets in this neighborhood. Many other informally developed neighborhoods can be found in other parts of Rio.

1
What are some of the forces that would lead people to live in these neighborhoods?
A)Peasants and farmers often become landless when wealthier landowners take their land, legally or not.
B)Many rural people move to cities in search of wealth, which may be more attainable in these shantytowns than compared to their rural villages.
C)Many children are born and grow up in these slums and, for them, leaving is very difficult.
D)All of these are factors leading people to live in these neighborhoods.
2
What are some of the forces that would prevent them from moving elsewhere?
A)There is poverty.
B)Better housing is unavailable in other parts of the cities.
C)Low-income people often need assistance to get into safer housing, and few developing countries have been able to invest in subsidizing housing.
D)In some cases, police keep poor populations in these neighborhoods, as they protect the wealthier parts of town.
E)All of these are factors preventing people from moving elsewhere.
3
Several other cities with shantytowns and slums are listed in your text. Look for one or two of these cities. Is it easy or hard to locate these impoverished neighborhoods in these cities?
A)It's impossible to determine from a satellite image where shantytowns exist.
B)In most cases, it is not hard to find the dense, irregular pattern of shantytowns.
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