audrey’s Weblog

With the advent of globalization, the movement of people has become much easier. The increase in mobility of the people has led to movement of different groups of people, as a consequence of urbanization. The groups of people that will be touched on in this essay are immigrants, people moving from rural to urban areas and city users. Many city dwellers feel that much of the original population of the neighbourhood has been filtered out. Hence, does this movement of people benefit the city?

Immigration has become easier and much more common in parts of the world. Immigrants migrate for several reasons, for example, to escape poverty or to earn a higher income. The underlying cause for immigration is to seek a better life and a higher standard of living, largely in the cities. The trend is moving from a less developed to a more developed country that will have better prospects than their home country.

In fact, a substantial number of present day immigrants are highly skilled in specialized jobs, sought after by the countries they migrate to. This group of immigrants adds to the city’s and country’s technical expertise. This in turn increases the country’s rate of technological and scientific advancement which will further benefit the country in terms of trade.  This might also solve population problems, as countries and cities facing the advent of an aging or declining population have taken advantage of immigration to counterbalance the falling birth rates.

There are problems associated with immigration that cannot be ignored, however. These include racial cultural tensions as a result of differences in culture between the locals and immigrants. The local people might also see immigrants as taking over jobs that were originally theirs.

An increasing number of people move from farms and villages move to live in cities, a phenomenon known as rural urban migration. Many of these people are attracted by the idea of urbanism in the city. In addition, living in cities permits people to take advantage of the opportunities of proximity, diversity and competition. Rural dwellers hence largely move to the cities in search of a better life. This results in an increased pool of cheap labour, which is necessary in cities suffering from a lack of labour in primary and secondary industries. This would help sustain these industries, which would face closure as native city dwellers are encouraged to take up jobs in the tertiary sector. However, there is a high possibility that these rural migrants enter the bottom rungs of the urban occupational structure and suffer inequality in status attainment in the city, creating social problems. [1]

Private cars, fast transportation and a developed aviation industry have resulted in an increased mobility of the people. This, combined with greater availability of income and leisure, has led to the movement of a new group of people, known as ‘city users’. This is a group of people who move to the city to make use of its services, for example shopping, movies, museums and restaurants, to name a few. One example is London’s Heathrow Airport. The London airport system handles a transient population numerically equivalent to entire nations like Italy or the UK, and this population is expected to double in the next few years.[2] A large number is composed of ‘city users’. This group of people contributes to the economy of the cities, by leaving a sizable amount of money in shopping, hotel and restaurant bills.

In conclusion, as a whole, movement of people does benefit cities. The benefits are largely economic, as cities are forced to improve to compete on the global stage. The social problems arising as a result cannot be denied; hence these benefits are largely dependent on the profile of people moving. I believe that economic benefits exceed the drawbacks, coming to the conclusion that movement of people into the cities is largely beneficial.