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The negative impact of rapid urbanization in Latin America deserves attention.

Sun Guangying

20 13 09 09 10:53 source: hongqi manuscript.

Latin America is a rapidly urbanizing region. The Report on Urban Development in Latin America released by UN-HABITAT in August 20 12 shows that 80% of the population in this region lives in cities, and the level of urbanization even exceeds that of many developed countries. However, the urban development of Latin American countries is not based on economic development, and the excessive growth of urban population cannot provide them with necessary employment opportunities and living conditions, which leads to a series of serious "urban diseases" and ultimately damages the healthy development of economy and society. Latin America and China are both developing countries, and many things are similar. The lessons of "excessive urbanization" in Latin American countries deserve our attention in urban development.

First, the factors that lead to "excessive urbanization" in Latin America.

The urbanization of Latin America began in the 1940s, and was promoted by the industrialization process that began in the 1930s. It is much later than the western developed countries, but the speed has improved rapidly. By 2000, the urbanization rate in Latin America reached 75.3%, even surpassing the developed countries in Europe and the fastest among the six regions in the world. Therefore, it is recognized as "over-urbanization".

After World War II, most Latin American countries unilaterally equated industrialization with modernization, believing that industrial development should take precedence over agricultural and rural development, and even that industrialization is the best way to solve agricultural problems, especially rural-urban migration. Therefore, in the adjustment of economic structure, they adopted the policy of emphasizing agriculture over agriculture, which aggravated the decline and backwardness of agriculture. The unreasonable land system-big property right system and the agricultural modernization model formed on this basis have made a large number of landless farmers lose their survival foundation in rural areas. Due to the wrong agricultural modernization model, a large number of agricultural population was pushed out of agriculture and rural areas prematurely and poured into cities blindly, which led to the explosion of urban population, insufficient food supply, intensified urban poverty and difficulty in improving domestic purchasing power.

Second, the problems caused by the excessive development of cities.

Rapid urbanization has brought a series of problems to Latin American countries.

One is the serious unemployment problem. Due to the continuous influx of rural labor into cities, the urban population is expanding rapidly, especially in big cities. From 1950 to 1980, Latin America experienced an accelerated period of urbanization, and the urbanization rate rose from 4 1.6% to 65.6%. /kloc-the number of big cities with a population of 0/10,000 has increased from 7 to 48; The capitals of many countries with 10 account for 40%-66% of the national population respectively. The population of Mexico City has increased from 3 million to 6.5438+0.5 million, Sao Paulo from 2.5 million to 6.5438+0.35 million, Rio de Janeiro from 2.9 million to 6.5438+0.07 million, and Buenos Aires from 5.3 million to 6.5438+0.065438+0 million, all of which have become world-class megacities. The phenomenon of urban unemployment and underemployment is becoming more and more serious because too much labor force has entered the city, which has exceeded the city's ability to create jobs.

Second, urban poverty has intensified and the gap between the rich and the poor is wide. Many farmers can't find jobs and return to their original places after entering the city, so they have to engage in all kinds of "self-reliance" service jobs in the city, which is called "informal employment". In Latin American countries, informal employment is not guaranteed by the government labor system, for example, there is no minimum wage, no social security and so on. For decades, a large number of labor groups in Latin American cities have been in informal employment and become urban poor. At present, 65% of the poor in Latin America are urban residents. In other words, social poverty in Latin American countries has been scattered in rural areas in the past, and now it is mainly concentrated in cities.

With the aggravation of poverty, the gap between the rich and the poor in Latin American cities is growing. According to statistics, since the 1970s, the per capita income in Latin America has tripled, but the gap between the rich and the poor has further widened. The richest 20% population in Latin America has 20 times as much wealth as the poorest 20% population, which is the biggest income gap in the world. Among them, Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia have the most obvious gap between the rich and the poor. In 2009, the Gini coefficient of these countries was above 0.56.

Third, housing shortage and serious social problems. Due to the population expansion, urban infrastructure and public service institutions are seriously inadequate, which leads to the shortage of urban housing, serious environmental pollution and deterioration of social security, which brings great challenges to the country's social and economic development.

Slums in Latin American cities, especially in big cities, are gathering places for rural migrants and urban poor. The environment is dirty, the conditions are simple, and the public security situation is even more worrying. With the increasing urban population, the area and population of urban slums in Latin America are still expanding and begin to spread from big cities to medium-sized cities. According to statistics, about14 people in Latin America live in slums.

Overexpansion of population and aggravation of poverty have led to serious social security problems in Latin American cities. Slums are also places where crimes are rampant, and organized crimes and violent activities such as robbery, murder, kidnapping, drug abuse and drug trafficking emerge one after another. Rio de Janeiro, S? o Paulo, Bogota, Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Galasca are all world-famous cities, where organized crime and violence are rampant. Colombia, El Salvador and Brazil are the top three cities in the world.

In addition, excessive urbanization makes Latin America's economy excessively concentrated in big cities, and the development of industry and the increase of cars lead to serious traffic congestion and environmental pollution, and the respiratory diseases caused by it have become one of the main causes of death in Latin America.

Third, enlightenment.

Some Latin American experts believe that China and Latin America are both developing countries, and many situations are similar to Latin America. In the process of urban development in China, the lessons of urbanization in Latin America deserve our vigilance in at least the following aspects.

1. The city scale should be controlled to prevent "big urbanization". The main mistakes of urbanization in Latin America are "big urbanization" and "super urbanization". "Urbanization" and "urbanization" are just a word difference, but they are two fundamentally different concepts. The main focus of China's urban development should be to promote the development of small and medium-sized towns on the basis of accelerating local economic development. In the process of "urbanization", it is necessary to limit the scale and prevent towns from becoming small cities, small cities from becoming medium cities, and medium cities from expanding into big cities. If we don't control it, we will face serious resources, environmental problems and various social problems at some point and pay a high price for it.

2. Urbanization should be based on agricultural development. Urbanization in developed countries is mostly based on agricultural progress, and a virtuous circle of mutual benefit has formed between agricultural development and urbanization. Different from the natural urbanization based on the substantial increase of agricultural productivity in developed countries, the urbanization in Latin America did not originate from its own economic development, but was driven by external forces when domestic agriculture did not make a breakthrough and agricultural productivity did not reach a corresponding height. Facts have proved that the urbanization of Latin American countries based on the relative stagnation of agriculture has not only made rural areas increasingly poor, but also led to urban poverty and crisis, and urbanization has gone astray. At present, more and more farmers in our country go to cities to work, and those who stay in the countryside are basically old people and children. There is a serious shortage of agricultural labor force, and some places even have abandoned land and no one is farming it. This is worth pondering on the development strategy for a large agricultural country like us, which is short of land and needs to import a lot of food.

3. Vigorously develop the tertiary industry and strive to solve the employment problem of urban working population. The lessons of urbanization in Latin American countries show that urbanization should not be too advanced, and it should be coordinated with industrial structure to achieve a virtuous circle of social economy and avoid breeding "urban diseases". Providing employment opportunities is the primary condition for rural population to flow to cities. Therefore, we should formulate policies conducive to promoting the development of labor-intensive industries, moderately reduce the excessive development of capital-intensive industries, and create more employment opportunities for rural labor transfer. Creating employment is still an urgent problem in the current economic and social development of China, and efforts should be made to make the rural population in the city have relatively stable jobs.

Most of the laborers transferred from rural areas to cities in China are engaged in low-end service industries, such as urban construction, catering and accommodation, wholesale and retail, house decoration, waste acquisition and other industries, and its huge scale has far exceeded the acceptance capacity of cities. Therefore, we should speed up the development of modern productive service industry and life service industry, promote the benign development of the tertiary industry, and strive to solve the employment problem of migrant workers. Expanding informal employment is an important channel to solve the urban employment problem.

4. Prevent the phenomenon of "slums". The average urbanization rate in Latin America has reached 80%. The urbanization rate is high, the population is excessively concentrated in big cities, and the urban employment problem is not well solved, resulting in a large number of urban poor people. These people can't afford to buy houses, and most of them seize land in the urban-rural fringe and build their own humble dwellings, gradually forming large-scale slums, which bring a series of serious problems to the city. In 200 1 year, the number of urban slum dwellers in Latin America reached 1.27 billion, accounting for 1/3 of the urban population. Some big cities, such as Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro and Lima, are surrounded by large slums. Slums usually have no formal roads or streets, and there is no water supply and power supply system. Water and electricity supply is often "stolen" from urban water supply and power supply system, and there is no public health system. Slum dwellers are difficult to integrate into their cities in terms of material and survival, especially in terms of culture. What is more serious is that the public security situation in such areas is not good, the underworld forces are rampant, illegal guns are rampant, and various criminal activities are rampant. The large concentration of poor people in big cities is also an important reason why Latin American countries are prone to social unrest.

At present, migrant workers in China mainly rent houses. Whether renting a building basement in the city or renting a house in the urban-rural fringe, the area is not large, and the sanitation, lighting, ventilation and environmental conditions are generally poor. Because there is no local urban hukou, it does not belong to the protection object stipulated by the urban housing security system, and it is not eligible to enjoy the minimum housing level stipulated by the urban housing security system. In the long run, the bad living environment will cause a growing psychological gap between rural and urban populations, which is not conducive to social stability.

5. Strengthen the management of floating population, and reasonably guide and standardize the floating population. The absence of government management and the mistake of policy orientation are the important reasons for the runaway urbanization in Latin America. First of all, the transfer of rural population to cities in Latin American countries has been in disorder for a long time, and the government's attitude is to let it go first and then be helpless. The failure to timely and reasonably contain and guide the domestic migration tide is an important reason for the out-of-control population in Latin American cities. Different from developed countries, the reason why Latin American rural areas urge farmers to enter cities is not that the improvement of agricultural productivity has caused a large number of rural surplus labor, but that a large number of farmers cannot survive in rural areas and flood into cities because of unreasonable land system and wrong rural modernization model. At this time, the industrial base of Latin American countries is still very weak and does not have the ability to absorb a large number of jobs. The large-scale transfer of rural population is bound to have great blindness, and timely and reasonable guidance and regulation is the unshirkable responsibility of the government. However, Latin American governments believe that farmers' migration to cities is a natural phenomenon of urbanization, and a large number of rural labor outflows can alleviate social contradictions in rural areas, so they do not guide and regulate spontaneous migration. Secondly, during the period of rapid urbanization, the Latin American government did not explore and find a suitable urbanization road in time. But let its urbanization develop along the road centered on the rapid expansion of big cities, resulting in excessive population pressure in big cities. The social contradictions in rural areas, which should have been alleviated, have also moved to cities, causing many more intractable urban problems. At this time, it is difficult for governments to curb the tide of immigration. In order to alleviate the pressure, the government can only increase investment in urban infrastructure and improve the social living conditions of cities, which in turn leads to the increase of urban attractiveness and the influx of more immigrants, and the urbanization of Latin America has thus fallen into a vicious circle.

At present, the main problems in China's population management are: the excessive expansion of urban permanent population and the increasing floating population. According to the figures released by Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics in June 20 13, the permanent population of Beijing in June 20 12 was 20.69 million, including 7.738 million migrants who lived for more than half a year. More and more migrant workers in Beijing are married and have children. Not only have they found stable jobs in the city, but even migrant workers who sell vegetables, set up stalls and collect waste products live and go to school in the city with their families. More and more migrants not only bring great pressure to urban employment and traffic, but also bring serious difficulties to urban management. At present, many roadside and residential areas in Beijing are crowded with people who set up stalls to sell vegetables. At night, the food stalls in the street are filled with smoke, which not only hinders traffic, but also pollutes the air. In addition, the disorder of the foreign population has increased the difficulty of social security, burglary and robbery are increasing, and various criminal cases continue to occur, making the masses more and more insecure. If the government does not formulate corresponding policies in time and reasonably restrict and standardize the floating population, the management of big cities will become more and more difficult and various "urban diseases" will become more and more serious.

To control the population size, we must first establish a long-term population management mechanism, improve the population control system, formulate effective policies and regulations, and guide the orderly transfer of rural labor force. Strengthen the construction of urban community management system, rely on the community to improve the management mechanism of floating population and rental housing, strengthen the comprehensive management function of community floating population, and strengthen the comprehensive planning and management of floating population settlements and "villages in cities".

(Author: Xinhua News Agency World Research Center researcher)