Urbanization Part 1 - Evil or the Way Forward?

This post I expect to furrow some brows. Similar to the post “Is School Cool?” this post is aimed at making us question something that we have forever thought was bad. I’ll lay down the most abbreviated summary of the typical and well-established argument in favour of rural-urban migration being bad. Those who know otherwise, PLEASE correct me.

In the 70s, when development really started to take off, much of development was aimed at urban centers in hopes that their would be a corresponding trickle-effect. That by developing urban centers, those centers would then follow by providing services for the rural population. In many cases what happened was what E.F.Schumacher called “the twin evils of mass migration and mass unemployment”.

Large populations of rural people would migrate to the urban centers (typically the young, strong, and perhaps educated men) leaving the elderly, young children, and women behind to mind the harsh conditions that rural livelihoods can often entail. Because the urban centers were not set up for this huge influx of people, mass unemployment followed along with its close companion mass homelessness. Your shantytowns and slum dwellings are the result, coupled with an ever increasing informal sector (people engaged in informal income generating activities).

Then I started to look at the differences between Canada and Ghana, and try to figure out some of the obvious differences that might account for the differing development challenges. Though there are MANY, ONE came up when I was having this conversation with a co-worker of mine. Immediately I thought of the low population density of the Northern Region of Ghana in particular. I know that Canada is one of the global leaders in low population densities (~30million people in the 2^nd largest country in the world), but it seems that most of our people have somehow gravitated towards towns or cities. When I drive from Hope to Manning Park, there aren’t too many rural settlements along the way.

Ghana is a polar opposite. There are small settlements everywhere, scattered throughout the country. The difficulty that arises from this phenomenon is that suddenly to provide electricity to all these people, you need ten times the amount of electricity lines. Water = 10 times the amount of pipe. Market access = 10 times the length of roads. If the same energy and resources that went into spreading such little butter over too much bread went into capital start up of industries, would it be possible to provide for the masses?