INTL201

WEEK THREE

Are urban problems related to something other than urbanization?

Globally, population is now more than 50 percent urban

- Only 3% urban in 1800

However, population of cities grows more slowly than rural populations

- To what do we owe rapid urban growth?
- Migration

Global South is increasingly urban

- Fastest growing and largest cities in the world are found in developing world
- Cities identified with greater economic opportunity
- Why shift?
o Manufacturing and industrialization (now increasingly services)
o “Closing of commons” and “force” has pushed people to cities
- However, cities are also home to severe issues
o Poverty, environmental problems, inequality
- Are they global issues?

Why have cities in US lost population after 1950?

- Suburbanization
o Is this “natural”, to what can we attribute changes?

Role of informality
- Positive or negative?
- Why? Subsistence, subordination or autonomy?

Environmental consequences
- Affect the poor most directly
o Environmental justice (potential thesis topic?)
- Sprawl (loss of farm land)
- Pollution
- Disease outbreaks
- Water
- Urban heat islands
Possibilities for sustainability in cities?
- Cities moving form industry to services
o Less pollution
o More energy efficient
- More efficient to provide services
- Transportation costs
Migration has changed
- Traditionally, rural to urban movement
- Increasingly, urban to urban migration internationally

Is immigration a national security issue?

• New “post 9/11” reality
– Primary weapon in terrorism not arms, but people
– Cannot separate national security from immigration
– Homeland defense falls mainly on civilian agencies, not armed forces
– Civilian defense/migration control system does not work
• Needs to be reorganized
Three levels of national security
• Abroad
– U.S. State Department
• Border
– Checkpoints and areas in-between
• Interior policing
– Local law enforcement support homeland security
• Immigration a privilege, not a right
Immigration and border control are separate issues
• Majority that enter US are visitors, not immigrants
• US identity and national interests depend of liberal immigration policy
– See Slate.com article on Blackboard
• Issue of competitiveness as national security issue leads us to “The Hispanic Challenge”
Immigration as a national security issue II
• Pat Buchanan asks “what defines a nation?”
– Common history, values, language
– Borders?
• Mexico harbors resentment against US for taking territory
– Different from previous immigrants
• US risks balkanization, division over ethnicity and culture
• Upsurge in Mexican population in Southwest is a form of Reconquista
– Fertility rates of Hispanic population are greater than that of Anglo population
Huntington “The Hispanic Challenge”
• Culture wars
– Hispanic immigrants reject American values
• Major differences from earlier migration
– Contiguity, Scale, Illegality, Regional concentration, Persistence, Historical
presence
• Failure to assimilate
– Education, Income/economic status, Home ownership, Intermarriage
• US identity (security) and competitiveness threatened

Are urbanization and migration global issues?