Impact Of Environment In Its Incumbents-Environmental Psychology-Handout, Exercises of Environmental Psychology

Download Impact Of Environment In Its Incumbents-Environmental Psychology-Handout and more Exercises Environmental Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Environmental Psychology (PSY-511) VU ©copyright Virtual University of Pakistan 85 Lesson 32 IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENT IN ITS INCUMBENTS Human Population Growth and Environment The human population of 6000 B.C. is estimated to have been about 5 million people. By A.D 1650 our numbers reached 500 million and in the succeeding two hundred years we had doubled our numbers to 1 billion. In 80 years, by 1930, we had doubled them again. The current rate of population doubling is approximately 35 years (Ehrlich, 1968); that is, at current growth rates, we can expect the number of human beings inhabiting the earth to double every 35 years and to quadruple within the expected life span of any given individual. Put differently, the world's population of human is currently growing (total births minus total deaths) by an average of over 100,000 people per day (that's approximately one new city of Chicago each month). By the year 2030, barring unforeseen catastrophe, the number of humans vying for space on our planet will exceed 10 billion. Thus, humans are remarkably prolific procreators, and it could be argued that reproducing is one of the things they do best! Carried to the absurd, Isaac Asimov tells us that, at present rates of increase, in 6700 years all the matter in the universe will have been converted to human flesh by unchecked fecundity. Such a geometric explosion of population (Asimov's preposterous projections aside) elicits rather frightening, and highly probable, scenarios with respect to the quality of life in the future. Obviously there are limits to population growth, and the rate of acceleration has begun to slow down, but whether this acceleration can be halted or perhaps even reversed in time for our planet to remain habitable is a much debated question. At the same time that our absolute numbers are growing, there has been a trend toward urbanization. Rather than spreading ourselves evenly over the surface of the earth we have tended to concentrate our numbers into limited geographical areas. The number of cities with populations in excess of 100,000 has quadrupled in the last 20 years and is expected to quadruple again in the next 20 years. In the United States alone, 70 percent of our citizens live on only 2 percent of the habitable land. These two trends (increasing numbers and increasing urbanization) combine to bring about dramatic rises in population concentration. The effects of these increases are only beginning to be considered worthy of investigation. Furthermore, these trends are magnified in the developing countries (i.e., third world countries show not only faster rates of population increase but also accelerated rates of urbanization). In light of the fact that third-world countries do not have a highly sophisticated agri-economy upon which to build up an urban population, these figures are especially disconcerting. This unmistakable, worldwide, positively accelerating trend toward urbanization has led a number of scholars to claim that in today's world the major problems of society are urban ones, and that coping with urbanization constitutes the major behaviors of modern humans. Personal anonymity, lack of privacy, crowding, feelings of powerlessness, a pull between monotony and over stimulation, traffic, pollution, and other problems that are either created or aggravated by increasing population concentrations are twentieth-century problems with which the inhabitants of Planet Earth may not be ready to cope. Those who have looked to the future predict a world in flux and one quite different from the world we now inhabit. Increases in starvation, pollution, communicable diseases, physical malfunctions, and slums are but a few of the physical effects predicted to be influenced by increased population concentrations. Poorer physical and mental health facilities and an increase in crimes and civil disturbances are listed among the social problems, and such psychological effects as increases in drug and alcohol abuse, greater family disorganization, with drawl, aggression, and decreased quality of life are also foreseen. Clearly, this is a rather alarming and dismal picture of the future brought on by unchecked population growth. But is this mere speculation, the ratings of dooms dyers, or do these projections have some basis in fact? Predicting the effects of population growth is perhaps one of the most central and fundamental issues in the field of environmental psychology, and in this chapter we will attempt to provide some tentative conclusions from the research on this issue. We will first review some of the research on the effects of urbanization, and then we will consider the related question of how humans respond to high levels of population density (i.e., the study of "crowding"). URBANIZATION As noted in the chapter's introduction, the majority of our population lives in or near large cities. Thus, it is not surprising that considerable effort has been expended toward describing and understanding the experience of urban life. In this section we will discuss the physical, social, and psychological effects of urbanization. Pakistan Situation Pakistan’s urban population is likely to equal its rural population by 2030. docsity.com Environmental Psychology (PSY-511) VU ©copyright Virtual University of Pakistan 86 Life in the City: Pakistan in Focus’, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Urbanization in Pakistan Sindh: Share of the urban population increased from 17.4 percent in 1951 to 32.5 percent in 1998.The estimated data for 2005 shows the level of urbanization as 35 percent. The level of urbanization in Pakistan is the highest in South Asia. Most & Least Urbanized Provinces Sindh is the most urbanized province with 49 percent of the population living in urban areas. NWFP is the least urbanized province with only 17 percent of its population living in urban areas. Urbanization Punjab & Baluchistan Urban population in Punjab and Baluchistan in 1998 was 31 and 23 percent respectively. Urban population in Baluchistan and Islamabad has been increasing at higher rates of 5.1 and 5.8 percent respectively. Urban Centers of Pakistan More than 60 percent of the population of urban Sindh lives in Karachi and this concentration has increased over time. Approximately three-quarters of the total urban population of Sindh are concentrated in just three urban centers: Karachi, Sukkur and Hyderabad. In Punjab, 22 percent of the urban population lives in Lahore, and half of the total provincial urban population lives in five large cities. Urban Centers of Pakistan Peshawar has a population of approximately one million without counting the Afghan refugees, which is 33 percent of the urban provincial population. The share of Quetta in the total urban Balochistan population was 37 percent. Urban Population Concentration More than half of the total urban population of Pakistan lived in 2005 in eight urban agglomerations: Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Multan and Hyderabad. Gujranwala and Peshawar between 2000 and 2005, these cities grew at the rate of around 3 percent per annum, and it’s projected that this growth rate will continue for the next eight to nine years. Urbanization Growth Rate By 2015 it is estimated that the population of Karachi will exceed 15 million, while Lahore and Faisalabad will cross eight million and three million-respectively. According to the UNFPA global report, more than half of the world population, around 3.3 billion, will be living in urban areas by 2008 and the number will swell to around five billion by 2030. Country representative of UNFPA, Dr France Donnay said that the growth of cities would be the single largest influence on development in the 21st century. But little was being done to maximize the benefits of urban growth or reduce its harmful consequences. “Between 2000 and 2030, Asia’s urban population is to increase from 1.36 billion to 2.64 billion and Africa’s from 294 million to 742 million”. “Katchi Abaadi” Statistics In Pakistan, the urban population living in “katchi abadis” varies between 35 and 50 percent. The growth of these informal settlements in the two mega cities, Karachi and Lahore, has particularly been massive. In Karachi, these settlements increased from 212 in 1958 to more than 500. In Lahore, there are more than 300 katchi abadis Faisalabad, at least 40 percent of the population lives in these abadis. Lesson 33 EFFECTS OF URBANIZATION Physical Effects The unchecked physical expansion of cities has created what some have called urban sprawl. This term refers to a random, and sometimes unseemly, spreading out of the city-proper in all directions. This often results in business and industrial areas bordering or surrounding residential and recreational areas of the city. One consequence of such random growth is the difficulty in maintaining an efficient and effective public transportation system, with the paths of industrial, business, and residential traffic criss-crossing. Apart from the bewilderment created for "out-of-towners" trying to find their way around the city, the noise docsity.com