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Opportunities and challenges of urban living Cambridge IGCSE Geography revision

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In plain words

Cities are where the jobs, the hospitals and the universities are. That is why people come. But when a city grows faster than its houses, pipes and roads can be built, the newcomers end up building their own.

7 things to know

  1. Opportunities of urban living: jobs, both formal and informal; better access to education and healthcare; housing with electricity and water; culture, leisure and shops; and faster economic development.
  2. Rapid growth outstrips housing. People build unplanned (squatter) settlements on land they do not own, from whatever materials they can find.
  3. Unplanned settlements are overcrowded, and often lack clean water, sanitation, electricity and waste collection. Disease spreads easily, and residents can be evicted.
  4. Employment: there are not enough formal jobs, so many people work in the informal sector, such as street selling, with low and irregular pay, no contract and no protection.
  5. Other challenges: traffic congestion and air pollution, waste that is not collected, schools and clinics that cannot keep up, crime, and great inequality between rich and poor districts.
  6. Urban sprawl is the outward spread of a city into the countryside around it, the rural-urban fringe.
  7. Sprawl uses up farmland and wildlife habitats, swallows villages, and increases traffic as people travel further to work.

Worked example

Explain why unplanned settlements develop in rapidly growing cities.

  1. Migrants arrive faster than houses can be built, and most cannot afford the housing that exists.
  2. They build their own shelters on spare land, often at the edge of the city or on steep or marshy ground nobody else wants.
  3. The land is occupied without permission, so the city does not supply water, drains or electricity.

Tips and tricks

  • Balance the picture. Unplanned settlements have problems, but they also have strong communities, small businesses and housing people can afford.
  • "Informal sector" means work that is not registered, taxed or protected. Give an example, such as street vending.
5 questions, about 2 minutes.

It lands in your notebook with its questions as flashcards.

Opportunities and challenges of urban living: 5 questions and answers

These are the quiz’s questions. Do the quiz first, then come back here for the ones that got you.

  1. What is an unplanned settlement?
    • a new town built by the government
    • housing built by residents on land they do not own, without services (the answer)
    • a block of luxury flats
    • a village

    Also called a squatter settlement.

  2. What is the informal sector?
    • government jobs
    • unregistered work with no contract or protection (the answer)
    • factory work for a TNC
    • farming

    Street selling is an example.

  3. Which is an opportunity of urban living?
    • air pollution
    • traffic congestion
    • access to healthcare (the answer)
    • overcrowding

    Hospitals and clinics are concentrated in cities.

  4. What is urban sprawl?
    • the decline of a city centre
    • the outward spread of a city into the surrounding countryside (the answer)
    • high-rise building
    • a type of transport

    It takes place at the rural-urban fringe.

  5. Which is an impact of urban sprawl?
    • more farmland
    • loss of farmland and habitats (the answer)
    • less traffic
    • smaller cities

    Countryside is built over.

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