A Reality of Cairos Past and Future Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

A Reality of Cairos Past and Future - Essay Example Cairo's efforts to mange its population is mirrored by a continental program in Africa that aims to decentralize commerce and industries by 2015 (Raychaudhuri 6). In 2005, the Egypt Human Development Report (EHDR) 2005 was published and tackled the problems that overcrowding has brought to the city: it cites that the disparity in resources, prospects and representation is a direct deterrent to national goal of development for Egypt (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP] "Choosing our future: Towards a New Social Contract", 5-6) Crowding in urban areas is a problem that all major cities are facing. Even developed countries also have to deal with issues of disproportion of population and industries. Efforts to balance these trends have come in either redevelopment of stagnating areas or through relocation efforts. The successes of these projects have been intermittent and have done little to stem rapid growth of urban populations. The stories of remote locations becoming ghost towns as residents move to the city is not fiction, it is a reality that aggravates economic and social problems of less developed regions. From the perspective of computer programs that include crowds and other social behaviors associated with it, crowding is seen as something that is important in all growing cities and economies. In many cases, urban overcrowding can either be a 24-hour phenomenon to a city or only an effect of people coming to work in the cities where the human congestion eases as people return to their homes at the end of the day. According to Loscos and his associates, crowding creates a resource base that is essential for development but at the same time, one has to be very careful in encouraging population development because population grow in geometrically and once it finds its momentum, little can be done to control it excluding extraordinary measures without sacrificing growth. Hebding and Glick point out that crowding is though a strongly social behavior, factors that fuel it more powerfully are economic and political factors. People gravitate towards areas that give him best access to resources. A direct economic effect of these movement is on labor markets and even greater impact is made on developing economies were labor maybe more easier than al other economic resources (Bertola 3027-3028). Politics also tend to follow these developments. The greater the development, the greater is the need for administration. Wars have been fought to control cities independently of the countries they are situated in. Cairo historically was a key city in controlling the Nile and gaining access to the rest of Egypt. There is cyclical effect to these developments: population, commercial and industrial density develops economic and political centers while at the same time, the establishments of these centers attract further population multiplication. Population and the availability of labor, political and economic institutions are all key factors that are essential to development (Bergsten). The magnitude of these cities, whether newly developed or ancient ones like Cairo, can be measure by the extent of their population, economy and political significance. Therefore, overcrowding to a certain extent is an indication of a city's