Urban anthropology explores the life of people in cities, the diversity of forms of social organization, the sociocultural experience, and the practices of urban communities. The subject of the study is both the problems of urban life (overcrowding, poverty, inequality of opportunity, migration, social exclusion) and the variety of forms of urban self-organization. These may be street subcultures, gangster communities, informal settlements, or self-help clubs. Today, the relevance of urban research is beyond doubt. Western and non-Western societies are rapidly becoming urbanized and mega-urbanized. It has a huge impact on how they function and all aspects of people’s lives in general. In modern world practice, issues regarding the sustainable development of cities are considered a key factor in the evolution of the modern economy (Monti 137). A developed economy is beneficial to any state in all aspects, including the political one. However, many problems of urbanization remain unresolved and do not have prospects for improvement shortly.
In the context of diverse living conditions and a huge gap between the incomes of the “lower” and “upper” strata of the population, the question of the new functional socio-economic model is especially acute. Questions of this level require large financial investments and cardinal changes in the fundamental structure of urban anthropology. To date, the search for a solution to the concerns of housing and communal services, civil, transport, garage construction, and renovation of territories is the most relevant (Monti 137). However, from a political point of view, absolute urbanization and providing people with equal economic, housing, and legal conditions are disadvantageous. As long as the core population of the big cities is white-collar, someone has to stay on the fringes, supplying all the resources for those bigger municipalities. Despite the general pattern of global urbanization, it should be understood that the state will never make this process absolute because of the unfavorable situation for the economy. There must be an equal distribution of legal and economic norms among people, regardless of where they live and work, in order to restore balance.
In recent decades, the governments got the issues regarding the size of cities and ecosystem services of “green zones”. From a scientific point of view, the process of global urbanization is also proceeding quite sharply. The influx of the population forces the expansion of urban infrastructures, which inevitably leads to an imbalance in the ecosystem. Currently, the problem of environmentally sustainable development of countries, territories, and cities has come to the forefront of scientific and methodological research and public consciousness. The most acute problems are associated with territory improvement, the emission of pollutants into the atmosphere, and the excessive deterioration of infrastructure due to the influx of people (Monti 137). From the side of science, primarily ecology, the current centralization of the population is unprofitable.
A strategy by which the authorities can count on the federal and regional policies improvement may be to divide territories into different types. These can be megacities, federal cities, million-plus cities, urban agglomerations, medium-sized cities, single-industry towns, urban-type settlements, and so on. It is also essential to recognize the basic postulates of sustainable development. It includes maintaining a balance of interests between economic, social, and environmental factors of urbanization. The institutional factor should also serve as the basis for the foundation of sustainable development. It includes finding a balance and mutually beneficial outcomes in the triad “society – business – government”.
Work Cited
Monti, Daniel Joseph & Borer, Michael Ian & Macgregor, Lyn C. Urban People and Places: The Sociology of Cities, Suburbs, and Towns. Sage, 2014.