Major cities in the United States have played a very important role in national and states development. The more they grow, the more they become important to human beings. However, growth of big cities has been associated with challenges and problems and both the local and federal governments are trying to solve these problems. The growth cities in United States of America began in the 1789 and they were built along the unexplored American coastline.
With the developments in big cities, the immigrants from foreign countries flocked in these cities and they became the source of cheap labor. This continued until the 1921 when more immigrants flocked the cities and they were forced to live in slums in the neighborhoods. (Broadu and et al, 2015). This was the beginning of slum life among many Americans. According research that was done in 2013, the number of Americans living in slums rose from 7.8 million to 13.2 million between year 2000 and year 2013. This shows that the number of people living in slums is still rising. This is becoming a threat in national development.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The growth of slums is catalyzed by some factors such as rural-urban migration, lack of affordable decent housing, low income by citizens and lack of jobs. People moves from rural areas to urban centers with hopes of getting well-paying jobs that can help them live a decent life. When they land in the cities, they become frustrated after becoming aware that job vacancies are limited and only few individuals are hired. (Currie and Goddard, 2015). They have to survive in cities and they end up doing casual jobs that pay little amount of money. (Johnston and Meyer, 2017) Many young adults in the United States have skills to work in industries, hospitals, banks and in engineering firms. Most of these job categories are found in the urban areas and these young adults flock there with hopes of getting jobs. Most of them are left with chain of broken dreams and they end up living in slums where they can afford low cost housing.
When people flock in cities, decent housing becomes limited and all citizens living in the cities cannot fit in these houses. People with better earnings lives in decent housing live in the decent housing. Others have to look for any other form of housing and they end up living in the slums. This is due to the fact that they cannot afford a rent for decent housing because of their low income.
Again, lack of decent and well-paying jobs have played a very big role in growth of slums. There are a lot of citizen who do casual jobs which are below their skills. In short, they are marginalized and they fall under ‘official unemployed’ and they cannot afford decent housing so they end up living in slums. Consequently, it led to development of slums.
People believe that, United States of America is a land of opportunities. As a result, people go there with hope of getting good life. The perception of America being perceived as the land of future hopes all began in the 19 th and 20 th century. Foreigners flocked in the US and they became the source of cheap labor. This has been the trend since then. Immigrants are force to live in the slums as that is the only place they can afford.
Life in the slums is not something to be proud of and it has always been associated with a lot of illegal activities that are threat to development of cities and also national development. People living in the slums do these illegal activities so that they can survive. Illegal activities include; drug dealing and drug trafficking. Underage kids and young adults, especial those from black families end up in this act. They are used by rich drug cartels to distribute drugs in the neighborhood and in return, the get money. They do this as it is among the many ways to survive in the slums. It is a huge challenge to the states and to country in general it is becoming impossible to fight narcotics. Apart from being to the country, the dealers have their territories where they carry out their business. Rival gangs are not supposed to operate that territory and sometimes they fight and kill each while defending the territory.
Another challenge associated with slums is; theft and violence. Most of slum dwellers are forced to steal so that they can survive. Others uses violence to steal from their victims. This is a threat to national security. Most of these wrong doers end up in prisons. However, the criminal gangs are still operating and it is hard to fight them.
Slums eradication ideas have been proposed and some are working. Alissa walker wrote an article on how to come up with decent housing projects. She said that, with proper amount of money and good plans, slums can be eradicated and people can live in decent houses. She said that investors can partner to build cheap but decent apartments that can be affordable to everyone. In this proposed project, she said that, the apartment should be accessible to public source of transport and they should have basic necessities such as clean water and electricity. The apartment should also have proper lighting. This was a good idea and it working very well.
I would like to propose some ideas that have the potential to eradicate slums. Am sure they can work very and if they are applied, the slum nightmare will come to an end. These ideas are; the local governments should partner with investors and build factories in the rural America. This will reduce the rate at which people are migrating from rural areas to urban centers. (Judy and Swanstrom, 2015). The secret behind this idea is, these factories will be source of employment to many skilled people. The will know that there is no need to move to urban areas when there is a decent source of employment in the countryside.
Another idea is, basic necessities such water and electricity should be made available in the rural regions so that they can be available to everyone. Shopping malls, entertainment joints, hospitals and police post should be built. When these resources are available, the rural-urban migration rate will go down as people will see no need of moving to the city. Federal government should come up with a way of creating more job opportunities to the ‘unofficial employed’ so that they can afford decent housing. This will reduce the rate at which the slums are growing.
Slums are growing at high rate in America and other countries. If the proposed ideas are implemented, there will be no slums or they will be very little.
References
Boadu, P., Jain, A., Paulsen, F., & Smith, S. R. (2014). Associating for Affordable Housing: Nonprofit Social Housing in Germany and the USA. In Modernizing Democracy (pp. 247-261). Springer New York.
Boadu, P., Jain, A., Paulsen, F., & Smith, S. R. (2014). Associating for Affordable Housing: Nonprofit Social Housing in Germany and the USA. In Modernizing Democracy (pp. 247-261). Springer New York.
Currie, E., Goddard, T., & Myers, R. R. (2015). The Dark Ghetto revisited: Kenneth B Clark’s classic analysis as cutting edge criminology. Theoretical criminology , 19 (1), 5-22.
Johnston, T. R., Johnston, T. R., Meyer, H., & Meyer, H. (2017). LGBT-specific housing in the USA. Housing, Care and Support , 20 (3), 121-127.
Judd, D., & Swanstrom, T. (2015). City politics . Routledge. Scott, A. J., & Storper, M. (2015).
The nature of cities: the scope and limits of urban theory. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research , 39 (1), 1-15.
