The growth in towns and cities across the world be it developed or developing, industrialist or pre-industrial, has fueled man’s appetite to be informed about the spatial aspects of cities-their location, growth and relationship both one with another and with their surrounding regions. However, the recurrent pattern of urban land use has to be formulated and for that a fair knowledge and understanding of laws and theories is required. Therefore, let us take a journey of laws and theories of urban space and get adequately familiar with them.
The Rank Size Rule
- The relationships between city rank and city population size was first noticed by F. Auerbach in 1913, that when the rank numbers (from largest to smallest towns) are plotted against their respective population, a regular relationship generally emerges.
- The “rank-size rule”, proposed by G. K. Zipf in 1949, states that if all urban settlements in an area are ranked in descending order of population, the population of the ‘nth’ town will be 1/nth that of the largest town.
- Zipf’s rank-size rule can mathematically be expressed as Pn = P1/n where Pn is the population of the town of rank n in the descending order and P1 is the population of the largest city. Thus, if the largest city has a population of 50 lakhs, the tenth ranking town should, as per the rule, have a population of 5 lakh people.
Concept Note
The ‘exploded city’ view was postulated in the book Social Geography of the United States by J. Wreford Watson. The theoretical position of the margin of an urban field can be calculated by using a technique known as breaking point theory.
A. E. Smailes divided a city region into Core Area, Outer Area and Fringe Area. The ‘law of Retail Trade Gravitation’ predicts the proportion of retail trade that two towns will derive from a settlement (k) lying between them. This is relevant to the question of the theoretical delimitation of urban fields.
Theories of Urban Structure
Concentric Zone Theory
This theory based on hypothetical pattern of urban growth was first postulated in 1923 by an urban sociologist, E.W. Burgess, while studying the urban morphology of the city of Chicago, the USA. Through this model, Burgess stated that the development of a city place from its central commercial core takes place in a series of concentric circles. He identified five zones in concentric pattern expanding outward from the city core. Let’s know what are these zones.
Zone No. 1: This is the C.B.D. (Central Business District), the heart of the City. It has shops, offices, banks, theaters and hotels. It has multi-story skyscrapers, transport lines, converge in this zone. The CBD draws its business from all other encircling zones.
Zone No. 2: Surrounding the CBD, lies a traditional area, a zone of residential deterioration, marked also by the encroachment of business and light manufacturing. This is a zone of urban plight of tenements and slums and inadequate services.
Zone No. 3: This is the Zone of working men’s houses.
Zone No. 4: This consists of middle class residence, a suburban area that is characterized by greater affluence and spaciousness.
Zone No. 5: This is the Urban Fringe consisting of communities that are in effete dormitories of the CBD, where most of the economically active residents go to work. Here lies some of the highest quality residential houses.
Concentric Zone Theory as Propounded by Prof. E.W. Burgess
Indian City of Muzaffarpur Somewhat Conforming to The Concentric Theory
The Sector Theory
This theory was proposed by Homer Hoyt and M. R. Davie in 1939. According to this theory, patterns of urban land use are conditioned by the arranged routes radiating from the city Center creating a sectoral pattern of land and rental value influencing the urban land use pattern.
Sectors: –
- The CBD
- Wholesaling and Light Manufacturing
- Low-Class Residential Area
- Medium Class Residential Area.
- High Class Residential Area.
Colby’s Dynamic Theory
According to this theory the patterns of any city at any given point is the result of forces at work, i.e., centripetal and centrifugal. Centripetal forces are of two types: (i) residents and business class people seeking the comforts of life in urban centers get lured into a city; (ii) within the city residents and business are drawn towards C.B.D from the fringe area, a C.B.D provides better access to both the consumers and the laborers. It is main hub of the city with stores, banks, libraries, theaters and clubs. Centrifugal forces just act in a reverse manner and drive people away from the C.B.D into suburbs. Even congested slums force people and business activities to move out of the city center.
The Multiple Nuclei Theory
In 1945, this theory was proposed by C. D. Harris and E. L. Ullman. It was suggested that land use pattern in most large cities develop around a number of discrete centers or nuclei rather than a single center as described in the concentric and sector models.
Von Thunen’s Model
Von Thunen conceived the idea of a land use model in both urban and rural landscape around a city on an isotropic landscape. His idea is basically how economic rent decreases from center of a city to its periphery. His system of land use around a city with no trade alliance with any other country is ring shaped. Near the city, he envisages rings of forest, crop rotation, horticulture and dairying. His theory stresses more on agricultural land use around a city rather than the land use within the city.
Sinclair’s Model
Sinclair propounded a ring type model in 1967. The progression of intensity of his ring’s is directly proportional to the degree of urban influence in form of high urban taxes, constrained zoning and disturbances in the vicinity of urban areas. This theory is also supported by two British writers, Best and Gosson. They believe there is a shift supported by cause i.e. increasing competition from distant areas with better production facilities, and loss of casual labour to city jobs by rural-urban fringe farmers.
Sinclair’s Pattern of Land use around an expanding metropolitan area are as follows: –
- Urban Farming close to the city
- Vacant and grazing land
- Field crop and grazing land
- Dairying and field crop land
- Specialised food grain-livestock
Concept Note
A pioneer study of the CBD was done by American geographers R. E. Murphy and J.E. Vance Jr. In 1951, based on a study of 36 cities, the economist C. Clark describe the pattern of population density in any city.Hypermarkets are carefully planned out-of-town shopping centers.
The Central Place Theory
The theory of central place is associated with the economically optimum location of services of different variety and range both for the town as service provider and the countryside as the service getter. The term ‘central place’ was first used by Mark Jefferson in 1931, while defining a settlement which is necessarily a focus of various economic and social activities for the surrounding hinterland.
Walter Christaller analyzed the ‘centrality’ in detail in 1931, in West Germany, on the basis of number of telephone connections at a place as the prime criterion for determining the hierarchy. Later A. Losch did some modification on it.
Christaller proposed that settlements with the lowest order specialization would be equally spaced and surrounded by hexagonal-shaped service areas or hinterlands. He assumed a stable price of the land, equal land surface and isotropic characteristics of the land.According to him, the smallest centers would lie approximately 7 km. apart. He also outlined hierarchy according to K value:K=3 represents Marketing Principle. It favors the development of symmetrical nested hierarchy of central places. This principle postulates that rural produce comes to the higher order centers through lower order centers and the goods produced in urban areas move through higher order centers to the lower order centers.K = 4 represents Traffic Principle.
In this principle, the number of centers followed the geometrical progression as 1,4,16,64, and so on. At this level one big center serves 4 lower order centers.K-7 represents Administrative Principle. At this level one bigger central place serves seven second order centers.In 1940, the economist A. Losch presented an important modification of Christaller’s Model. Like Christaller, he again used hexagonal service areas, but allowed various hexagonal systems to co-exist. He developed a more sophisticated form of economic landscape by superimposing all the various hexagonal systems.
Nested Hierarchy Theory
A. K. Philberk, an American geographer based his nested hierarchy theory on the following: –
- Inter-connection between different occupations viz. agriculture, cattle rearing, mining, manufacturing, industry and trade are found between uniform areas which are homogenous in terms of occupance.
- Origin of nodal areas — in one nodal area different uniform areas are found which are connected with the focal point. The example of a nodal region could be one town, which is made of different mohallas.
- Nested hierarchy of nodal organization — this is the third postulate of nested hierarchy theory, which is related with the occupant units arrangement. This hierarchy turns from uniform relationship to nodal organization.
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On March 31, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its annual Gender Gap Report 2021. The Global Gender Gap report is an annual report released by the WEF. The gender gap is the difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes. The gap between men and women across health, education, politics, and economics widened for the first time since records began in 2006.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]No need to remember all the data, only pick out few important ones to use in your answers.
The Global gender gap index aims to measure this gap in four key areas : health, education, economics, and politics. It surveys economies to measure gender disparity by collating and analyzing data that fall under four indices : economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
The 2021 Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks 156 countries on their progress towards gender parity. The index aims to serve as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy, and politics.
Although no country has achieved full gender parity, the top two countries (Iceland and Finland) have closed at least 85% of their gap, and the remaining seven countries (Lithuania, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, and Ireland) have closed at least 80% of their gap. Geographically, the global top 10 continues to be dominated by Nordic countries, with —Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden—in the top five.
The top 10 is completed by one country from Asia Pacific (New Zealand 4th), two Sub-Saharan countries (Namibia, 6th and Rwanda, 7th, one country from Eastern Europe (the new entrant to the top 10, Lithuania, 8th), and another two Western European countries (Ireland, 9th, and Switzerland, 10th, another country in the top-10 for the first time).There is a relatively equitable distribution of available income, resources, and opportunities for men and women in these countries. The tremendous gender gaps are identified primarily in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
Here, we can discuss the overall global gender gap scores across the index’s four main components : Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
The indicators of the four main components are
(1) Economic Participation and Opportunity:
o Labour force participation rate,
o wage equality for similar work,
o estimated earned income,
o Legislators, senior officials, and managers,
o Professional and technical workers.
(2) Educational Attainment:
o Literacy rate (%)
o Enrollment in primary education (%)
o Enrollment in secondary education (%)
o Enrollment in tertiary education (%).
(3) Health and Survival:
o Sex ratio at birth (%)
o Healthy life expectancy (years).
(4) Political Empowerment:
o Women in Parliament (%)
o Women in Ministerial positions (%)
o Years with a female head of State (last 50 years)
o The share of tenure years.
The objective is to shed light on which factors are driving the overall average decline in the global gender gap score. The analysis results show that this year’s decline is mainly caused by a reversal in performance on the Political Empowerment gap.
Global Trends and Outcomes:
– Globally, this year, i.e., 2021, the average distance completed to gender parity gap is 68% (This means that the remaining gender gap to close stands at 32%) a step back compared to 2020 (-0.6 percentage points). These figures are mainly driven by a decline in the performance of large countries. On its current trajectory, it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide.
– The gender gap in Political Empowerment remains the largest of the four gaps tracked, with only 22% closed to date, having further widened since the 2020 edition of the report by 2.4 percentage points. Across the 156 countries covered by the index, women represent only 26.1% of some 35,500 Parliament seats and 22.6% of over 3,400 Ministers worldwide. In 81 countries, there has never been a woman head of State as of January 15, 2021. At the current rate of progress, the World Economic Forum estimates that it will take 145.5 years to attain gender parity in politics.
– The gender gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity remains the second-largest of the four key gaps tracked by the index. According to this year’s index results, 58% of this gap has been closed so far. The gap has seen marginal improvement since the 2020 edition of the report, and as a result, we estimate that it will take another 267.6 years to close.
– Gender gaps in Educational Attainment and Health and Survival are nearly closed. In Educational Attainment, 95% of this gender gap has been closed globally, with 37 countries already attaining gender parity. However, the ‘last mile’ of progress is proceeding slowly. The index estimates that it will take another 14.2 years to close this gap on its current trajectory completely.
In Health and Survival, 96% of this gender gap has been closed, registering a marginal decline since last year (not due to COVID-19), and the time to close this gap remains undefined. For both education and health, while progress is higher than economy and politics in the global data, there are important future implications of disruptions due to the pandemic and continued variations in quality across income, geography, race, and ethnicity.
India-Specific Findings:
India had slipped 28 spots to rank 140 out of the 156 countries covered. The pandemic causing a disproportionate impact on women jeopardizes rolling back the little progress made in the last decades-forcing more women to drop off the workforce and leaving them vulnerable to domestic violence.
India’s poor performance on the Global Gender Gap report card hints at a serious wake-up call and learning lessons from the Nordic region for the Government and policy makers.
Within the 156 countries covered, women hold only 26 percent of Parliamentary seats and 22 percent of Ministerial positions. India, in some ways, reflects this widening gap, where the number of Ministers declined from 23.1 percent in 2019 to 9.1 percent in 2021. The number of women in Parliament stands low at 14.4 percent. In India, the gender gap has widened to 62.5 %, down from 66.8% the previous year.
It is mainly due to women’s inadequate representation in politics, technical and leadership roles, a decrease in women’s labor force participation rate, poor healthcare, lagging female to male literacy ratio, and income inequality.
The gap is the widest on the political empowerment dimension, with economic participation and opportunity being next in line. However, the gap on educational attainment and health and survival has been practically bridged.
India is the third-worst performer among South Asian countries, with Pakistan and Afghanistan trailing and Bangladesh being at the top. The report states that the country fared the worst in political empowerment, regressing from 23.9% to 9.1%.
Its ranking on the health and survival dimension is among the five worst performers. The economic participation and opportunity gap saw a decline of 3% compared to 2020, while India’s educational attainment front is in the 114th position.
India has deteriorated to 51st place from 18th place in 2020 on political empowerment. Still, it has slipped to 155th position from 150th position in 2020 on health and survival, 151st place in economic participation and opportunity from 149th place, and 114th place for educational attainment from 112th.
In 2020 reports, among the 153 countries studied, India is the only country where the economic gender gap of 64.6% is larger than the political gender gap of 58.9%. In 2021 report, among the 156 countries, the economic gender gap of India is 67.4%, 3.8% gender gap in education, 6.3% gap in health and survival, and 72.4% gender gap in political empowerment. In health and survival, the gender gap of the sex ratio at birth is above 9.1%, and healthy life expectancy is almost the same.
Discrimination against women has also been reflected in Health and Survival subindex statistics. With 93.7% of this gap closed to date, India ranks among the bottom five countries in this subindex. The wide sex ratio at birth gaps is due to the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices. Besides, more than one in four women has faced intimate violence in her lifetime.The gender gap in the literacy rate is above 20.1%.
Yet, gender gaps persist in literacy : one-third of women are illiterate (34.2%) than 17.6% of men. In political empowerment, globally, women in Parliament is at 128th position and gender gap of 83.2%, and 90% gap in a Ministerial position. The gap in wages equality for similar work is above 51.8%. On health and survival, four large countries Pakistan, India, Vietnam, and China, fare poorly, with millions of women there not getting the same access to health as men.
The pandemic has only slowed down in its tracks the progress India was making towards achieving gender parity. The country urgently needs to focus on “health and survival,” which points towards a skewed sex ratio because of the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices and women’s economic participation. Women’s labour force participation rate and the share of women in technical roles declined in 2020, reducing the estimated earned income of women, one-fifth of men.
Learning from the Nordic region, noteworthy participation of women in politics, institutions, and public life is the catalyst for transformational change. Women need to be equal participants in the labour force to pioneer the societal changes the world needs in this integral period of transition.
Every effort must be directed towards achieving gender parallelism by facilitating women in leadership and decision-making positions. Social protection programmes should be gender-responsive and account for the differential needs of women and girls. Research and scientific literature also provide unequivocal evidence that countries led by women are dealing with the pandemic more effectively than many others.
Gendered inequality, thereby, is a global concern. India should focus on targeted policies and earmarked public and private investments in care and equalized access. Women are not ready to wait for another century for equality. It’s time India accelerates its efforts and fight for an inclusive, equal, global recovery.
India will not fully develop unless both women and men are equally supported to reach their full potential. There are risks, violations, and vulnerabilities women face just because they are women. Most of these risks are directly linked to women’s economic, political, social, and cultural disadvantages in their daily lives. It becomes acute during crises and disasters.
With the prevalence of gender discrimination, and social norms and practices, women become exposed to the possibility of child marriage, teenage pregnancy, child domestic work, poor education and health, sexual abuse, exploitation, and violence. Many of these manifestations will not change unless women are valued more.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]2021 WEF Global Gender Gap report, which confirmed its 2016 finding of a decline in worldwide progress towards gender parity.
Over 2.8 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. As many as 104 countries still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs, 59 countries have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and it is astonishing that a handful of countries still allow husbands to legally stop their wives from working.
Globally, women’s participation in the labour force is estimated at 63% (as against 94% of men who participate), but India’s is at a dismal 25% or so currently. Most women are in informal and vulnerable employment—domestic help, agriculture, etc—and are always paid less than men.
Recent reports from Assam suggest that women workers in plantations are paid much less than men and never promoted to supervisory roles. The gender wage gap is about 24% globally, and women have lost far more jobs than men during lockdowns.
The problem of gender disparity is compounded by hurdles put up by governments, society and businesses: unequal access to social security schemes, banking services, education, digital services and so on, even as a glass ceiling has kept leadership roles out of women’s reach.
Yes, many governments and businesses had been working on parity before the pandemic struck. But the global gender gap, defined by differences reflected in the social, political, intellectual, cultural and economic attainments or attitudes of men and women, will not narrow in the near future without all major stakeholders working together on a clear agenda—that of economic growth by inclusion.
The WEF report estimates 135 years to close the gap at our current rate of progress based on four pillars: educational attainment, health, economic participation and political empowerment.
India has slipped from rank 112 to 140 in a single year, confirming how hard women were hit by the pandemic. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two Asian countries that fared worse.
Here are a few things we must do:
One, frame policies for equal-opportunity employment. Use technology and artificial intelligence to eliminate biases of gender, caste, etc, and select candidates at all levels on merit. Numerous surveys indicate that women in general have a better chance of landing jobs if their gender is not known to recruiters.
Two, foster a culture of gender sensitivity. Take a review of current policies and move from gender-neutral to gender-sensitive. Encourage and insist on diversity and inclusion at all levels, and promote more women internally to leadership roles. Demolish silos to let women grab potential opportunities in hitherto male-dominant roles. Work-from-home has taught us how efficiently women can manage flex-timings and productivity.
Three, deploy corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the education and skilling of women and girls at the bottom of the pyramid. CSR allocations to toilet building, the PM-Cares fund and firms’ own trusts could be re-channelled for this.
Four, get more women into research and development (R&D) roles. A study of over 4,000 companies found that more women in R&D jobs resulted in radical innovation. It appears women score far higher than men in championing change. If you seek growth from affordable products and services for low-income groups, women often have the best ideas.
Five, break barriers to allow progress. Cultural and structural issues must be fixed. Unconscious biases and discrimination are rampant even in highly-esteemed organizations. Establish fair and transparent human resource policies.
Six, get involved in local communities to engage them. As Michael Porter said, it is not possible for businesses to sustain long-term shareholder value without ensuring the welfare of the communities they exist in. It is in the best interest of enterprises to engage with local communities to understand and work towards lowering cultural and other barriers in society. It will also help connect with potential customers, employees and special interest groups driving the gender-equity agenda and achieve better diversity.