Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 31 to 40.
[I] We have much more difficulty coming to terms with urbanization - the process by which cities grow and change. Singapore has just announced its very first "urbanization policy”, while California is aggressively pursuing the idea of "smart cities". Neither is full of the reality faced by the overwhelming majority of citizens caught in this turmoil of urban growth. [II]
[III] There is also a dystopian view of cities (typically associated with sub-Saharan Africa) as being chaotic and focused on poverty and violence. The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s capital Kinshasa, with a population of 9 million, is described by Canvard anthropologists as "a city that is in and of itself elsewhere, invisible.” In development policy, cities were seen as malevolent, sucking in productive people from rural areas and undermining agricultural production, the basis of economic development.
The reliance on Western models of urban planning and containment has resulted in a catastrophic failure to manage the growth of cities in many low-and middle-income countries. Most development policies have lacked a specific urban perspective, with the result that cities have grown haphazardly in the face of irresistible migration and population growth. Urban policy, when it existed at all, has sought membership in the elite of global cities pursuing high-value real estate development and prestige projects while ignoring the needs of the poor, who are an essential component of city economies.
[IV] Control of land development and the revenues from increased value are captured by elites who in turn occupy the most advantageous sites, often in gated communities protected by private security. The poor, lacking access to land and housing, occupy vacant land that is often polluted to create so-called "informal settlements” that sit alongside slums. They establish informal economies, making a livelihood outside the formal economy of contracts and wage labor.
