“First World/ Third World city” dichotomy.
The First World/ Third World city phenomenon can be paralleled to a city that is located in developed and modern countries, but have the condition or environment that can be associated with the general overview of Third World countries environment. In many parts of United States (U.S) itself, there are many major cities that are considered as slums and filled with the problems that most Third World city usually has. In addition, the Third World city in the US also associated with the growing number of immigrants’ city based such as Chinatowns or Little Saigon. This large number of immigrants’ population, drive people to view some cities in US as the Third World cities. In this mini paper, I would like to discuss how and why those cities turn out to be like that and also address the implications of dividing cities into these two categories.
Before going to my main discussions, I would like to cite the Third World definition in The Dictionary of Human Geography, which is, “underdeveloped countries in general – in Africa, Asia and Latin America”. (p. 828) It’s also important to note the use of “in general” term since there are growing numbers of countries in Asia including Japan and Singapore, which are now considered as developed nations and had at least the same or better environment city compared to the most western countries. In addition I also would like to give the general description of the Third World City. It basically is associated with the overcrowding population, high number of crimes, sanitary problems, lots of slums and poor neighborhood, higher number of unemployment, increasing poverty, polluted environment and many other problems and troubles. So we can see that the Third World cities are usually associated with all these negativity.
In his book Urban Geography: A Global Perspective, Michael Pacione, lists several main goals of urban planning. Some of the goals are:
“to contribute to the...