Urbanization and Asian Lifestyles

Nations of Asia, predominately made up of villages with rural life more the norm than city life, have been changing into lands of cities. The uniqueness of this urban growth in Asia is the universality of its nature and accelerated pace, caused primarily by the explosive increase of population and its shifts into cities. As a result, the immediate consequence of population concentration in Asian big cities in particular, without an adequate base of industrial and urban economies, is the inevitable deterioration of human environment, which affects the lifestyles of families and individuals in cities and rural villages as well. In other words, the patterns of life that provided for the orderly handling of many matters have to be compromised or shattered altogether. It must be recognized, however, that the urbanization process in Asian cities is playing a dynamic role, demonstrating a new spirit in the development of the urban community as well as in the process of modernization of a nation itself. Asian leaders are now convinced that planned urban growth, including the improvement of human environment, is a necessary condition for both a balanced economic growth and a new quality of life.