Long time no update!

Sorry this blog hasn't been updated for the last couple of weeks. I thought I had but it turned out I hadn't!

The recent work we have done is:

- looking at the land use models for LEDC cities. Basically you have the CBD in the same place, and then the richest housing. As you move towards the outskirts you have the quality of housing gets lower, as do many of the other social indicators we looked at such as private ownership, employment, and number of bedrooms.

- looked at the problems of rapid urbanisation and the effects on the destination city. We found that in LEDC cities especially there were a lot of problems for people who arrive at the city such as no employment opportunities unless you have skills (which you are unlikely to have - that's probably why you moved!) and lack of healthcare or places to live. We designed our own squatter settlement as individual families looking for the best for their own family, including building the houses to be monsoon proof (to withstand wind and rain) and found that sloping roofs help more than flat roofs, but it is the quality of the building materials that really makes the difference. We then redesigned our settlement as a community rather than as several individual families, and found that by doing this we could improve the overall standards of the area e.g. by putting in services like shops, healthcare and education - all of which would be impossible if you were going to do it on your own.

- finally we have looked at the problems in the countryside that make rural to urban migration happen. We have found that the basic lack of employment and services, plus overcrowding and small farming plots, might make people leave for the city (despite the fact that when they get there, it often isn't as good a place to live). To hold back the people from moving, we found that schemes like PRIDE in India can have a huge impact by improving education, healthcare, farming methods and so on.

Over Easter watch out for the proper Cromwell web page hosting a Geography website. It may also have some information on case studies for you!