Goal 15: Reverse the migration from the land to the cities
[For those who haven't been following this series, I post about one per day, each dealing with a specific goal for the 21st Century. The full list is cited at the end of the diary. Visiting my profile page will give you citations to prior sections.]
Obstacles
The movement off the land has been going on for thousands of years and it is not realistic to think that this will cease in the near future. However, the numbers of people affected worldwide has been growing and the economic opportunities available in metropolitan centers are limited. Densely populated countries like China and India are now experiencing unprecedented population movements. Land is being taken from the peasants for development and local farming is becoming unprofitable.
The economic and cultural dislocations can be minimized if steps are taken to provide substitute economic opportunities in the countryside. This will objected to by the rising capitalist class that finds the influx of cheap labor profitable, but does not have to directly carry the social costs associated with it. Much development in cities occurs in "informal development", that is shantytowns. These areas have little in the way of municipal services. Improving the conditions of these people would put a strain on municipal finances and thus are resisted.
Implementation
Modern transportation and communications make it less important for people to be brought together in compact communities for economic efficiency. Rather, the migration causes the rise of poverty and slums as people leave the land and lose their ability to be self-sufficient. Governments must factor in the societal costs of displacing people and encourage, or subsidize if necessary, the maintenance of local and regional economies. Factories can be placed in the countryside and peasants can be helped to supplement their agricultural lifestyle with local employment. This will result in an improvement of the rural standard of living without creating the problems caused by excessive urbanization. Sensible land use policy can be formulated when the total costs of urbanization are included in the equation, not just the employer's labor savings that arise from creating a local excess of labor.
The implementation problem is made worse in that migration results in local problems while the solution requires national social policies. Even in developed countries such as the US we have seen a large-scale, unplanned, movement from the rust belt to the southwest. This has wasted the infrastructure of the already built up areas, especially with easily rehabilitated housing and caused poor land use and water problems is the newly settled regions. People don't want their freedom of movement restricted, but national planning can be used to make ecologically friendly choices more inviting economically. When the government pays for new roads into the hinterland and doesn't pay for infrastructure revival in a rust belt community there is a hidden subsidy. These should be made explicit and debated on their merits, not solely on how they help developers.
The full list of goals can be found here.
The list of general objections can be found here.