Migration and Density – Major Problems for the Economic Future of Emerging

Economies

Gica Gherghina Culiţă

Universitatea Constantin Brâncoveanu – Brăila
ggculita@yahoo.com
Ciorăşteanu Gianina
gia11nina@yahoo.it
Mariana Mihăilescu
mihailescumariana@yahoo.com

Abstract • The first is Tokyo, the largest city in the world

The world is changing. Civilization has
moved from discovery and populating their
territories through colonization to the next level.
Those who recently tried to win a piece of land
to settle are now driven by economically
developed areas to survive and lead a better life.
We therefore return to the abandoned areas in
uninhabited areas.
Steps to work the developed world now
repeat emerging states. Populations we are
talking about now migrate to areas that are
economically developed but hundreds of
millions. And yet migration is not "free" (see the
case of China).
Cities evolving people becoming more
mobile and products becoming more specialized,
are all part of the development. Such changes
were visible in North America, Western Europe
or North and East Asia. But the countries of
Eastern and Southern Asia and Eastern Europe
now face similar changes in scope and speed.
World Development Report 2009 - "Reshaping
Economic Geography"[3] considers that such
transformations will remain essential to future
economic success in developing and emerging
countries should be encouraged.
These changes bring prosperity but do not
occur without risk and sacrifice. Evidence are
examples of three of the most prosperous places
in the world:
with 35 million people, one fourth of Japan's
population, living in less than 4 percent of its
territory.
• The second is the United States, the largest
economy in the world and is also the most
mobile, where approximately 35 million people
change their residence each year.
• The third proof is the Western Europe, the
continent most connected in today's world,
where countries trade out of about 35 percent of
gross domestic product (GDP), more than half of
them being accomplished between neighbors.
Man's habitat at the outset was dominated
by the need to find food, and hunting and
foraging were rural pursuits. Not until the end of
the last ice age, around 11,000 years ago, did he
start building anything that might be called a
village, and by that time man had been around
for about 120,000 years. It took another six
millennia, to the days of classical antiquity, for
cities of more than 100,000 people to develop.
Even in 1800 only 3% of the world's population
lived in cities. Sometime in the next few months,
though, that proportion will pass the 50% mark,
if it has not done so already. Wisely or not,
Homo sapiens has become Homo urbanus.[6]
Visitors can see the people crushed in
Tokyo trains. Millions of people voluntarily
subject to the possibility of suffering such
accidents. A density map shows that Japan's
economic. Tokyo generate much of the wealth in
Japan and to get some of this people choose to
live near it.

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 In the United States each year, days before
the Thanksgiving holiday, some 35 million
people trying to return to their families and their
friends. It is early winter in some parts of the
country, so many times, flights are canceled. But
Americans accept the pain of leaving friends and
family, because economic activity is
concentrated in some parts of the country. To get
some of that wealth has to be close to her. This is
why the 8 million Americans each year change
their state of residence, migrating to reduce the
gap to economic opportunities.
Over the Atlantic, Western Europe, another
massive movement takes place every day but this
time not of people but of the products. An
example is Airbus, which manufactures aircraft
components and assembles them in France,
Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom and
other countries. Large sections of aircraft are
loaded on ships and planes to special places in
different parts assemble and produce them at
scale. Countries in a region that was shared not
long ago now they trade with former enemies to
become an increasingly integrated European
Union. As this integration has increased the
economic disparities have decreased, making
possible the specialization and economies of
scale.
What is the reward for all this trouble? A
map of economic geography, which resizes areas
to reflect the country's GDP each show benefits
of big cities, people's mobility and integration of
economies. United States, Western Europe and
Japan dominate the world economy.
Big cities, migration and trade were key
catalysts of progress in the developed world in
the last two centuries. History is repeated now in
the most dynamic developing economies.
Mumbai is the largest city in the world but is the
most densely populated and the population
continues to grow. China is the largest economy
in the world, but is the fastest growing and could
be among the most mobile. Southeast Asia may
not have formed a political union like Europe,
but trade in goods between states are similar to
the EU region.
• Half of world
production would fit into a smaller area than
Algeria?
• Cairo
metropolitan area generates more than half of
Egypt's production using 0.5 percent of the
country's area?
• In the U.S., 96
percent of the innovations taking place in
metropolitan areas?
Increasing population density, rather than
boosts in human brain power, appears to have
catalysed the emergence of modern human
behaviour, according to a new study by UCL
(University College London) scientists published
in the journal Science.[1]
High population density leads to greater
exchange of ideas and skills and prevents the loss
of new innovations. It is this skill maintenance,
combined with a greater probability of useful
innovations, that led to modern human behaviour
appearing at different times in different parts of
the world.
• 200 million Chinese immigrants
traveling to his native place to spend New
Year?
• Despite lower transport costs in the last
century, countries are selling even more
neighbors than with more distant?
• In 2006, Singapore, with 700 square km
area of export of the same value (U.S. $ 300
billion) as the Russian Federation, which
has more than 16 million kilometers
square?
• People take risks just to take advantage
of special economic density. Despite the
loss of lives among commuters and those
due to living in slums like Dharavi,
Mumbai population has doubled since
1970. Starting in 1990, millions of Chinese
workers have migrated to closer economic
opportunity concentrated along the coast.
Just as Americans traveling for
Thanksgiving, so more than 200 million
Chinese travel to China during Chinese
New Year.
Regional production networks in East Asia
are much more common than in Western
Europe's Airbus. East Asian countries may not
sell airplane parts, but nations that were once
enemies, are now trading in auto parts or
computers, the same frequency and speed as in
European countries. And the reward? We
2
recognize the new forms of China, India and the
countries of South-Eastern Asia on the map of
world economic geography. These forms contrast
with the African continent, which seems a
peninsula deleted.
WDR2009 report claims that the situation
in some regions is good to have promoted
changes in the three dimensions of economic
geography:
• higher density, as seen in the growth of cities.
• Distances shorter, so that workers and
companies migrate closer to the density.
• Borders fewer, as countries weaken their
economic borders to enter global markets and to
reap the benefits of specialization and economies
of scale.
United States and Japan have reshaped the
economic geography on the basis of past trends.
China reshape its economic geography now. This
shows that there will be changes that will help
developing nations in other parts of the world,
especially Africa, to follow the path of developed
countries.[4]
Over half of world population live in
miserable conditions. Whether from our poorest
African or emerging, they are the greatest
challenges of current economic development.
Seemingly disparate, they share one key feature:
at different distances, they are the most visible
manifestation of the importance of economic
geography of development.
Precisely because of this breakdown is
required to follow a more balanced growth space.
It is necessary to develop controlled growth of
cities, a reduction of urban-rural disparities and
should be required to implement development
programs that create jobs for people who live far
from economic density.[5]
Bridging could be achieved by measures to
protect companies from the developing world
until they are able to compete on the world
market.
But economic growth is rarely balanced.
Efforts to obtain it at all costs may sometimes
endanger economic progress.
Two centuries of economic development
shows that differences in income and production
are inevitable. Results of scientific research
confirms that there is no reason to expect
economic growth to be spread smoothly in space.
Developers of successful experience shows that
production becomes more concentrated spatially.
Success Nations established policies that
standardize living standards. Economic
production is concentrated, while living
standards are converging.
In conclusion, any economic benefits would
bring the density required to follow a balanced
growth as the region.
References:
[1]Adam Powell, Stephen Shennan, and Mark G.
Thomas. “Late Pleistocene Demography and the
Appearance of Modern Human Behavior”. Science,
2009; p. 324
[2]Negrea (Culiţă), G., “South-South Cooperation”.
Economic Tribune Publishing House, Bucharest,
2007, Introduction.
[3]World Development Report 2009, “Reshaping
Economic Geography”, on http://www.worldbank.org
[4]http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/sconcerns/d
ensurb/default.html
[5]http://www.esri.com/mapmuseum/mapbook_galler
y/volume21/sustainable_dev1.html
[6]http://www.economist.com/specialreports/