With a particular focus on dereliction, water and air pollution
Water pollution
This is when pollutants enter open water sources by industries dumping hazardous waste to avoid disposing of it correctly or human defecation. This contaminated water is then consumed by people, especially those in poverty, which leads to the spread of water borne diseases like typhoid fever and cholera.
This is an issue which can be seen in Mumbai, where shantytowns like Dharavi have cholera epidemics which have killed hundreds. As a result, mitigation strategies have been implemented on different scales.
On a national scale, President Modi has made the cleaning of the Ganges river a key policy goal. However, this is a short-term solution because it does not resolve the root of the problem which is the dumping of waste.
On a local scale, the city of Ahamadabad have subsidised children to use public toilets instead of defecating in the rivers.
A small-scale innovation has been made called the janicki omniprocessor, which takes sewage and combusts it. This produces water vapour from evaporation, which is dead condensed through cooling pipes to create water. The sludge left over is used as additional fuel source. Water pollution is not much of an issue in developed areas.
Air pollution
This is when the combustion of fossil fuels creates pm 2.5 particles which entered the atmosphere. In 2010, there were 720 deaths in London directly related to the carcinogens in pollution leading to respiratory illnesses. As a result, since then many policies have been implemented like the emission zones and congestion zones, to which they have worked. In Dhaka, similar legislation has been introduced like preventing brick making kilns operating on certain days of the week. This is because these kills make up 60% of the city’s emissions.
However, this is not enforced due to high levels of corruption. This is a recurring issue like 90% of all road vehicles produce emissions which are above the prescribed limit. Therefore, enacting such policies is difficult in practise for developing nations as it hinders their economic growth.
Dereliction
This is a consequence of deindustrialization where manufacturing declines in an area. This is usually the biggest employer within a place which leads to structural unemployment. These people are unable to pay their mortgages, so homes are repossessed creating a sense of abandonment. This attracts homeless people and along with-it crime, leading to a spiral of decline.
This can be evidenced in Detroit, which was once the home to global car manufacturing, but due to competition from South Korea and Japan caused car manufacturers to relocate. As a result, the area had fell into a spiral of decline, which had created a negative perception about the place Which has been reported in the media.
However, community spirits were strong, and the local people wanted to improve the town. That deindustrialisation created many brownfield sites, so the local people had turned them into community gardens. By 2015, they had converted seven hectors of derelict land into over 40 community gardens yielding six tonnes of produce each year like alfalfel, fruit and veg, herbs, wheat and corn. Some of which is then sold to local soup kitchens.