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Urban Envinronments In Third World Countries

The urban environment impact on human health with particular emphasis on cities in developing countries.

Introduction
The city may be looked at as a story, pattern of relations between human groups, a production and distribution space, a field of physical force, a set of linked decisions, or an arena of conflict (Lynch, 1981). Simeone (2005) argues that urban Africans have long made lives that have worked. There has been an astute capacity to use thickening fields of social relations, however, disordered they may be, to make the city life viable. He viewed the city as a laboratory of change rather than as simply an embodiment of accommodation, social engineering or the spatial fix of economic growth.

Environment refers to objects or/ and circumstances that influences, impacts, affects and shape on human physical, mental spiritual and social wellbeing. The urban environment consists of the political, social, economic, technological, educational, human resources and legal or statutory framework environments. The urban context gives rise to high risk factors for and rates of diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, cancers and coronary heart disease. Risk factors associated with this group of diseases include smoking, alcohol consumption, increased intake of fat and reduced intake of fibre, lack of exercise, and inhalation of potentially toxic pollutants such as carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and suspended particulate matter.

Most urban areas in developing countries have experienced phenomenal growth. Urbanisation in third world countries is occurring under more difficult circumstances compared to what happened in developed countries. El Sammani etal (1989), suggested that the possible explanation for the terrible conditions found in some third world urban areas is that rural-urban migration is so massive as to make it impossible for cities to cope with demands for the various services. Rural-urban migration is accelerated by war and by...