Urbanization Programs and Trends In Belize

Urbanization Trends and Programs in Belize

In researching the urbanization in Belize, I discovered past, present, and future government and private programs that effect the region’s migration patterns. What I planned to learn from all of this was what changes has urbanization brought, how the people of Belize are effected by these governments run programs, how successful these programs are, and what population trends occur when these programs are implemented. Developing Caribbean countries alike pull out loans from the world bank to improve their country’s economy and reduce their poverty rates. More often than not these loans are temporary and leave the countries in debt and far from being fully developed.   

Belize is unique country when observing urbanization because of the programs they implemented and the rates of urbanization they have gone through recently. Belize is a small country off the Southern coast of Central America. The official language is English, where 62.9% of the population speaks it as a primary language. The population of Belize is approximately 347,369 people. Belize is considered a younger country compared to other Latin American and Caribbean Countries because of their independence from Britain happening within half a century in 1981. Belize has the third highest Latin American urbanization rate of 3.1% but one of the lowest urban populations in the region at 44% (World Fact Book). These high rates are primarily dedicated to the booming tourist based economy in the region. Like many other Caribbean countries, Belize urbanization and investment is based on the fact that they’re more developed areas are primary attraction for the thousands of tourists that visit and sustain their economy. On the other hand, this vary tourist based economy takes away from the majority Caribbean population that lives in the shadow of this economy. Investment and programs to improve their conditions are much slower and ineffective as the ones we see in highly urbanized tourist areas.  

Belize’s Social Investment Fund (BSIF) teamed up with the world bank to invest and plan the Belize Municipal Development Project starting in 2010. The project set out three primary components. These are small scale municipal infrastructure investment, technical assistance & capacity building for town and city councils/government, and finally project management/administration. The overall goal was to prepare for the population shifts and growing urban population by improving the quality of towns and improve relations between the population with their government to expand services. A big contributor to this project was the work of (LPWG’s). These are “Localized Planning Working Groups” and they are groups made up of Belizeans who work alongside the local councils to help develop a vision and implement the proposal. These groups go through a extensive urban planning training program to achieve the skills and qualifications to set out projects like these. The Belize government and private third person foreign parties evaluate and budget the proposals to get the projects off the group.     

The anticipated effects of these projects were to advance drainage systems, increase road and traffic management, strengthen local/central government relations, and improve sustainability developments. With a rise in immigration into Belize, there has been primarily a rise of a Spanish speaking population that establish new communities in both the urban and rural areas of the region. This rise in population only emphasizes the need for better government social systems and development. The government must account for these immigration influxes to properly prepare for the future of Belize.  

The migration patterns that occur with these improvement programs are both a worker’s migrant shift towards jobs and opportunity in the urban areas but also a population that remains in a rural way of life. The government in a way encourages to reduce the migration to urban areas to further develop them and keep a large lower class population in their current rural areas. Reasons for this may be that it saves the government money in the long run as they develop the already urban areas more and improve conditions in rural areas to keep that part of the economy functioning as it has been. Products of exports such as papaya rely on the farming based economy running strong in rural areas.

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Programs such as the Belize Rural Finance Program seeks to reduce poverty and improving the standard of life in rural areas in Belize. With assistance of the world bank and private credit unions, programs like these help the rural dwellers in Belize from having to migrate where opportunity may not be as promising as expected in urbanized areas. Expansion of these programs have both picked up and remained stagnant lately due to long planning periods and completion times being anywhere from a few years to a decade. Finance companies and the world bank often contract the urban work to laborers within the country to help stimulate job growth and opportunity. Projects to urbanize can range from modernizing central sewage systems to building roads. In the more extreme rural areas, the government works to expand social programs and assist farmer’s income to keep the population self-sustaining on their cultivated based economy. In Belize we see that the government is promoting the rural population in retaining their lifestyle and not migrating towards the urban areas. An important reason for this is because of the tourist economy itself. If the urbanized and fully developed towns were flooded with lower class citizens then the opportunity to bring tourists in would not be as easy.

As far as a direct urban based municipal development program, Belize planned and conducted a program in 2014 to provide services and improve upon development in 7 municipalities. Working with financers and local Belize local planning groups (LPWG) in the region, the Municipality Development Program built and improved upon small infrastructures and implemented environmental friendly sustainability programs to reverse the degradation effects of urbanization to local environments. This includes reducing the contamination and improving the life that such roads and drainage systems will have before needing further improvements. Local mayor of Orange Walk Town, Kevin Bernard comments on the Municipal Development Projects “Our plan will focus a lot on infrastructural work. Talking about that plan, in our long term goals, we are looking at upgrading a hundred and thirteen major streets in our town. Part of that plan includes drainage, includes flood mitigation areas that we want to look at. But on the short term, we have already put together a street infrastructure project proposal, we are looking over the document-we got a consultant to work on that for us-and we want to seek funding” (Kevin Bernard). Locals of such towns, like Bernard, see the longstanding investment and benefits of programs to urbanize districts of Belize. Because Belize is a coastal region, it experiences amplified weathering affects from coat storms, such as hurricanes and floods. Both rural and urban areas need to be equipped with mechanisms and infrastructure to deal with this. Urbanization infrastructure in this way acts as both an improvement for living conditions and a buffer against natural disasters.

The effects of Urbanization programs have still to be completely seen in Belize. The programs are ongoing even past the years they are finished. We do see that undertakings have a remarkable effect on the migration of Belize’s population, more urbanization focus leads to greater amounts of people rushing to fill those areas. If not immigrating to these developed areas, a good 15% of the population immigrates out of Belize itself annually for opportunity in countries like the United States for work. On the other hand, the government subsidizes farmers and the working class to keep the urbanization rates at a constant. Since Belize is still a developing nation and is slowly growing economically, their progression into the globalized world is a process. The focus of the government is to receive loans and attract foreign investment to improve towns and municipalities, but also allocate money for social programing funding to help the large underrepresented lower class. Both efforts are seeing progress and have been somewhat successful overall thus far. Although some projects are very time consuming and costly, the Belize government is determined that the urbanized growth will be prosperous for the country.

Works Cited

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