31 March 2009

Brief overview about urbanization in Mongolia


By Erdenetuya Urtnast

For centuries or until the early 20th century the Mongols had farmed mobile animal husbandry and used livestock products rather than natural sources, such as using of cow dung as fuel. The territory has sparsely been populated because of low carrying capacity of Inner Asian ecosystem.
Thus it can be said that the urbanization process in Mongolia started only after 1921’s people’s revolution and in actual fact, around 50s and 60s of 20th century it began to take shape as a city because of collectivism, industrialization and “great socialist upbuilding” (socialismiin aguu ikh buteen bosgolt).

At the same time, thanks to cultural campaign (soyolyn dovtolgoo) or cultural raid the nomads started to become citizens of “modern city” by their behavior, hygiene and living style.
It doesn’t mean that I want neglect its’ previous history. The city was founded in 1639 somewhere around Shireet tsagaan nuur of Uvurkhangai aimag far away from its current location as a Buddhist monastic centre and, in 1778 the city settled for good at its current location or along the basin of the Tuul and the Selbe rivers, second of which has already evaporated.
Why collectivism and industrialization must be mentioned in connection with the urbanization? Because giving their livestock to negdels (collective farms) many herders migrated to Ulaanbaatar and became workers of new established industries. A main advantage of the period might be taking care of newcomers’ hygiene and civilized behavior.

Around 1970-1980s new micro districts of apartment buildings were built and since then many of ger settlement families moved into the new apartments. During the period the capital city was a medium sized, considerably clean, tidy and typical Russian style city, even there had been ger settlement areas in outskirt of the city. In the socialist period “to be a citizen of the capital was considered as matter of reputation” and Ulaanbaatar citizenship was restricted for rural residents.
Even though, after 1990’s rural-urban migration abruptly increased because of the variety of factors: social, economical, political, cultural and so on.

Ps: Photos were inserted from www.google.com