University of California Societies of Central Asia Essay Please try to express your arguments clearly and check for grammar and spelling before you submit

University of California Societies of Central Asia Essay Please try to express your arguments clearly and check for grammar and spelling before you submit the assignment.

Your response should be 600 words or less.

The prompt follows:

Compare and contrast the circumstances accompanying urbanization in Mongolia, as described in Miller’s “Slide Lecture” and Sneath’s “The Rural and the Urban in Pastoral Mongolia,” with the situation in Tibetan areas of China, as summarized in Levine’s PowerPoint “Urbanization Tibetan areas.” Take note of the following comparisons/contrasts in the two areas:

a. people’s motivations for moving to urban areas

b. government involvement in the planning of residential communities

c. how the design and construction of houses/apartments is managed

d. how essential services (electricity, water supplies and waste disposal) are provided to the households in newly built residential communities

Then imagine yourself in this sort of situation—a pastoralist who has decided to move from a rural life based on herding animals to an urban setting. Which arrangement would you prefer—staking a claim in one of the ger districts surrounding Ulaanbaatar and getting help from friends and kin to build a house fit to your resources and tastes or moving into a development of finished houses in one of the new towns on the Tibetan plateau in China? Explain the reasons for your preference.