The quick tempos of industrialization and resultant urbanization lead to quite serious problems, which can have many negative consequences if not solved. In essence, there exist certain solutions that could be taken into consideration, some of them being too radical and some being more acceptable.
Admittedly, the situation in which more and more people, especially young people, start living in cities, leaving their villages and small towns, can lead to some serious problems with the economy. Speaking objectively, food in supermarkets in big cities does not appear from cosmos; somebody needs to grow it and deal with farming. Since a growing number of people are moving to urban areas to work and settle down there, soon there will not be enough farmers and farm workers to simply grow vegetables and fruits, which people from big cities could eat. Neither will there be enough farms to grow plants that are used to produce medications. Additionally, identical problems may appear in terms of farm animals, which will increase the prices for average animal products in shops as well. Furthermore, there will arise the problem with the overpopulation in large cities, causing numerous traffic jams, on top of leading to the rise in the prices for apartments and the decrease in the quality of these places.
Nevertheless, the problems mentioned above could be solved by improving living conditions in villages and rural regions. For example, the infrastructure in villages should be renovated and improved by building new cinemas, roads, hospitals, schools, parks and shopping centres, although this may lead to a change in the status of a village to a city, but this will be a different story. Yet, if we think about less humane but more effective ways to hamper the discussed rural-to-urban migration, I can suggest imposing a tax on moving from a village to a city or introducing the need to have a special permit for moving out of rural territories. Additionally, one could also introduce some requirements for those who would like to commence residing in urban zones, such as having a higher education or merits that will improve the quality of life in cities if such a person moves there.
However, I must note that such approaches will make the level of development in villages and cities even more different. Besides, these methods are clearly not a way out of this situation because such a state of affairs will resemble a regime of the soviet government at the beginning of the 20th century, where, firstly, discrimination against people from villages flourished and, secondly, there was created a system in which villages were only resource-producing units, while, in fact, cities were simply sucking all resources from villages. Surprisingly, such a system can still be observed in Russia, where all resources from the regions go to several main cities, namely St. Petersburg and Moscow, while the rest of the regions are drowning in poverty.
In conclusion, in theory, most of the outlined predicaments caused by rapid urbanization could be resolved via certain radical measures. Yet, I must admit that some of the potential approaches are inhumane and I am categorically against the methods promoting limitations and discrimination. Instead, I suggest that governments should focus on the development of infrastructure in rural, remote and economically depressed terrains.