>Generally people are driven to the urban centers in the first place after their [sustainable] rural ways of life and systems of land management are dismantled in the name of "liberalization"/"privatization"/"modernization", leading to ecological deterioration, and ultimately resulting in complete desertification.

Maybe I'm misreading what you said - because I don't think you could argue that people are moving from villages to cities because of privatization and land being polluted - in general. In some specific cases people are forced to move because of externalities like pollution or instability for sure - but migration to cities is just a step in social evolution that's been happening since forever - subsistence farming is a horrible way to live compared to even low level jobs in cities and people naturally want to avoid that.