The Impact of Urbanization- Aditya Patil
Currently, about half of the worlds population lives in urban areas. In 1800, a mere 2 percent of the world's population lived in urban areas. The cause for this sudden influx of new residents in cities around the globe is part of the term urbanization. Urbanization is the population shift from rural areas to urban areas. This shift has caused many positive and negative side effects.
Land in urban areas are generally used as commercial buildings, transportation, and residence buildings. Due to the massive population living in urban areas, poor air and water quality, insufficient water availability, and waste-disposal problems often are serious issues in this area. Urbanization also decreases biodiversity. As more buildings are needed to provide for the influx of people moving to the city, habitats are destroyed and land is cleared for building. This leads to many animals having no place to live and eventually dying off. These new buildings cause an increase in air pollution in the area. The poor air quality will lead to many humans getting sick as well as contamination of water sources and foods. The compact city will also allow many diseases to spread fast in a short amount of time.
When I visit India with my family, I witness urbanization firsthand all around me. Although the urban area has created many jobs for the forever increasing population of India, there are many side effects. Mumbai, a city in India, is almost always cast under a haze that is created from pollution. There are many forms of transportation and factories that create many negative impacts on the health of residents and ecosystems. Wildlife in India cities is very scarce and this is part of the reason for the poor air quality in India. Furthermore, Urbanization is still occurring in India at an even faster rate! It took nearly 40 years for India’s urban population to rise by nearly 230 million; it will take only half of that time to add the next 250 million. This means that unless India finds a way to deal with their issue of urbanization in a timely manner, they could have a major economic crisis on their hands.
However, some say that urbanization has more positive impacts than negative on a location. Urbanization is shown to bring a higher productivity rate than those in rural locations. Urban areas have been shown to use less energy per person due to the mass transit systems located in most major cities. Urban life is also associated with high population density resulting in more people walking or bicycling as transit rather than using motorized vehicles that will negatively impact the environment. Finally, the higher standard of living associated with urbanization provides people with better food, education, housing, and health care.
Questions
- Do you believe that urbanization has more positive or negative impacts?
- Have you experienced the positive or negative impacts of urbanization first hand?
- What is a solution to an issue related to urbanization?
Sources
- https://richmondvale.org/en/blog/6-major-effects-of-urbanization-that-will-make-you-think
- https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/urbanization/indias-urbanization-a-closer-look
- https://www.asiapathways-adbi.org/2012/12/urbanization-can-be-good-for-the-environment/
28 comments:
Personally, I believe that urbanization has more positive impacts than negative due to the level or standard of living in these areas. I think that people tend to thrive to a much more extensive degree when living in these more clustered areas due to certain factors. Some of these aforementioned factors are a higher level of competition for a set amount of resources such as housing, jobs, and food. Speaking for myself, I have not experienced urbanization firsthand having lived in only two fairly large cities in suburban Texas. And as for your final question, I feel as though the only solution, ideally, to improve urbanization is to make the standard of living better in these non-urban areas so that urbanization, in a way, is prevented or regulated.
I believe that urbanization can cause both positive and negative impacts to the area where it happens. A lot of people think of urbanization as a negative impact towards the environment due to all the consumption in the city but really it helps develop the economy and efficiency in urban areas. I’ve gone to Seoul in my homeland and its economy is thriving due to urbanization of course and since South Korea started as a really poor country you can really see what it has done to many of the cities in Korea, as I mentioned before Seoul.
I believe that Urbanization has more positive impacts overall, but it definitely has detrimental impacts to the environment as well. I personally experienced negative impacts of urbanization because the air in cities are more cloudy and hard to breathe in because I have asthma. A solution to an issue related to urbanization is setting aside plots of land for recreational activities. If you have a city full of buildings and factories, the oxygen levels are low, so there needs to be some space for just nature (such as trees, grass, and flowers). When there is a place for outdoor activity, it benefits the wellbeing of the residents since they have places to go to spend leisure time. Urbanization is very innovative and has benefited many people, but people tend to forget the green, fresh scenery that was originally there.
Economically, urbanization definitely has more positive impacts due to the increase in capital it brings, as a result of increasing urban populations and corporate businesses mixing. Now, environmentally, urbanization definitely has more negative effects than positive ones due to the splitting of populations and destruction of habitats (just to name a few problems). I have faced direct consequences and benefits of urbanization first hand. To start, I live in a suburban neighborhood that is connected to a large-scale urban network, often make visits to urban areas, and travel all throughout many urban areas. The trend? My entire life revolves around American Urban Areas. Negatively, on the other hand, I've definitely had to deal with poorer air quality (which is important due to my asthma), less environmental biodiversity, and hotter temperatures due to the concrete jungle that cities are. Some solutions include: planting more plants and flowers (possibly by increasing the number of parks we have), creating more environmental recreation area that facilitate greater community environmental growth (gardens, etc.), and just reducing overall emissions in general.
As far as economics urbanization most definitely is a positive, but when it comes to the the environment it’s terrible. Urbanization creates air pollution, massive use of energy, and destruction to land due to the need for architecture as well as room for the large populations of people. First hand not really just because I live in Flower Mound and it’s not really an urban area. A way we can try to fix the air pollution problem is make more room for public transportation in the urban areas. By using public transportation we can reduce the problems especially air and green house pollution,
Urbanization has both positive and negative impacts depending on what part of society you look at. It definitely negatively affects the environment because it cause a lot of pollution and the compactness of people allows for the easy spread of diseases. Similarly, many habitats were destroyed for urbanization. On the other hand, it offers benefits economically. I have never really sent the direct impacts since I’ve only visited cities like New York and Boston, and have never lived anywhere but the suburbs. To reduce the pollution from urbanization, people should use public transportation more and planting more plants in the area.
I believe that urbanization has more positive impacts than negative impacts. With urbanization comes more economic prosperity and can also help the environment to some extent. I have experienced the impacts of urbanization right here is Flower Mound. With more people moving into Flower Mound, there has been an increase in cutting down trees to create space for housing or shopping complexes. For example, near Lakeside there has been a massive increase in shopping and restaurants along with increased housing. I have also seen the impacts of urbanization in my home town in India. In what used to be a small city has now grown to become completely urbanized with numerous opportunities.
I think urbanization has positive impacts for the people living in cities, but negative impacts on the environments and because of that, indirectly on the people. What I mean is, as you said, urbanization does housing, smaller commutes, less driving, etc, which are beneficial to our standard of living. However, the mass pollution, habitat destruction, and degradation of land caused by urbanization severely hurts the environment and eventually, comes back around to hurt people. This can be seen in cities in China and India, in increased lung problems in people from the pollution and food shortages due to overuse of land. Whenever we go to Mumbai, I am always struck by the amount of pollution there is as well, and we always hold handkerchiefs over our faces so as not to breathe it in.
A society that is progressively growing more urban/city-like is typically seen through a dark lens. However, cities can become hubs of some of the greatest ideas and innovations. I believe that urbanization has more positive impacts than negative. Because buildings are clustered together, many people can be seen walking in the streets of urban areas, or utilizing public transportation. Although a lot of pollution does arise from urban regions, steps can be taken to decrease carbon emissions, and that can only begin with education. As we as individuals become more aware of our own effects on the environment, we can focus on creating solutions.
I think that urbanization has more positive impacts than negative. However, the negative impacts of urbanization are more often discussed, so it seems that urbanization has more negative impacts. As stated in this article, urbanization has many positive impacts such as more job opportunities, less energy use per capita, better education, etc. I have experienced the more positive effects of urbanization in my life. If it weren’t for urbanization, both of my parents wouldn’t have been employed at Allstate in Dallas and they wouldn’t have met. Thus I never would have been born. My parents both got jobs after urbanization really began to take over in Dallas. They then moved to Chicago where they drove into the city for their jobs. So I view urbanization as a good thing. One solution to the issue of urbanization is moving out of the cities and into the suburbs. Many jobs do not require one to be at the home office every day or at least the whole day. Companies can make more jobs accessible at home so people can work from home. They can also change the hours needed at home office so people can move farther away from the urban centers. If people’s jobs do not start so early and don’t require a lot of time in office, they can move to the suburbs and help with the overcrowding of cities.
Personally, I believe that urbanization has more positive impacts than negatives due to the fact that many people walk or use a bicycle, resulting in less pollution. One positive impact of urbanization that I’ve experienced first hand is when I visited Tokyo, Japan. Buildings and restaurants were all walking distances from your house, and some families don’t even own a car because it is not necessary. However, public transportation was extremely crowded. The train station in Japan during rush hours were so packed that employees had to push the crowd into the train doors so that everyone could fit. Overall, you can make strong arguments for both sides of urbanization.
Honestly, I can’t really say if urbanization has more positive or negative impacts. As the world population is growing, more people move to urban areas for a better job, hence a better life. The negative impacts I have experienced because of urbanization are the pollution in large cities, such as New York City, New Delhi, and Mumbai. Also, where my grandma’s lives in the state Uttarakhand, known for its natural beauty and beautiful mountains, is slowly becoming more urbanized. When I went to her town for the first time, fireflies could be seen in the night and there were not many houses. Now, there are so many shops and new houses being built. This makes me so sad because I have so many memories of walking with my cousins on a scenic path every morning to singing classes. The positive impacts of cities are that they are truly so busy and exhilarating. New York City is amazing and impressive, and anyone can fall in love with it. I want to live there so badly when I’m older. I think we need to re-evaluate how we see urban cities and find innovative solutions to growing vegetables in cities. Once, I saw a video about a person who started growing vegetables in the most unlikely places of a city (can’t remember which city, but I think it’s Chicago). For example, he grew plants on the building walls, which I thought was really cool. Furthermore, we can encourage people with terraces to have plants and to take more public transportation or walk/bike to places.
Economically, urbanization has more positive impacts overall. However, there are drawbacks to urbanization on the environmental front. I have not experienced urbanization first hand, but I have experienced the nature of urban cities such as Mumbai and New Delhi—cities like these have a major pollution problem on their hands. To counteract urbanization, we can build more smart cities with more green areas, public transportation, and areas for walking/biking.
I feel that although urbanization has both positive and negative impacts, we tend to hear about the negative impacts more and so we think that urbanization is more negative. I personally think it is more negative because I have heard more reasons about the negative impacts versus the positive so that is the perspective I have. I have not experienced a lot of impacts of urbanization first hand because i do not live in an urban area and I do not have family that lives in an urban area. The only time that I have had any encounter with urbanization was when I went to New York. That was a negative impact because New York is very crowded and the streets were very dirty. A solution to the urbanization issue is to create a better standard of living or those urban areas, which would increase the standard of education, food, etc. and make people more willing to visit and live in urban areas and will create a more positive stigma around urban areas.
It is a very lengthy difficult argument to answer the nearly impossible question, if Urbanization is more negative or positive. While Urbanization brings environmental havoc to the surrounding ecosystems by releasing dangerous chemicals and heavily polluting the environment. But this world hasn’t come all this way because people care about the environment. Earth today is as developed as it is because it is driven by economics not environmentalism. In the eyes of the people who lead the world see the positive economic outcomes of urbanization as far more important and extremely overshadowing than the negative effects. Productivity is a major pulling point for urbanization. Why wouldn’t corporations want to have their headquarters, factories, and offices in a big city, and why wouldn’t the workers want to live close to their jobs and hobbies in the great big city. There is not stopping urbanization, just working around it. We must make cities more environmentally sound by reducing carbon emissions by cutting down vehicle usage, maybe utilizing public transportation or making the city more walkable. Parks and trees will also help balance the carbon foot print in cities, but it would take a long time to see true results.
I think urbanization has both positive and negative impacts but in the long run it will be more negative if the city does not handle it well such as the example you put of India. I have been to Pakistan before and the pollution was so bad the sky was foggy and hazy. I believe this could be because of urbanization and the increase of factories and cars. For urbanization to be successful I think that the city needs to know how to handle it well and not let it affect the economy or enviormental in a bad way.
I think urbanization has equally many positive and negative impacts. This is because if you think about it, it really has an infinite amount of impacts both ways. An infinite amount of lives could be saved by the same urbanization that destroys an infinite amount of lives. Yeah I’ve experienced the positive impacts because I don’t live in the middle of nowhere without any places to shop and well paying jobs nearby. But I’ve also seen the numbers about all of the loss of biodiversity due to habitat loss caused by urbanization so that's pretty bad too. One extremely specific solution to an extremely specific issue would be to put anti-collision stickers on buildings’ windows to prevent birds from flying into them and dying. Google it if you don’t know what I’m talking about but that’s something everyone can do to help for sure.
Urbanization has more positive impacts than negative because humanity is progressing due to urbanization. We would not be where we are today without urbanization. Urbanization also has its negative impacts. Pollution has increased due to all the construction, and invention of things that need fuel. Yes, I have experienced both negative and positive impacts. A positive impact is when I sat in a plane to go to India, instead of a boat. The negative impact is when I go to India all I can see and smell is smoke in the air. We need to use more renewable resources.
I believe that urbanization has both positive and negative impacts. The positive impacts of urbanization include the creation of jobs and infrastructural advancements. The negative impacts of urbanization include the destruction of the environment and increased pollution.
I believe urbanization has more positive impacts due to the economic growth and opportunity. The mass of the negative impacts from urbanization comes from poor infrastructure or the lack of. The negative impacts included poor air and water quality and plumbing, all of which can be resolved through proper infrastructure. If countries like India, that Aditya mentioned, focused on their urban area infrastructure, they can maximize the positive impacts while minimizing the negatives. I have experienced the positive impacts of urbanization first hand despite living in a suburb. I am able to get food and groceries easily within a 1 mile radius while still having access to school within a 1 mile radius. My thought in the remedy of many issues urbanization arises is the improvement of urban infrastructure. With this, countries facing difficulties in rapid booming urban centers can attempt to increase the living standards.
Urbanization is very convenient for us. Having easy access to plenty of places and people is certainly the positive aspect of it. It’s also very good for businesses and overall an increase in development. Unfortunately it comes with a lot more negative aspects such as pollution and habitat destruction. I think if we made sure to have larger parks and forests with zero pollution it would help to keep a balance of nature and infrastructures.
The greater part of the individuals see just negative sides of urbanization, for example, profoundly expanding contamination, absence of assets, obliteration of environments, social disparity and so on. Society sees urbanization rather as an issue, not a chance, in spite of the fact that there are likewise parcel of constructive outcomes of urbanization. Here are a portion of the advantages from this procedure recorded. Most importantly urbanization gives proficiency. That may appear as a conundrum, since urban communities are notable for immense vitality utilization and extraordinary measures of contamination, however urban areas frequently are more effective than provincial regions. There is parcel dregs exertion expected to supply essential civilities, for example, warm and crisp water.
I believe urbanization has had an overall positive effect on our society due to the amount of jobs and opportunities it has opened up for people. I believe urbanization has impacted me in a positive way. Everything is in a close proximity and individuals are able to get their necessities in a short amount of time. I have also experienced the negative impacts of urbanization through my trips to India. Every time we go there the pollution seems to be getting worse and worse from the huge population and overcrowding cities. I think we should limit our infrastructure to only necessary buildings. We should carefully plan how we are going to construct the buildings and how it will affect the population.
I believe that urbanization has more cons than pros. Urban areas typically have dense population that means there’s going to be a lot of traffic jams, which encourages people to either walk or use bicycle. They also have more job opportunities than rural areas. However, they also experience many environmental difficulties, such as pollution, blackouts, and competition. Urban areas tend to absorb more sunlight than rural areas, which result in “Urban Heat Island”, which is a doom of heat over a city created by urban activities and conditions. To prevent this from happening, people should avoid using automobiles and plant more trees to make surfaces greener.
As far as how it impacts humanity I would say that urbanization can yield more positive than negative effects when managed correctly. Cities provide a multitude of jobs for thousands of people and cities such as smart cities that use sustainable energy can actually help to reduce pollution. I have not had any personal experiences with cities as far as environmental impacts go before. I do however know that in countries like China’s and India the air pollution is profound do to all the urban activities that occur there. In order to prevent the negative effects of urbanization cities should learn to manage themselves in a more sustainable way like making homes and work places close enough to commute there via walking. Promoting public transportation and using sustainable energy sources would also help to limit urbanization’s negative impacts.
Urbanization is really just the most simple solution to the growing population of humans on Earth. By densely packing people together with the efficiency of the economy is at its peak. As you discussed, this has many negative impacts on Earth. I think that rather than trying to fight urbanization itself, we need to push to make urbanization more sustainable and eco-friendly. Creating greens spaces or finding ways to reduce the carbon emission in cities are both great ways to ensure that the negative impacts of urban centers are lowered. In many Asian countries, we see the extremely negative effects of urbanization; in Hong Kong and Bomba the air is heavily polluted and these cities produce more pollution than any other city on Earth.
I believe urbanization has a positive impact on our society due to the growth, opportunity, and the amount of jobs. I think it has a positive and a negative impact on me because if i got to Korea it is easier to go places because everything is so close together and a negative impact was like the other places in the the other side of Asia were the pollution was bad. I think if we care more about how we construct the the buildings it will change the air pollution more.
Urbanization seems to largely have positive impacts on everything but the environment. Therefore, to decide if it is good or bad is to choose between our economic benefit and the environment. If a city were to have connected areas within it for organisms, I think it would be safer to say that urbanization is not too horrible. When I lived in Houston, I could constantly hear road noises that were ever so faint. I never really realized I was hearing that noise until I moved to Flower Mound. One nice thing, that I believe all of us appreciate, is that everything is so close in Flower Mound. From grocery stores to hospitals. If we all lived in pure rural areas, it would be extremely difficult to reach these facilities.
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