Problems And Solutions Of Urbanization Environmental Sciences Essay

The meaning of urbanization can be basically described as the expansion of cities by encompassing the rural areas in it. Urbanization is not just physically growth. Also, it contains population and social and economic structure. The urban growth generally has been caused by immigrations. Most of these immigrations are done from rural areas to urban areas. Sometimes it can be seen from countries to countries. The reasons of migration can be arranged as economic, technologic and sociological. The urbanization has positive sides as well as negative. The major advantage of urbanization is economic development. The cities supply more facilities to its citizens with huge amount of technological equipments. On the other hand, negative sides follow the technological and economical development. All forms of pollution increase together with growth of population. Traffic congestion also starts to seen in the developed countries. Housing problems accrue due to population access from rural areas to urban areas. The whole of society is affected by urbanization. All of these negative sides can be arranged as the problems of urbanization.

The problems of urbanization need to be addressed. In this developing world, nobody can stop the growth of population. However, if urban areas could be developed with a good method like sustainability, the problems of urbanization would be solved. Sustainability means the ability of sustain something. In other words, think of the future and make a plan. The aim of it is prevent some problems which will be faced in the future. If the cities are developed regarding to policy of sustainable development, the problems of urbanization can be met.

In the last centuries, the urbanization had been got an uncontrolled phase. The huge amounts of people migrate to cities from rural areas. There are several causes of it. The major causes of urbanization can be arranged as economic, technologic, politic and psycho-sociological.

People, who have been living in the rural areas, tend to migrate to cities because of economic factors. Specially, in the developed countries, there is vast amount of difference between peasant`s income and civics’ income. So, the people who have been living in the rural areas immigrate to cities to increase their incomes. Besides, people immigrate to live more comfortable and for education.

Firstly, population problem arises in urbanization. The balance of the population between rural areas and cities starts to grow up. While the cities are expanding, the farmland starts to destroy. In the rural areas, life is more difficult than the life, in the cities. Transportation, communication, technological needs are always difficult to benefit in the rural areas. Therefore, people spread towards cities.

All types of pollution can be seen easily in the urbanization. Air pollution, water pollution, noise pollution, light pollution and solid product waste are the main pollutions which are increased parallel to urbanization. Because of the population growth, the air quality decreases in the urban areas. The trucks, cars, factories always exhaust a huge amount of carbon dioxide in a day to the air. The number of truck, car, and factory are raised parallel to people population. As population growth in cities, the demand of clean water increase. Sometimes the local authority cannot supply enough clean water to citizen due to high population. So, the water pollution occurs in the urban areas. The other pollution is noise pollution. In our daily life everybody use their cars, especially in the cities, car noise is the simplest example for noise pollution. The noise could be created by cars, people, factories, construction sites. Because of noisy environment, people have been less fertile and uncreative in their professional life. Again, all of them are connected with population growth. Light pollution causes to loss of electricity energy as well as environmental pollution. This also creates a problem for the future. By using more energy to use lights, the sources for electricity go down. This is the main problem of urbanization, unsustainable development. In the developing countries, solid product waste is another problem in the recent years. High population always need more supply. Sanitation should be always kept on high for public health. Whole pollutions act a very important role in human life. Pollution creates different type of disasters.

According to P.S. Brandon, P.L. Lombardi & V. Bentivegna (1997, p. 134) China is one of the cities which is faced with environmental degradation, in the world. Environmental degradation covers both its air and water. To improve this environmental degradation governments develop some strict laws. Water pollution, air pollution, noise pollution and the other environmental degradations can be met by policy of environmental protection law.

The other problem which occurs in the cities because of urbanization is traffic congestion. Using a private car has become very common in the world. Everybody prefers to use their cars to simply their life. It seems especially in the urbanization countries. This attitude creates traffic congestion. Besides, with this problem, it causes more energy usage, time loss and makes people nervous. To decrease the traffic congestion, the governments find some possible solutions. Public transportation is the most common solution to prevent traffic congestion. The developing cities should produce more sustainable products, vehicles, buildings to save more energy for future generations. According to S. M. Wheeler and T. Beatley (2004, p.98) to prevent the traffic congestion, traffic calming is the process of slowing down traffic to create safer, conductive to pedestrians, cyclists and residential life. With this alternative solution, the air and noise pollution will be decreased. Also, the fuel consumption will be reduced. The cities will be more sustain by traffic calming method. Energy will be saved by this way. Roads will be used safely. Briefly, this method will be solved one of this urbanization problem, traffic congestion.

As list of my essay, third problem of the urbanization is housing. Because of large amount of migrants, housing problem has been increasing day to day in cities. The migrants who migrate from rural areas to cities create a problem. These migrants try to find suitable accommodation for them. Unfortunately, due to the low income of migrants, it is impossible to find an accommodation by reasonable price. There are large amount of flats, houses and buildings to live in cities. However, the accommodation price is large as well as amount of accommodation. People start to live unsuitable buildings in cities after migration. The migrants hold old and inconvenient accommodation to survive their life. This creates another problem, which is called visual pollution. Besides, several diseases can easily spread into cities. According to Mark, Gordon, Peter & Ron (2007, p. 362) groups of buildings or building stocks is the useful method to over to the management of social housing stock. The governments have some policy to over to the management of social housing stock. If policy of housing always applies, the housing problem can be solved by this policy.

Fourthly, suffering of societies can be counted as a problem of urbanization. Urbanization effect on societies is the other problem. Fundamentally, this problem is the result of other problems, pollution, traffic congestion and housing. Because of these problems, peoples` welfare goes down. The societies feel bed. This problem can be solved after other problem`s solutions.

As a result of, urbanization is created by people and can be solved again by people. The main reason of urbanization is unbalanced income between peasant and civic. In the other worlds, urbanization is expansion of cities and contraction of farmland. According to Philip M. Hauser & Leo F. Schnore (1967, p. 1) the reasons to emergence of cities are the size of total population, the control of natural environment, technological development and developments in social organization. The major triggering factor of developing cities is technology. Technology should be used correctly. Even if cannot be used correctly or without caring future, it cause some problems such as urbanization. Urbanization has lots of negative sides. In case, urbanization control by policy of sustainable development. The brief meaning of sustainable development is deliberate developing. The problems which occur due to urbanization can be solved with caring future. And developing some rules or policies by governments will prevent problems of urbanization. For example, to prevent the environmental pollution that contains air pollution, water pollution, noise pollution, visual pollution and solid wastes can be decreased by making lawful to sustainable development. On the other hand, increasing the number of public transportation with reasonable price can raise the demand of using public transportation. Besides, the fuel consumption, noise and air pollution can be solved by this way. Also, traffic congestion can be solved by developing the infrastructure of transportation facilities. For the other problem, housing problem, governments can apply strict rules to prevent housing problems which is occur because of immigrations from rural areas to cities. If all these problems are solved, automatically, the last problem, effect of urbanization on societies can be disappeared.