The Rise of Cities
Throughout history, mankind tends to fall back on growth and expansion. The first cities were built around 7,500 BCE, with populations rising to around 80,000; today there are over 4,000 cities around the world with at least 100,000 people residing in them. The rise of cities and urban areas have been great for establishing economies, jobs, and housing, but the earth as a physical entity has suffered a brutal toll because of it. Big organizations have resorted to expanding onto some of the world’s natural wonders, completely tarnishing the historical beauty of the earth. All of this to simply change the traditional agrarian lifestyle. Is it really worth tainting the Rocky Mountains, Niagara Falls, or the Amazon Rainforest just to gather resources people already have or expand a business’ workplace? Urbanization has been around for quite some time, but today’s world is losing its respect for natural habitats and environment.
The rise of urban cities that have shaped today’s society has brought humanity exactly what it wants: growth and innovation. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as people living in these modern areas reap several benefits. People can go outside and see peers of different races, languages, beliefs, economic status, political views, religions. All of these things creates the diversity the world has now adopted over time. The world urban population today is up to 4.2 billion; the entire world population at the time of the first city was around 250,000. The problem with urbanization today is everyone is intrigued by the idea of to living in urban areas because of the benefits described earlier. Cities were built to bring people together so the society can grow and thrive more efficiently. Sure, better jobs, better health access, and diversity all sound great, but 4.2 billion people share these same desires. The mass density and relentless growth in these urban areas have taken these benefits and hindered them from original goal in a way that has hurt people and the earth as a whole.
Earth is 4.5 billion years young. Many natural wonders of the world have been around for millions of years. It took them millions of years to form, but took humanity just a few to ruin the beauty of the world they live in. Research has found that over 5% of the total surface area of the United States is covered by urban and other built-up areas. This is more land than is covered by the combined total of national and state parks and areas preserved by the Nature Conservancy. Not too long ago, the United States was once a place with vast plains, majestic mountains and flowing rivers without a trace of human activity. A little over three hundred years later and everywhere you look there’s a building, windmill, dam, road, something that taints the natural landscape. The earth doesn’t just adapt to a five hundred foot tall dam; human interference of habitats cause significant damage that people don’t always realize.
Cities bring together a tremendous amount of cultures and people from different backgrounds, resulting in diversity and international relations. This isn't always a good thing, however. Social impacts such as higher divorce rates, lower fertility rates, and fewer wage earners per household have been caused due to urbanization. These effects are believed to happen because of higher stress and anxiety that come with living in cities. Household numbers drop because people living in cities don’t need the manual labor that rural dwellers require on farms on ranches, not to mention they are more expensive to support. These statistics have established themselves over time and with people’s adaptation to modern urbanization. But, since everyone is drawn to urban areas, social classes have become very separated. Urban areas are supposed to give better access to sanitary and health services, but slum dwellers, whose numbers have risen to about 863 million, aren’t reaping the benefits. Not to mention that racism still exists today. Hundreds of cultures packed into one place in a world haunted by terrorism and a history of racism; what could go wrong? Now with thousands of cities sprawling across the world, people have been closer together than ever before.
Do the pros of urbanization outweigh the cons? How can we create a more sustainable environment in urban areas?
Works Cited
www.lorecentral.org/2018/01/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-urbanisation.html.
www.ancient.eu/urbanization/.
www.ancient.eu/urbanization/.
ourworldindata.org/urbanization.
family.jrank.org/pages/1732/Urbanization-Social-Impacts-Urbanization.html.
careertrend.com/info-8530337-negative-effects-rapid-urbanization.html.
20 comments:
Humans are pack animals, and it definitely shows in how we clump together in settlements. Even people who prefer living more remotely are seen as antisocial or hermit-like because of how much social interaction humans crave and require. I think you're right in saying that urban areas are kind of like sitting ducks in that they are far more vulnerable to colossal damages from any kind of epidemic, terrorist attack, natural disaster, or environmental degradation or depletion. City life has fed a culture of excessive use of materials and resources, which fuels its attraction to so many people. It makes me wonder is it really all that worth it? Is there even a possibility for humans to stop clumping together in such concentrated areas?
I think urban areas definitely have benefits when it comes to things like convenience. However, I believe cities should definitely strive towards being a little greener. For example, some cities, such as Dallas, do not have many public transportation options. It is one of the few cities I've seen here where almost everybody has a car. Something as simple as having a bus system can cut down on harmful emissions drastically. A lot of people don't seem to understand how simple making a city a little more environmentally friendly can be.
Urban areas do have benefits; nonetheless, I still believe that the negatives outweigh the positives. Although urban areas have many negatives, there are ways to reduce them and make these areas more green and environmentally friendly. The smart growth plan that we learned could be applied to urban areas. For example, more options for public transportation can be instituted.
As the other commenters have already asserted, the building of ur areas have benefits, such including less disturbed habitats. However, urban areas typically house people who aren’t deeply concerned with their carbon footprint and overall environmental impact. To begin to reduce the amount of carbon emissions, people need to become willing to make sacrifices such as trading their cars for public transportation. However, people are accustomed to their current lifestyles and don’t want to give up their vehicles. But there are measures that can be implemented to reduce the carbon emissions such as planting gardens in patios. Having these mini gardens will decrease the amount of carbon in the atmosphere while providing fresh produce to their owners.
Urban areas have such a big impact on the environment around it because they start to build buildings without even realizing that it is destroying habitats of organisms. People want to move out of urban areas to get rid of the overpopulation of people, but those rural areas also have big effects. The urban life has many positives such as less burning of fossil fuels and less greenhouse gases. But, the pollution rate is at an alarming rate. People must start to think of what they do the air around them.
Urban areas are increasing every day, which contributes to more greenhouse gases being released to make energy to power these large areas. More people living in these types of areas need to be aware of the huge carbon footprint they are leaving behind, so that they find little ways in their lives that will make earth more sustainable. For example, taking less time in the shower or double checking that they turned off all the lights before leaving can greatly decrease the use of fossil fuels for electricity and water filtration.
I do believe that urban areas have a huge impact because of the amount of greenhouse gasses it emits. However, if such areas attempt to be a little more green then it could go a long way. I know certain places like Dallas are trying to by reusing resources and much more, but that is one city out of so many!
I believe that the pros of urban areas do not outweigh the cons. The negative impacts of civilization has affected its surroundings so greatly, and it will be very difficult to reconstruct the environment. Urban areas should try to leave vast areas if greenery, not for instrumental values, but for intrinsic values. An example would be New York City and Central Park. If urban areas think hard enough, they will be able to conserve more resources by reusing and recycling properly.
While urban growth is important for the economy, it is detrimental to the environment. However the two can coexist. Smart cities that have minimal environmental impact will help protect both the environment and help city growth. It is important for people to push lawmakers to have smart cities to help the environment.
Obviously urban area have a lot of pros but the cons outweighs it. The environmental impacts are a result of everything us humans are doing. Urbanizing and polluting.
Urban areas in my opinion has more cons that take over the pros. Pollution and urbanization has very bad affects. We definitely need to figure out how to stop pollution.
Urbanization is a great thing that comes with many consequences. People don’t realize that many animals' homes and habitats are getting destroyed during urbanization. The new cities also emit a lot of green-house gases that pollute the air we breathe. If major cities such as New York begin to be more environmentally friendly, I believe that other cities will follow.
Urbanization is a negative thing that has changed the way of life in our world. Too many negative effects are ruining our environment in and around big cities. We need to stop and take a second to appreciate our earth.Great Blog will!!
Great Blog! I feel like most people tend to overlook the pros of urbanization mostly because the cons severely outweighs them. But there are in fact something’s that are considered good. For instance, because people are so densely packed in one spot, it is easy to get around and share common amenities. Also, public tranposrtation is used more often as opposed to everyone driving their own cars; most people even walk. Urbanization’s can also greatly enhance the economy. However, these factors are still overshadowed by habitat destruction, pollution, and social inequality. That is why we must strive to reverse the tide and create an unbalance that favors the pros. Because whether we like it or not, the urbanization rate will probably not decline in the coming years.
I think that urban areas have more pros than cons since they have access to more resources. I do believe that urban areas might have issues later on when they start overusing resources. We need to find an environmentally friendly way to use the available resources while also fitting our needs.
Although many classmates have seen the negatives of these urban environments, the positives in my opinion are being overlooked. For one, urban areas have a higher density of people, meaning that respectively, people have less of a physical environmental footprint. As opposed to something like 10 people occupying an acre in the suburbs, in an urban environment an entire apartment building can house hundreds, cutting down individual land use. Another overlooked attribute is the availability of public transportation, with increased density, people are more apt to take forms of public transportation which reduce overall carbon production because cars are not as much necessary. Further more, density awakens us to actual issues within the environment; if cities did not exist the same pollution would happen just more spread out. Resources are more effectively shared and managed with large amounts of people, for example, an Energy Information Administration study shows that urban dwellers are actually more efficient in their use of electricity and water as opposed to suburbanites or rural dwellers. These are just some of the benefits of many people living close together, and although cities do produce a lot of waste, they are fundamentally places most adept to helping change the planet, culture, and saving the environment.
There are definitely a lot of negative effects of urbanization. However, I think that if smart growth were to be used more, this could greatly improve the effects.
Wow, this blog was very interesting! I never really knew that urban areas can have an impact on the environment. Today, our world has significantly increased its urban areas which is contributing to the increase in greenhouse gases being released. I think we should really educate people in urban areas on smart city growth so that they can take action to help save the environment. We need to be more cautious about what we put into the environment, and take control of what we do to our environment.
This was really well written, great job! Personally, I don’t think the pros of urbanization outweigh the cons. As you mentioned, there are many negative impacts of urbanization on people. There are also vast amounts of negative impacts of urbanization on the environment. For example, the increased area of black tops prevents water from reaching soil which leads to soil degradation.
While the growth of industry and urbanization has many environmental detriments, their prominence is inevitable and we cannot outdo what has already been done. Many of the negative environmental impacts induced by urbanization, however, can be amended through smart growth.
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