 |  Environmental Science: A Global Concern, 7/e William P. Cunningham,
University of Minnesota
Mary Ann Cunningham,
Vassar College
Barbara Woodworth Saigo,
St. Cloud State University
Urbanization and Sustainable Cities
BE ALERT FOR: Urban Problems
The problems of cities are both numerous and serious. Traffic congestion, air pollution, lack of safe water, inadequate housing, lack of sewer systems, noise, crime, and urban decay plague big-city dwellers around the world.
The puzzler: Why do cities with these problems develop as they do? Why don't we instinctively organize ourselves in other ways? We are not pushed kicking and screaming into these huge aggregations with their myriad problems. We come together of our own free will.
Why do we do it? What do you think?
Notice that two kinds of forces are involved. Some, the push factors, are conditions in the countryside that people simply wish to leave. What do you suppose those are? Pull factors—excitement, vitality, freedom, and jobs—draw many people to cities by choice. By their expenditures, governments often enhance these attractions of cities as well.
As human numbers grow and urbanization continues into the next century, city sizes are projected to attain astounding sizes, for better or for worse.
BE ALERT FOR: Transportation Impacts
Notice the long-standing relationship between cities and transportation routes and methods. Cities first arose where transportation routes crossed or where breaks in transportation occurred, such as at the head of navigation on rivers or where trade goods were shifted from water to land transport.
The method of transportation influenced the organization of cities. The location of businesses and residential locations of different socioeconomic classes was significantly changed by automobiles in comparison to patterns that existed during horse-and-buggy days.
Freeways produced the most profound changes of all, giving rise to extensive suburbs and shopping malls and a substantial increase in energy consumption and pollution.
BE ALERT FOR: Role-playing
Learning anything is made easier when we develop personal connections to the subject. Much of this chapter is concerned with both the perceived problems of U.S. central cities and suburbs and the supposed solutions.
You can have some fun with this chapter and more easily learn the important ideas it addresses if you take on the role of skeptic. When a problem is identified, ask yourself if it is or would be a problem for you. When a change is proposed to improve things, ask yourself if you would like to live in such a circumstance. Would you like to live in one of those new towns being created or proposed by futuristic urban planners?
After all, the planners and critics whose ideas are presented here are not addressing some hypothetical context. They purport to speak for our well-being—yours and mine! Engage their ideas in argument (silently or otherwise) if they sound like bad ideas to you. Compliment them if you would like to live in a place like they describe.
BE ALERT FOR: Antiquity of City Problems
Did you notice that the recognition that cities create problems for people is nothing new? City planning to avoid and correct such problems has been going on since the time of the ancient Greeks. Notice also the considerable similarities between the attributes the Greeks tried to incorporate in their city plans and what more recent planners in England and Scandinavia have sought to do. As you study the planning section, make a list of these common features.
On reflection, it looks like human nature and human needs haven't changed all that much in over 2,000 years.
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2003 McGraw-Hill Higher Education