Why It Is Important to Develop Sustainable Cities?

Why it is important to develop sustainable cities? With the rapid development of urbanization, there are an increasing number of serious problems emerging all over the world, especially in some developing countries. Therefore, if we want to live a sustainable life without destroying the natural resources and wildlife, some effective and feasible sustainable development policies must be taken step by step from now on. Firstly, too many people move from rural areas to urban areas, along with the high growth rate and the low death rate in the cities, which has led to space and housing shortages.

There is no enough room for such a large amount people living in the cities, so poor housing conditions, such as squatter settlements and shanty towns are unavoidable. Such poorly constructive and unplanned shacks are usually lack of running water, electricity and sewage systems. Additional, people who live in the slums cannot afford to good quality education, healthcare and social services. To solve the housing problems, one way is to improve the infrastructure and boost the employment opportunities in rural areas to inspire people to move back to countryside.

Another solution is to build “satellite New Towns” and “New Territories” near the cities to disperse overcrowded people, like Hong Kong where it has made process on building the high-rise blocks of flats in new settlements. Secondly, the severe pollution problems are more obvious in the cities than those in the countryside. Because of the emission of cars and chemical factories, air pollution has become the biggest challenge for most city governors.

It is essential to follow sustainable development policies, such as encouraging mass transit and building fast and efficient transport systems to find alternatives to cars. At the same time, regulations and laws are critical methods to fine or even close badly polluting factories and workshops but encourage environmental-friendly production activities. Lastly, there is continuous big concern on exhausting of non-renewable energy resources, i. e. oil, wood, gasoline and minerals. If we overuse and overexploit such energy resources blindly, how can our next generation live?

So it is an urgent issue for human beings to discover and make good use of locally available renewable energy (solar, wind and biogas etc. ), which are clean and unlimited, but it will have so many limiting factors to make use of them, like technical financial restrictions. Overall, apparently, practical and feasible sustainable development policies are able to address most problems which come across in the process of human society developing. Therefore, it is vital and necessary to make more and more sustainable policies to keep the pace of urbanization. Word count: 418 words