Urbanization

The City is probably one of the most important inventions that the mankind has
ever made. Joint efforts of several hundreds or even thousands of people allowed
the ancient civilisations to build a more save and stable society, accumulating
resources and workforce for what was the most important things at the time.
Over the course of history, our cities became economic, cultural, political and
military centres, driving more and more people to settle in towns and cities, while
the rural areas were becoming less populated. Such a process of increasing a
country’s population which come to live in towns and cities is called urbanisation.

Interestingly, despite the benefits the city has brought to us, we, humans, are
prone to be consumed by our best inventions. In 1800, only 3% of people lived in
cities. Nowadays, we are talking about 50% of population of our planet, and,
according to the UN reports, the amount of city dwellers will be constantly rising
until it reaches 8,1 billion in the following 40 years.

The question is bound to rise: what makes us build our cities bigger and bigger?
One of the possible answers lies in our technological advancement. With the
development of industry and introducing of new methods of growing crops,
agriculture has become more effective: a single farmer with agricultural
machinery can now do more than a hundred of farmers a century ago. It causes
unemployment and drives people from rural areas to cities.

In some countries, such as the U.K. and the USA, urbanisation has gone so far,
that the most of population of those countries is now concentrated in cities – 90%
and 80% respectively. The uncontrolled city sprawl has also resulted in merging
large cities into giant megalopolises, such as, e.g. Boswash (e.i. Boston and
Washington) in the USA or Tokaido in Japan. Such a megalopolis is now forming in
Europe, stretching along the south eastern coast of England and northern coast of
France.

In fact, the invention once boosted economy and changed the way our ancestors
led their lives is now causing a combined set of ecological, social, and, ironically,
even economic problems firmly bound to each other.

Ecologically, cites, especially large ones, produce every kind of pollution possible
including air, water, soil and noise pollution, and have a great impact on vast
areas – up to 35% of the US territory is affected by their large cities. People lost
their work in rural areas have to venture into cities to find a new, better life.
The increasing number of people cause social problems, which are somewhat
multi-layered. On the one hand, there are huge differences in the standard of
living within cities. Thus, in

Manhattan, residents earn three-four times as much as in Broncs. On another

hand, giant masses of people of different backgrounds, beliefs, and religions
cause the increase in crime rates. Moreover, the city population tend to sub-
urbanise, meaning that people of different social standings live separately
creating ghettoes and more respectable districts.

It also affects economy. Thus, the government and industry cannot keep up with
the accelerated population growth. It generally leads to unemployment, which
means that more and more people have to apply for the unemployment benefits.

The overconcentrated industry, which used to benefit from co-operation between

various companies, now suffers from endless traffic congestions, supply shortage
and limited waste disposal, which, in turn, affect environment. And so, this vicious
circle has closed.

Unfortunately, the problems caused by urbanisation seem not to have a clear

answer. The measures we could take, such as reducing the impact on
environment by using green energy or adopting better city-planning to deal with
the traffic problem, look ineffective and could only preserve the current status
quo for a certain amount of time. It would require joint efforts of the entire world
and a long and cost full campaign to address the main reasons of urbanisations:
unemployment, poverty and differences in standard of living in cities and rural
areas.

Yet, it is likely that mankind believes the benefits of urbanisation outweigh its
drawbacks.