Urbanisation Essay

ASSIGNMENT  SUBMISSION

EDINBURGH  NAPIER  UNIVERSITY

Urbanisation Portfolio task.

Question: Identify three examples of problems related to urbanisation and evaluate possible solutions for each of these

Urbanisation

Urbanisation, which means people migrate from rural areas to urban areas, is a process of societies that the cities become more urban. As the rapid improvement of economic and living standard, more people believe that moving to urban area can receive good education, healthcare and services. This phenomenon is more and more obvious in the world especially in developing countries, such as China and India. However, urbanisation has brought some problems. This essay will focus on three main problems that are caused by urbanisation and their solutions respectively. First of all, the problem of resource shortages, such as food and water, and the solutions are discussed. Next this essay will focus on traffic congestion and solving measures, such as improve underground system and adjust the rush hours of employees. Finally, the issue of work stress, which is caused by urbanisation, solutions and some healthy problems of work pressures will be discussed.

Firstly, one of the most visible issues, which is caused by urbanisation, is the shortage of resources. Because of over population, the excessive demand of resources need be satisfied. For instance, Warren (1976) points out that the rising population cause the increasing of individual needs, which includes new resources and the existing ones. The inevitable raise both the stress on resource accessibility and the possibility of conflict over the using of a specific space in a limit areas. Furthermore, there are two main shortages of resource, which are food and water. As the development of urbanisation, some people, who live in countryside, migrate to urban areas. That might cause the lack of agricultural labors, thereby, the grain output may decrease, and there is not enough to feed so many people. On the other hand, increasing population and growth of large industry make water shortage to be more striking (Warren, 1976).

However, there are some solutions to abate the resource shortage of urbanization. For the food shortage, Wibberley (1976) mentions that retaining the use of farm land suitably to people, who live in town access near to urban places to farm. The water shortage can be solved by enlarging reservoirs and encouraging people to recycle water. However, for example, there is a negative of reservoirs, which might is require long time to plan, build and obtain a cost (Barford et al, 2014). Although these solutions cannot solve the problems completely now, it is useful to a certain extent. In addition, as the development of technology, these issues could be solved gradually.

Secondly, there is another problem, which is traffic jam. Urbanisation causes the traffic jam for three reasons. The first reason probably is population explosion. More people migrate to the fringe of rural areas and urban areas, the traffic jam might get more worse. Because most people will move into the urban city to go to work (BBC, 2015). The second reason possibly is that as the improvement of economy, there is a growth in the living standard of people. For example, the increasing inflow of the number of people from towns and small cities that making economic rise have leaded to an explosion of increasing in urban personal owning car. The last reason is that the original system of public transportation is not improving as fast as rising population. For instance, the road infrastructures cannot keep up with the rapid rise, and incomplete rail system cannot relieve pressures from road (MC, 2012). However, the traffic congestion does not happen all the time. The traffic jam is more likely to happen and more serious relatively in rush hour. During this time, people come or back to their home, where is rural area or urban area.

There are several solutions to reduce traffic congestion. For those people, whose job in urban cities and home in town or small cities, their rush hour of usualness should be staggered to reduce traffic pressure during that time. On the other hand, one of effective solution for traffic jam of urbanisatiuon is establishing and improving the system of public transportations, especially underground rail systems. However, these measures might be hard to operate relatively, because these need a large of money and time to change and improve them. Due to the fact that the policies of company or government cannot implement immediately, so it is difficult that solving the traffic jam in short time.