21st century is a period that technology has a significant role. Thanks to technology; life standards are increasing in areas such as social welfare, health care ,education and transportation. Because of this, population rises up even faster and people move from country side to cities. Therefore city life swiftly becomes widespread. This situation is called Urbanization. People who live in rural areas lack some basic facilities such as hospital,school,grocery,banks etc. With urbanization these people can obtain these conveniences easily, thereby it helps to improve their standards of living. Thus most people are happy to live in urban areas. However, urbanization has many disadvantages. Most importantly; the harming of the enviroment, damaging of historic beauty and the possibility of losing the order of goverment.
One of the disadvantages is environmental pollution. Due to the population increase, people need more dwelling. That’s why they cut forests down and build houses in cultivated areas. This situation affects nature badly and causes drought and poverty. Moreover people construct buildings in stream beds and therefore flood disasters happen. Urbanization pollute air,soil and water. It weakens natural balance. For instance, according to Dr Romshoo (2017) only of the water in Dal lake – a lake ın Asia- was relatively clean, base factors are unplanned urbanization and high population growth. Also countries like Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Somalia, Malawi suffer from water shortages and the circumstances are getting worse because of urbanization. Damaging of historic beauty is the second disadvantage of urbanization. When people move from a rural area to a city because of the need for shelter, they construct slums without any permission from the goverment. Nowadays slums spread everywhere and the goverment has lost their control over them.They don’t have an aesthetic appearance therefore they ruin cities silhouette. Shantyhouses cause to seem suffocating, uneasy and unhealthy. According to news, Selimiye Mosque, which was chosen to UNESCO's World Heritage List is a victim of unplanned urbanization. The silhouette of the Selimiye Mosque, which is one of the most important architectural works of the Ottoman period, began to deteriorate. The third disadvantage is the possibility of losing the order of goverment. Unplanned urbanization means building buildings without a construction plan. For this reason, the goverment can’t follow and check the process. For example, roads; people construct the houses so close to each other that when a fire breaks out, fire engine can not fit the road and reach the house. Unplanned constructing affects transportation and increase the probability of occurrence of the traffic jam. Also irregular urbanization influence the rates of commiting an offence. According to Parikh (2013) urbanization pushes people towards doing illegal things such as theft, murder and abduction. In conclusion, irregular urbanization is harmful for the enviroment and damages the earth. It destroys our historical places and ruins the order of cities. So, what can we do? We can make plans and design the cities. Before starting to build something, we can decide where the roads and streets should be, where the parks should be, we should also think substructures like electricity, sewage, water etc. And finally calculating the population for cities is a good solution. If we do these things, I certainly believe that people will be happier and cities will look glorious. Cansu Ündeyoğlu, Omega Group Member, Agora Leo Club, Turkey.
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According to the United Nations, water use has grown at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century. By 2025, an estimated 1.8 billion people will live in areas plagued by water scarcity, with two-thirds of the world's population living in water-stressed regions because of use, growth, and climate change.
Kenichi Fukui, who was a Japanese chemist, known as the first Asian scientist to receive a chemistry Nobel Prize, famously said that Chemistry itself knows altogether too well that - given the real fear that the scarcity of global resources and energy might threaten the unity of mankind. Living in Mumbai keeps us away from the problems arising from water scarcity but the fact is that to fuel the water needs of Mumbaikars, many villages in Maharashtra have to bear the cut in water supply to fulfil the fat belly our city has. There are many actions being taken to solve the problem of water, nationally as well as globally but the bottom line is that this isn’t something which has to be dealt with only at government level but rather every human being has an equal contribution to give or the price to pay sooner or later. What can we do to contribute? Nothing really just a few tweaks here and there in our daily bad habits, is that too much? We all know what can be done to save wastage of water in a household but just to give a gist. If you turn off the tap when you brush your teeth – this can save 6 litres of water per minute. By taking a shorter shower. A shower can use anything between 6 and 45 litres per minute. This one is a surprise if you fix a dripping tap. A dripping tap can waste 15 litres of water a day, or 5,500 litres of water a year. And last but not the least water your garden with a watering can rather than a hosepipe. A hosepipe uses 1,000 litres of water an hour. So, until we don’t learn to clean seawater at an affordable price, let’s make smart choices and make our lives a bit easy for the future us. Leo Rahul Narula, Member Of Leo Club Of Juhu. |
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