Think, Design & Build - The Shadows Of Life #18

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.