The Complex Processes Of Urban Development

Recent data has shown that the world’s total population is doubling; however, the world's urban population is tripling. In the early 1800s, only 2 percent of the world’s population lived in urban areas (Urbanization; an environmental force to reckon with). This is a sharp contrast to what we have today. The promise of ample job opportunities, higher wages, and a better standard of living have been the main luring factors for attracting people into cities. Today about 50 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas. It is estimated that by 2050 about 60-70 percent of the world’s population will be living in urban areas (Urbanization; an environmental force to reckon with). This growth trend of the urban populace is troubling since it has tremendous bad effects on our environment which in turn has bad effects on our health and well-being.

Urbanization is a concept that is deeply rooted in the increase in a population within a region in response to the availability of unique opportunities. The opportunities may include the availability of employment chances in factories, investments opportunities in the urban areas, and the presence of sufficient housing and social infrastructure. It is apparent that urbanization began centuries ago in different regions of the world. However, the development of suburban areas has also been an interesting phenomenon over the centuries. Initially, people strived to live in the luxurious houses in major towns and cities. Nevertheless, there was a gradual shift in the desire to live in the cities when various negative impacts of overpopulation

According to Statistics Canada (2011), there are five cities that are considered to be the largest metropolitan areas in Canada. However, of the five Toronto is one of them that has a population of over 1,000,000 people. In total, Ontario is home to 7 of the largest cities in Canada. With this note, we realize that Ontario is familiar with rapid urbanization which is also called urban sprawl. Also, although urban sprawl can seem extremely positive in terms of population growth and a rapidly growing economy. It can also have quite a negative effect on the environment and the biodiversity of an area. Moreover, pollution is another negative aspect of urban sprawl since countless commuters live in the rural areas around our urban centers

This dissertation is influenced by the ongoing urban regeneration and urban developments in many of the major cities in India, especially in city of Pune, and its adverse effects on the city townscapes and place identities. City of Pune has a rich education legacy and has been often referred as the ‘Oxford of the East’, a legacy which came into prominence on the establishment of the University of Pune in the year 1949 (Hindustan Times, 2012). The city truly justified itself as the cultural capital of Maharashtra with its strong connections with the work of arts, music, theater and literature (Hindustan Times, 2012). Pune, being an educational hub of India by having one of the India’s oldest University (Maharashtra Tourism, 2013), has now been transformed into a major manufacture and production hub as well as has improved in educational sectors like research institutes for information technology, management, architecture and engineering that attract students and professionals internationally (SCHEMCON, 2015).

In a recent article that I read, the issue of Urban sprawl was brought to bare. The article argued that urban sprawl is the reason for many ecological issues, and I tend to agree. This issue is very controversial as it makes economic improvement and accordingly framework advancement conceivably a negative thing, and therefore numerous organizations are attempting to claim that Urban sprawl is not an issue. Along these lines, I have investigated this topic further to investigate whether urban sprawl is undoubtedly as terrible as the original article states.

Urbanized areas also modify microclimates and air quality by altering the nature of the land surface and generating heat (Oke, 1987). Although ecological impacts of urban development often seem to be local, urbanization also causes environmental changes at larger scales. Today's cities are sustained by a socioeconomic infrastructure that operates on global scales; the ecologically productive area required to support an urban area can be 100 to 300 times larger than the urban region (Rees & Wackernagel, 1994). A new cooperative relationship between science, business and policy is needed to gather all the information needed and to find a solution that benefits all of society. The study of urban ecology ultimately involves studying how to integrate this new interdisciplinary knowledge about urban ecosystems into policymaking processes--to improve interactions between policymakers and scientists so as to help society achieve more sustainable existence. Today, the scientific and political communities lack the effective two-way communication and trust that they need to address urban ecological problems. Although science can help society formulate a range of options to achieve societal goals, it cannot make value judgments. In addition, scientists often cannot deliver definitive answers to questions posed by policymakers. To be able to find solutions to the larger issues

I think the United States can also build biophilic cities and integrate more nature into urban design and urban planning. Building biophilic cities is of great important for cities, residents, and the nature. Unsustainable urban sprawl damages open space and disturbs the function of the nature. Biophilic cities help us solve many environmental problems, such as climate change, air pollution, and decreasing biodiversity. For example, if we integrate more nature into the urban fabric, there will be more trees, animals, and rivers in cities. The urban heat island effect can be relieved and more air pollutants can be absorbed by trees. Rivers can help solve increasing floods and droughts.

Urbanization is important, but its development is effected at the expense of deforestation, destruction of biotopes, fragmentation of ecosystems, consequently shrinking of the open space among many other things. A city should be a complex system that should entail several interactive sub-systems, it should be affected by various factors including governmental land policies, population growth, transportation infrastructure, market behavior to mention just a few.

In spite of this gloom, many urban planning experts have demonstrated that those who create the built environment, actually have the number-one means of reducing energy use and GHG emissions—and, at the same time, giving the market what it wants. Urbanism is, in fact, the single most potent weapon against climate change, rising energy costs, and environmental degradation.

Short Gianotti, A., Getson, J., Hutyra, L., & Kittredge, D. (2016, June). Defining urban, suburban, and rural: A method to link perceptual definitions with geospatial measures of urbanization in central and eastern Massachusetts. Urban Ecosystems, 19(2), 823-833. doi:10.1007/s11252-016-0535-3

The first chapter of this book clearly summarises what biophilic cities are, how they work, the current view on biophilic cities, what happens to people with a lack of nature, and what benefits come from biophilic cities and nature in general. Within this it also tells us what can be done to create biophilic cities overtime. This book is a strong debate for biophilic cities becoming more popular as it outlines the benefits and what has happened without

Urban sprawl seems to be directly related to the increase in total imperviousness areas, runoff coefficients, and the interruption of the ecological integrity of the Andean watershed. Significant impacts can also be observed on the social environment, as the recent urbanisation process has substantially increased social segregation and socio-ecological fragmentation in cities. Urban planning and regulations have not explicitly taken account of the environmental effects of urbanisation on mountains in Chile.(Boyle, 2004)

Automobile is one of the most important transportation thing that is now governing the transportation all through the world and it's use is rising over the time. The North Americans seem to be dependent on automobile, but the new implementation of urban planning methods and new transportation systems is going to take on automobile use in coming years and some reasons are as following.

What is sustainable urbanism? Sustainable urbanism, as a characterized term, is use of sustainability and flexible standards to the outline, arranging, and organization/operation of urban areas. Settled human conduct inclinations have blocked activity toward an economical future. In spite of more than 50 years of exertion by researchers and environmentalists, the fate of the human attempt can never again be underestimated. This is expected essentially to our tendency. For quite a long time researchers have created confirm depicting the genuine natural dangers we confront. Their work has neglected to light a critical open reaction on the grounds that our message has not been conveyed in a way that addresses the drivers of human conduct. The

Urban ecology, together with remote sensing and GIS, advance the methodological approach that well fit the landscape transition studies through analyzing the spatial patterns and temporal sequencing (Thorne and Huang, 1991). With a holistic view, urban ecology provides valuable theories and methods for urban growth studies in revealing the biotic and abiotic causes of its spatial pattern as well as the ecological consequences (Turner, 2005, Kong et al., 2012, Haas and Ban, 2014). However, ecological studies have reduced the human