Urban dwellers are often quick to remind us that living in a city is more sustainable and eco-friendly than in a less densely-populated area. To an extent, that is true: taking public transit to work equals less vehicles on the road and less carbon spewed into the atmosphere; fewer sprawling homes means less land is consumed by lawns and perhaps pretty, but useless, landscaping. More green space between clusters of apartment buildings lends to more trees that can absorb CO2 and emit more O2.
Or does it? A few years ago a study that Siemens and the European Union undertook showed that once a city’s population exceeds 750,000, the air gets dirtier while the overall risk of a reduced quality of life increases. Air particulates exist at disturbing rates in a 30-mile zone around New York City; San Francisco’s 800,000 residents may think their city is sustainable when looking around their fair city, but the greater Bay Area has long suffered from a haze that hovers around the region’s 6 million people.
The arguments over what’s livable and sustainable will always drone on; but they are screeching in Asia, where cities are reaching their tipping point. The transformation from rural to urban has had enormous consequences for the Pacific Rim; Tokyo has long been a mega-city, but the Seoul of 1950 would be unrecognizable today, and the rural poor still stream into cities like Jakarta and Manila.
And then there is China; even a geography geek like me reads the news wires, scans the lists of cities with over a million people, and wonder, “where the heck is that?” Climb to the top of a high-rise in Shanghai or Shenzhen, and you’ll be gob-smacked by the brown haze, not to mention the Lego-like vistas of apartment buildings, office towers, apartment buildings, and office towers.
The price paid in the long term will be steeped; the use of concrete on a massive scale has a gigantic environmental consequence—many of these buildings, built even as recent as the 1990s, are shoddy, torn down, and then replaced with another poorly built structure. Public transport in these cities cannot adequately carry the streams of people who have to get to work. And as cities, particularly those in China, expand farther from their historic center, many of these mega-developments do not become of the city’s fabric—they are too far from the shopping centers and subway lines—so the residents have to drive . . . and the cycle continues.
Hope may be on the way, as the desire to live and breathe “green” is now spreading to East Asia. Seoul’s leaders have long realized that providing parks and shade have long-term benefits. And the work of foundations like Hong Kong’s Civic Exchange, led by the dynamic Christine Loh, is starting to change hearts and minds.
But at the unchecked rate these cities are growing, cities from Guangzhou to Busan will become unlivable and unsustainable. São Paulo has become so congested that the business elite commute by helicopter. We just cannot allow that trend to continue across the earth.
[...] a year until strict groundwater pumping laws were implemented in 1996. Just another reason how megacities in Asia are struggling to cope with population growth. Read the full article here on [...]