In this modern world, there is a strong debate whether horizontal or vertical cities would provide better life quality. This essay will elaborate both viewpoints as well as my own perspective.
On the one hand, horizontal cities bring a strong sense of community. As many houses gather together door to door in a neighborhood, the social cohesion is highly promoted. Therefore, these cities prioritize public spaces such as commual houses, mutual playgrounds for children, pavements. At this point, the safety is also reinforced since when people know each other better, the community engagement increases, they will together prevent criminal activity and support each other when that happens. However, horizontal cities require a lot of land, given the increasing population in these recent years, it may not be able to accomodate such amounts of residents. As a result, more forests would be flattended to shift into residental areas, causing the loss of habitats for wildlife, which adversely impacted the biodiversity.
On the other hand, vertical cities require much less amount of land. As the buildings there are constructed to be high-rise, they can accommodate a lot of residents just in a small area. By this way, it helps in conservating natural habitats since humans do not need to invade wildlife’s homeland anymore. Nevertheless, this approach would lead to higher population density, requiring a large amount of resource to serve people in heating, cooling, travelling. This is particularly the case of Shanghai and Mumbai when these big cities still greatly consume fossil fuel for such househoud activities since there are still no better alternatives. Therefore, this idea will not be too environmentally friendly either.
In my opinion, with the high acceleration of urban sprawl, vertical cities would be more desirable. Despited the disadvantages, to accomodate the increasing population should be more prioritized. Moreover, the amenities and facilities in the high-rise apartments there tend to be more modern and in high quality. For example, there are strict fire prevention system, including large number of water sprinklers, each household is also thoroughly equipped with fire-resistant materials. Besides, there is also a densely system of cameras and security serving 24/7. Therefore, safety should not necessarily be a too serious concern when living in vertical cities. So as to deal with urbanization, vertical city is not a bad approach.
In conclusion, both horizontal and vertical cities have considerable advantages as well as disadvantages but given the overpopulating state of the world recently, vetical design should be the priority for the planning of future cities.