The rapid spread of urbanization in some countries has raised some concerns among their populations. This phenomenon is inevitable due to several reasons and has posed some concerning problems.
There could be numerous reasons urging residents in rural areas to migrate to the cities. Some people just simply want to enjoy the improved living standards of the busy city life. As economic centers of the country, citizens often have access to better infrastructure including transportation, public amenities, healthcare, and services. They also enjoy quality education, and opportunities for higher-paying sources of income and a wider range of job prospects. In fact, those are the most common reasons for people to leave the countryside for the busy urban lifestyle: some students just moved there for their higher education, and then decided to stay for employment opportunities in their areas of specialization, which will be rather narrow in suburban areas.
Yet, the growth of populations in urban areas has posed a great many problems. As the population grows, the living space of citizens gets narrower, and the prices for housing have been skyrocketing out of the range of affordability. Public facilities and infrastructure also have to serve a number of people exceeding their designed capacity, which in turn worsen both the quality of their services and the quality of our environment. This could be exemplified by overloaded traffic in peak hours, a scene typical of city life, which significantly increases carbon emissions into the air. As a result, besides earning more, residents in the cities not only need more money to bear their living in the fancier facilities and services, but also suffer from reduced quality of services and of the environment they live in, making them prone to various respiratory diseases. The local authorities who are in charge of catering to the services in their city, such as electricity, transportation, etc. have to budget to extend the capacity of their public amenities to cater to their ever-increasing population, and we cannot see an end of that until new cities being developed from the extension of the old ones.
In summary, the spread of urbanization is probably inevitable due to people’s justifiable need to improve their standard of living and better their lives. The problems it causes are huge, since holding an overpopulated city life together is never easy; yet, somehow, with our collective effort, we have to find our way to navigate through, like we have always done.