Most countries have experienced a significant movement of population to urban areas over recent decades. There are several reasons for this shift that put pressure on urban planning. In this essay, I will point out some factors contributing to urban shift and consequences cities have to face from this change.
To start with, movement from rural to urban areas springs from three main causes. Firstly, many young people living in the countryside believe that cities offer them more opportunities to pursue their career. As many education institutions, working places and research sites situated in cities, people have diverse chances to acquire knowledge as well as practicing their skills. In the contrary, there are limited job opportunities in the countryside, especially in this modern life when many rural industries are mechanized. For instance, many repetitive tasks in rural areas such as farming or breeding domestic animals are replaced by machines these days, which urges young people move to cities to find works that depend mostly on humans’ skills. Secondly, economic aspect plays vital role in this shift. Since there are vast numbers of working sites, rural people come to cities with the hope that they can earn more money. Clothing manufacturing industry and services industry are two common areas that individuals moving to cities engage in to help their families financially. Furthermore, cities have good facilities serving humans’ lives, so it is reasonable to move to urban areas to experience the best service quality. There are not only places that meets humans’ fundamental needs in life such as hospitals and schools, but also entertaining services such as mall centers.
The significant movement to urban areas results in many consequences. First, infrastructure can not keep pace with the increasing number in populations and fast development of industrialization. As cities face with overcrowded populations and many industrial sites, government find it is challenging to focus on improving the infrastructure including roads, sewage, hospitals, schools,… For example, many cities in some developing countries suffer from pollution, overcrowding and bad infrastructure at the same time, which put a strong pressure on both the government and citizens. Second, this movement causes unplanned growth in big cities. Traffic jams, for instance, happen frequently in cities, causing tiredness to many people and air pollution due to smoke from private vehicles. Moreover, this significant change increases crime rate, which is a serious social issue. Fast living pace in cities promote citizens to try to earn more money, become more successful and gain more powers in society, which makes people experience stress. As a result, some people involve in illegal activities such as burglary or even murder to have what they want. This issue causes danger to irrelevant people, and raises fears of city life.
In conclusion, there are several factors causing urban shift, which put strong pressures on cities, especially in urban planning. It is extremely important for the government to have ways that can control this significant movement in order to prevent more bad results happen to citizens.