Urbanization
- Creation and growth of urban areas or cities and their surrounding developed land
- Urban growth
- The rate of increase of urban populations
- Urban areas grow in two ways
  - Natural increase
  - Immigration
- Rural people are pulled to urban areas in search of jobs, housing, educational opportunities, health care, entertainment, and freedom from religious, racial, and political conflicts
- Main advantages
- Access to education
- Sanitation
- Access to health care
- More jobs
- Better transportation
- Main disadvantages
- Worse air quality
- High population density
  - Increase spread of communicable disease
- Noise pollution
  - High levels of stress
- High crime rate
Advantages of Urbanization
- Cities
- Centers of economic development, innovation, education, industry, commerce, transportation, and jobs
  - Better access to medical care, family planning, education, and social services
- Recycling is more economically feasible because concentrations of recyclable materials
- Concentrating people in cities helps preserve biodiversity by reducing the stress of wildlife habitats
- Central cities can save energy if residents rely more on energy-efficient mass transportation
Disadvantages of Urbanization
- Huge ecological footprints
- Lack of vegetation
- Water problems
- Concentrate air pollution
- Health issues
- Excessive noise
- Create different climates
- Light pollution
Phases of Urbanization
- People migrated from rural ares to large central cities
- Many people migrated from large central cities to suburbs and smaller cities
- Some people fled both cities and suburbs and migrated to developed rural areas
Urban Sprawl
- The growth of low-density development on the edges of cities and towns
- Major factors that promoted urban sprawl in the U.S.
- Ample land was available for most cities to spread outward
- Federal government loan guarantees for new single family homes for WWII veterans stimulated the development of suburbs starting around 1950
- Low cost gasoline and federal and state funding of highways encourages automobile use and the development of outlying tracts of land
- Technology has made possible to work from home
- Goof suburban school districts
- More space to raise children
- Higher quality of life
Environmental Problems
- Building homes in preserved areas causes habitat destruction/fragmentation
- Problems related to the high usage of fossil fuels, since more people drive to work and other places
Ecological Footprints
- Urban populations only occupy around 2% of the earth’s land are, but they consume 75% of its resources and produce 75% of all carbon dioxide emissions from human activities
- Most of the world’s cities are not self-sustaining systems
- Large areas of land must be destroyed and degrade to provide for the urban people, which results in the lowering of biodiversity
- Most urban dwellers live in an artificial environment that isolates themselves from natural areas that contain biodiversity
Lack of Vegetation
- Most trees, shrubs, and other plants are destroyed in urban areas in order to make way for development
- Vegetation is important because it absorbs air pollutants, gives off oxygen, cools the air through transpiration, provides shade, muffles noise, and provides habitats
Water Pollution
- As water demands increase, expensive reservoirs must be built, and deeper wells must be drilled
- Can deprive rural and wild ares of surface water and deplete groundwater
- Covering land with asphalt and concrete causes precipitation to runoff quickly and overload storm drains, causing flooding
- Global warming is causing urban dwellers in arid areas to have a shortage of water
Pollution
- High population densities and high resource consumption causes cities to produce most of the world’s air pollution, water pollution, and waste
- Pollution is produces in a small area and cannot be dispersed and diluted as easily as pollution in rural areas
- Most of the CO2 from human related sources are due to urban areas
- Nitrogen nutrients in runoff can disrupt the nitrogen cycle
Excessive Noise
- Urban dwellers are subject to noise pollution
- Any unwanted, disturbing, or harmful sound that impairs or interferes with hearing, causes stress, hampers concentration and work efficiency, or causes accidents
- Too much noise can kill someone and cause permanent hearing damage
Light Pollution
- The artificial light created
- Affects some plant and animal species
- Migrating birds
  - Lured off course by the lights of a high rise building
  - Fatally collide with the buildings
Heat Island Effect
- Cities are generally warmer than the suburbs and rural areas
- Causes
- The enormous amount of heat created by cars, factories, air conditioners, and heat-absorbing dark roofs and streets in cities creates an urban heat island, surrounded by cooler rural and suburban areas
- Consequences of the heat island effect
- Increases the formation of photochemical smog
- Increases dependence on air conditioning for cooling
- Increases energy consumption
Transportation
- Motor vehicles have many harmful effects on people and the environment
- Automobile accidents kill approximately 1.2 million people a year and injure another 15 million
- Kill about 50 million wild animals and family pets a year
- World’s largest source of outdoor pollution, and cause 30,000 to 60,000 premature deaths per year in the U.S.
- Fastest growing source of climate changing CO2 emissions
- Account for ⅔ of oil used in the form of gasoline in the U.S. and ⅓ of the world
- At least a third of urban land worldwide, and half in the U.S. is devoted to roads, parking lots, gasoline stations, and other automobile related uses
Reducing Automobile Use
- Charge a tax on gasoline to cover the estimated harmful cost of driving
- Such a tax would amount to about $3.18 per liter of gasoline in the U.S.
Alternatives to Car Ownership
- Mass transit rail
- Advantages
  - Uses less energy
  - Produces less air pollution
  - Requires less land
  - Causes fewer injuries and deaths
  - Reduces car congestion in cities
- Disadvantages
  - Expensive
  - Commits riders to a schedule
  - Causes noise and vibration
- Bicycles
- Advantages
  - Affordable
  - No pollution
  - Quiet
  - Require little parking space
  - Easy to maneuver in traffic
  - Require few resources
- Disadvantages
  - Little protection in an accident
  - No protection from bad weather
  - Impractical for long trips
  - Tiring
  - Lack of secure parking
- Buses
- Advantages
  - Can be rerouted
  - Cost less to develop and maintain
  - Can reduce car use and air pollution
- Disadvantages
  - Can lose money due to low fares
  - Can get caught in traffic and add to pollution
  - Commits riders to a schedule
  - Noisy
- Rapid Rail
- Advantages
  - Reduce travel by car and plane
  - Ideal for long trips
  - Energy efficient
- Disadvantages
  - Expensive
  - Must operate along heavily used routes
  - Cause noise and vibration
Conventional Land-Use Planning
- Urban and rural areas use some form of land-use planning to determine the best present and future use of each parcel of land
- Encourage future population growth and economic development, regardless of the environmental and social consequences
- Leads poorly controlled urban growth and sprawl
- 90% of the revenue of local governments used to provide public services comes from property taxes levied on building/property based on economic value
- Zoning
- Most widely used approach in which various parcels of land are designated for certain uses
  - Can be used to control growth and protect areas from some types of development
  - Disadvantages
  - Threatens/destroys environment
  - Favors high-priced housing over protecting environmentally sensitive areas and low-priced housing because of property tax revenue from high-priced developments
Smart Growth
- Limits and regulations
- Limit building permits
- Urban growth boundaries
- Greenbelts around cities
- Public review of new development
- Zoning
- Encourage mixed use of housing and small businesses
- Concentrate development along mass transportation routes
- Promote high-density clutter housing developments
- Planning
- Ecological land use planning
- Environmental impact analysis
- Integrated regional planning
- State and national planning
- Protection
- Preserve existing open space
- Buy new open space
- Buy development rights that prohibit certain types of development on land parcels
- Taxes
- Tax land, not buildings
- Tax land on value of use
- Tax breaks
- For owners not agreeing to allow certain types of developments
- For cleaning up and developing abandoned urban sites
- Revitalization and New Growth
- Revitalize existing cities/towns
- Build well-planned new towns and villages within cities