There are a lot of known problems of cities. They exist in both large settlements and relatively small ones. The study of shortcomings and analysis of their impact on human life is an important work that allows you to determine the optimal line of development and improvement of the situation. The nature and extent of the problems vary widely. Of course, in the current conditions, even if there are all opportunities for this, the shortcomings cannot be completely eliminated, but some can be eliminated, while others can be weakened. To do this, you need to know what and in what direction you should work in the first place.
Where to start?
A significant problem of modern cities is space for social life. What will a city dweller answer if you ask him about his preferences in organizing free time? Many will tell you that they spend hours freed from household chores and work in shopping centers. Indeed, such facilities offer everything you needfor human entertainment. Here you can watch a movie on the big screen, entertain yourself in the rollerdrome, eat in a restaurant and spend money in shops of various kinds and directions. What else, it would seem, might a person need? But not everything is so simple. Shopping malls are designed to attract citizens. They are organized in such a way that people spend as much time as possible on the territory of the center, because it is beneficial from the point of view of building a business, but for a particular person it would be much more pleasant and useful to spend time outdoors. Many disagree: there are climate systems indoors, so the air is always pleasant, there is entertainment, but there is nothing to do outside.
According to urban social scientists, people simply do not understand that large cities are in some ways like one big entertainment center, and citizens are free to choose where to go, because there are many interesting things going on. The number of venues that attract visitors in any large city is constantly growing, but their quality leaves much to be desired. The task of developing such territories is the sphere of work of urbanists. If we manage to solve the problem with the arrangement of territories, the organization of attractive and comfortable places, people will spend more time in interesting places, not limited to shopping centers. Communication, interaction of personalities will become more active and richer.
What is up to me?
Within the localitythe organization of attractive spaces is the responsibility of specially trained people. Can an average person who does not have a lot of money and rights do something? Others think not. It's not like that: citizens can equip sites near their homes, squares and courtyards of residential complexes in which they live. This improves the living environment and partially solves the problem of organizing space in the city.
Want and make want
Another problem of modern cities is advertising. Its abundance is truly appalling. As some say, advertising is a kind of parasite that negatively affects the environment and devours the beauty of the surrounding space. Banners and billboards, screens and light boxes, signs that can be seen on houses, fences and even trees - all this creates a depressing atmosphere and creates a negative impression. It has long been known that the abundance of advertising information greatly tires, exhausts, annoys a person. Of course, most of our compatriots are well aware that it will not be possible to completely eliminate advertising, at least at the current stage of the development of civilization, and there is no need to completely abandon it either - it is only important to limit the volume and clear the environment of visual and sound debris. According to experts in the organization of living space, each city should create its own design code, which will be subject to all advertisements.
The proposal to introduce a design code to solve the problem of the city involves the introduction of standards for the design of the living environment. This code is created forsettlement, includes important restrictions, regulates the parameters of advertisements, clearly establishes the possible number. At the same time, the code fixes the harmony of the building. Responsibility for the adoption of such a code rests with the administration of the locality. The task of officials is to take control over the placement of advertising, remove numerous signs from the space, replacing them with a correct and aesthetic sign that fits into the design of the building and street. These ads are less aggressive and less tiring.
About difficulty
Working with advertising as a solution to the problem of large cities, as can be seen from practice, is complicated by the abundance of illegal ads. Many of the signs that hurt the eye are not placed by specialists or advertising agencies at all, but by private individuals who do not pay attention to the provisions of the law. Such people don't know about the design code and don't want to understand its importance. They do not care about the organization and beauty of the surrounding spaces. The main purpose of such persons is to announce their proposal. Illegal advertising is a public problem, including a social one, since the authors of such advertisements, structures and installations are often convinced that the streets are something in common, and therefore belong to them, that is, you can do whatever you want. It is through the efforts of such persons that the problem of visual littering of the common living space appears.
Living environment
To the problems of large cities belongs another one related to appearance. Many of our compatriots put inclimate control systems in apartments, without thinking about how the air conditioner box negatively affects the appearance of the building. The appearance of the building suffers even more when the owner of a separate apartment decides to install contrast insulation from the outside. Of course, for the inhabitant of a single dwelling, this is profitable and convenient, but the building in which many citizens have decided to improve their life in this way seems untidy. The more such buildings around, the more oppressive atmosphere of chaos is formed, negatively affecting any person who is forced to watch the picture from the side. Deliberately damaging the appearance of their own city, people do not consider that it is really important. Currently, there is no active work to promote the idea of a beautiful facade, there are no generally accepted design systems or prohibitions on unauthorized "improvement". Until these are accepted, cities will remain chaotic.
An equally significant social problem of the city associated with buildings is the specifics of barriers. It is most relevant for sedentary people who are forced to use special additional means of transportation. In many cities, especially large ones, underground passages have been built, and not everywhere justifiably, but there are no ramps, thanks to which such elements of the urban environment would be accessible to everyone. There are often no ramps in residential buildings, in other multi-storey buildings, they are not equipped with entrance areas of shops and other public institutions. The houses often do not have elevators, and the sidewalks are not equipped with ramps. If the ability of a person tomovement is limited, such a person often leads a reclusive life precisely because of the problem of the environment. Once on the street, he faces the risk of getting into a dead end, in such a place, getting out of it with his mobility capabilities is extremely difficult.
What shall we ride?
It is believed that the problem of large cities is the low mobility of citizens who constantly use transport, and an excess of cars. To solve it, it is proposed to promote cycling. Of course, the option is attractive, has a positive effect on human he alth, weakens the harmful effects on the environment and reduces the congestion of the streets, but this was not without drawbacks. In most cities of our country, the infrastructure for cyclists is catastrophically poorly developed. An ideal city in which citizens use bicycles would be wonderful, but the rights, even assigned to such a person by laws, are far from always respected. The task of a cyclist is to follow the rules of the road, use the road, not the sidewalk, but riding near cars can end in tragedy. A solution to the problem has long been invented: the creation of special bicycle paths. Some more progressive cities have them, while others are forced to either break the law or risk their lives next to high-speed road transport.
From police statistics it is known that the number of cases of road accidents involving cyclists is quite large, so the lack of infrastructure for such people can be safely calledan important problem of cities - large and small. To solve it, activists call for organized public actions in order to draw the attention of officials and the general public to the current situation. It is assumed that with such peaceful, but rather loud methods, it is possible to achieve a change in the situation for the better.
About ecology
An impressive percentage of people live in fairly large settlements, the territories of many cities are heavily congested. Living conditions are gradually getting worse, among the inhabitants of such places the frequency of occurrence of diseases increases, and the labor activity of many worsens. Life expectancy is decreasing, the environment is getting worse, the climate is changing for the worse.
Urbanization is a factor affecting the earth's lithosphere. As a result, the terrain changes. Karst voids are formed. An aggressive impact on river basins, leading to their deformation, has been recorded. Separate territories have undergone desertification, it is impossible to live there, the animal and plant world has completely retreated.
An equally significant problem is associated with landscape changes, degradation in this aspect. Man is aggressive towards the animal world, vegetation, species diversity is deteriorating, individuals are dying, a specific nature is being formed, which is called urban. In recent years, there has been a significant decrease in the number of recreational areas and natural areas, there is less and less greenery. Highly negative impact of road transport, abundant in and around the major city.
Water and air
We should not lose sight of the problems of Russian cities related to the water system. Rivers and lakes are heavily polluted, and gradually the situation is getting worse. The main sources of harmful inclusions are wastewater from industrial facilities, domestic wastewater. The waters are getting smaller. Plants and animals living in the waters die. Water resources at all levels and scales, from the smallest bodies of water to the largest oceans, are affected. The damage is done to the waters underground, inside the continent, the World Ocean suffers. As a result, the amount of water available for drinking is declining, and constantly hundreds of thousands of people in different parts of the world experience a lack of life-giving fluid. If you turn to statistical reports, you can find out that every year thousands of people die precisely because of the lack of drinking water.
Another major problem in the city is poor air quality. It was this ecological complexity that was first noticed by mankind. The atmosphere is polluted by emissions from motor vehicles and numerous industrial enterprises, which are present in abundance on all continents. The air is polluted with dust, chemical and mechanical impurities, precipitation has an abnormal level of acidity, aggressive for living forms of life. Polluted air is the reason for the high level of disease in animals. It greatly affects human he alth. At the same time, there is a problem of cutting down green spaces that could help clean the air, so the diversity and number of plants capable oftransform carbon dioxide.
About garbage
If you ask ecologists what urban problems are most often overlooked by the public, experts will probably talk about waste. Garbage is a factor of pollution of soil, atmosphere, water systems. Many materials actively used by mankind decompose under natural conditions for tens, hundreds of years, and the period of decomposition of some is so long that they are considered unrecyclable in the natural environment in principle. The decay process is accompanied by the generation of malicious compounds. They additionally poison the soil, water and air. All these compounds are capable of provoking diseases of animals and plants, leading to the extinction of some life forms.
In recent years, the developed countries have been actively promoting the idea of separate waste collection and organization of waste processing enterprises. The use of secondary raw materials is advertised, social programs are being developed aimed at increasing the education and responsibility of the general population.
Movement
Above it was mentioned about the transport problems of cities. There are several options for solving them, and one rather promising proposal was put forward by the Canadian specialist Toderian. This professional, working in the field of landscaping and organization of living space, considered that it would be promising to design a settlement with priority on walking and cycling, and not on cars. This idea fully satisfies the publicsentiments. Not so long ago, there was another jump in the cost of motor fuel, and activists from different countries started talking about the prospect of electric cars, which are less aggressive for the planet's ecology. However, as the Canadian considered, it is not so much the fuel that is the problem, but the way of transportation itself, because the stations that generate electricity are no less dangerous for the environment. This is often silent, but absolutely clean energy has not yet been identified, all varieties, even alternative ones, negatively affect the environment to one degree or another, except that this effect varies somewhat in strength.
To solve this one of the main problems of the city, it is necessary to use a minimum of energy - such behavior must be individual, conscious, chosen by a specific person. The more often people move on foot or use a bicycle, the less they harm the surrounding space. The authorities should encourage such behavior and make efforts to promote it - this is exactly what the Canadian expert thought. In addition, as he pointed out, it is equally important to properly arrange the building and common areas - this will significantly reduce the problems of the modern city and the discomfort of living in it.
Options and space
Cars are not only a source of emissions, but also numerous objects that require a huge amount of space for their placement. Cars need space to park, they need lanes to drive. As experts have calculated, an impressive percentage of the urban area is an infrastructure for cars, and not at all forperson. Switching to electric cars may not be the solution to the city's problem. To find a way out, you need to consider using bicycles and arranging the space in a way that makes it easier for people to get to their destination on foot. A promising area of work is multimodal urban systems. Mobility and space are related phenomena. Their reciprocity was realized in the middle of the last century. In those days, and today, you can see a variety of advertising posters showing how much more space is occupied by an equal number of people using personal cars than urban public transport. If we replace all cars with buses and use bicycles as personal transport, the parking lots of which are much more compact, it will be possible to save space and at the same time reduce the negative impact on the environment.
Recently, the Sydney Transport Department launched an advertising campaign dedicated to this city problem. As the project materials clearly show, eight train cars or a dozen and a half buses are needed to move a thousand people to the city center. The alternative is a thousand cars, for the parking of which it is necessary to allocate one and a half hectares of land. For the movement of this volume of transport, even more space is needed.
About Social
One of the problems of cities (small, large) is charity, or rather, the lack of its development. This value is universal, it is common to all people and is important as an element of civil society. She isis the basis of partnership in society. Charity does not depend on the state, although it is encouraged by it. To some extent, it can be a solution to a number of economic problems of cities - poverty of citizens, lack of housing and food, necessary household items. Charity allows you to redistribute funds for the benefit of society, guided by especially significant programs.
In our country, such activities are a tradition. Although today its insufficiency has become a problem of cities (small, large), in which people often lack empathy for each other, the historical roots of the phenomenon are deep. The situation changed a lot during the Soviet era, when such a phenomenon almost disappeared, but now it is gradually recovering. Charity can be considered as a means of solving the economic problems of cities, since projects that popularize this activity are being promoted and implemented, it becomes a public technology for meeting the needs of society. Charity is a means of mutual work of entrepreneurship, society and authorities.
Rationality and everyday life
One of the important problems of industrial cities is the correct organization of a functional urban structure. Any settlement has a certain potential of the national economy, which can be realized with a certain degree of efficiency. In order to effectively solve the problems of urban development, it is necessary to implement functional planning projects that correspond as closely as possible to the realities of a particular settlement. These should cover aspectssettlement and regional development. This requires the transformation of the functional structure through the rational use of the resources of the settlement.
Social diversity is equally important. A settlement designed and modified in accordance with such an idea not only receives a new production profile, but also a he althier living environment for people.
