Introduction-Kelvin

Topic: To what extent can the problems of urbanisation be met by a policy of sustainable development?
Sub-title: How to iron out the urban problems? Are the policies successful? Find the answer from Hong Kong. [make this into one question]
More than half of the population of the world are living in the urban areas now (Ciok Ling Ooi, 2009). There is no surprise that it is the trend in the future of the world. From this point of view, urbanisation is used to describe the growth of the urban cities. Kam Wing Chan (2009) claimed that urbanisation is caused by the growth of population in the city. The migrants moving from rural areas to urban area and the sprawling of the urban area are the two main patterns of the urbanisation. At the very beginning, urbanisation can boost the economic growth thus leading to a higher living standard of the whole community. Government welcomes the [art.] urbanisation or even encourages and develops more urban areas. However, the reality is that urbanisation brought the economic growth to the community together with a handful of urban problems. The main underlying cause of the problem is the huge population in a tiny place. In this essay, Hong Kong is being used as a case in order to illustrate the urban problems in most of the cities in the World. Additionally, Asia is the home of the fastest growing urban population in the World. Therefore, the main cities in Asia such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Shanghai are suffering from the urban problems. Those problems are now the obstacles for the economic growth because of the poor transportation system and housing environment and heavy pollution in terms of air, water and solid wastes. With the aim to eliminate the negative effects of the urbanisation and continue the city development, sustainable development policy is the ultimate method. According to WCED [who?] report, “sustainable development refers to establish the fundamental needs of the current population without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Based on this principle, the sustainable development policy does improvement on environmental and economic and quality of life for the people living (David L [is that his surname?], 2007). Definitely, it is not an easy task for the government to balance every aspect, therefore, there is a need to evaluate the policy regularly. In the case of Hong Kong, sustainable development policy had been carried out for a long time with the aim to iron out the two main urban problems, which are housing and transport problem. Indeed, to a fair extent the policy can meet the urban problem in Hong Kong. At the end of the essay, [gr.] do comparison with Singapore in order to evaluate the sustainable development policy in Hong Kong and come up with some recommendations eventually [v.}.

References:
• Ciok Ling Ooi 2009. Challenge of sustainability for Asian urbanisation. Current opinion in Environment Sustainability 2009, 1:187-191
• David L. Blumenthal and Edward J. Martain 2007. Urban Sustainable Development, Lower Income communities, and Transorganisation. Public Administration, 30: 95-107
• Kam Wing Chan and Ying Hu 2003. Urbanization in China in the 1990s: New definition, Different Series, and Revised Trends. The China Review, vol. 3 No, 2(Fall 2003), 49-71
• Report of the the World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future. Chapter 2: Towards Sustainable Development. Available at: http://habitat.igc.org/open-gates/ocf-02.htm#I