Introduction-Renie

Title: To what extent can the problem of urbanization be met by a policy of sustainable development?

-to what degree can UK government policies improve present traffic situation and reduce the impact on the environment to achieve sustainable development.

Over last 2 decades, as the population increase rapidly, urban areas in many counties have witnessed a dramatic growth accordingly, at present, nearly half of the world’s population lives in cities, and it’s expected that over the next 3decades, most people that increase in global population will also live the urban areas. Many countries are towards the way towards urbanisation which means cities of which grow rapidly and massively, and large amount of migration pour into these areas. In Europe, the urban population was 51.2 million in 1950, it’s predicted by the year of 2030, and this figure will amount to 79.6 million in 2030(Cohen, 2006).

Urbanisation, it also stands for low average cost of providing infrastructure, education and health care, and other basic services (Cohen, 2006), however, it’s also attended by many serious problems that challenge the surrounding environment and society current situation such as: traffic congestion, pollution, over-crowd public places, high price houses and consumer goods, increased crime rate, fierce competition which are difficult to manage.

Facing the problems that become increasingly sticky, government carried out a rang of measures to improve the situation and hope to achieve sustainable development, the most widely used definition describes sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”( Brundtland, 1987,p43 ),as this essay will focus on the traffic problems and traffic pollution in UK, firstly, I will reveal the traffic problems of UK’s current situation, secondly, introducing the policies that the government adopted to tackle the problems, then move on to analysis how sustainable the solutions are.

Till now, a series of initiatives are implemented by UK Department for Transport to encourage sustainable travel, meanwhile to promote healthier lifestyle and to improve local environment. Great efforts have been made by the government, based on the statistic and research have done before, in my opinion, to a large extent the problems can be solved by the sustainable development policies in the long run.



Reference:

Cohen, B. (2006) Urbanization in developing countries: Current trends, future projections, and key challenges for sustainability, Technology in Society 28 (2006) 63-80

Brundtland, 1987, the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future

Department for Transport, 2009, Delivering Sustainable Low Carbon Travel: An Essential Guide for Local Authorities