Nick's essay introduction

Title: What extent can the problems of urbanization be met by a policy of sustainable development?
Subtitle: what are the impacts of massive population growth by the policy of sustainable development in Shanghai? [not clear]

Introduction:


For promoting the economic development and improving human beings life standards, urbanization has become the main trend in lots of countries. So what is urbanization? Actually urbanization is a process that humans entered industries era, the proportion of agricultural activities began to decrease in some areas, and on the contrary, a proportion of non-agricultural activities began to increase. It also means that more and more rural population transformed into urban population. In fact urbanization is the product of the industrial revolution. It is a symbol [?] of city development. What the urbanization brings for us contain a growth of economic, a progress of the society, an improvement of technology and so on. However, when we appreciate these significant achievements of urbanization, some problems because of urbanization also cannot be ignored, such as a rapidly increasing proportion of urban population. More and more rural people migrate into urban. Therefore, we need to consider that whether a city could dominate the continuous expansion of the population with a limited resource. More and more household refuse and auto emissions also could cause lots of serious pollution.

For solving these negative impacts, many countries have mentioned that “sustainable development” will become an important strategy to face with urbanization issue. So what is sustainable development? In fact, sustainable development is a growth model of long term development. The currently definition explained by the World Commission on Environment and Development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (WCED, 1987; P 43). Generally, sustainable development involves main 4 aspects which are environment、science、society and economic. For long-term interests, sustainable development has a close relationship with urbanization issue. For instance, the strategy of SD needs to deal with some issues about how to allocate the resources efficiency, how to decrease the pollution and how to balance the ecological environment in a city.

In some developing countries, urbanization is more serious [?] than developed countries. In China, Shanghai as an international city could be a typical example. From the Shanghai Statistics office, there are more than 19 million people in 2010. Among this figure, the number of floating population is more than 5 million. And currently the area of Shanghai covers about 6340.5 Km2. it shows a high density of population in Shanghai. Seriously [?], due to urbanization this high density is increasing rapidly. It causes lots of problems such as serious traffic jam, less planting, poor environment and so on. Especially, because of economic risk in recent years it will also bring a higher unemployment. It is really hard to find a job. For dealing with these urbanization problems, the government has made some policies such as transfer factories to suburbs; build more complete public transport system and explore Pudong as a new urban area. In my essay I am going to talk about more problems because of urbanization, and how to deal with them by sustainable development. And also I will give an assessment for these achievements and policies. Finally, I will give some recommendations.


Reference
1) Qing S, (1997). Urban transportation in Shanghai, China: problems and planning implications.
2) Liu T, (1994), Urban renewal and development of Shanghai city. Journal of Chinese geographical science. Volume 4, Number 3, PP. 219-231,1994.
3) http://www.stats-sh.gov.cn/2005shtj/2009shgl/rkjy/userobject1ai8633.html
4) http://www.shanghaihighlights.com/essentia
5) Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau. 2002. Shanghai Statistical Yearbook. Beijing: China Statistics Press
6) World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future. (New York: Oxford University press, 1987)