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Miguel Longoria
Professor Wickham
ENGL 1213
23 April 2022
Life On Another Level
Though urbanization provides a society with several benefits, it has also given rise to a
handful of drawbacks: Pollution, poverty, and overall environmental degradation are just a few
of the tragedies brought on through urbanization. Increasing population in cities and towns is
leading the urbanization movement and is not entirely damaging, but most of the downsides tend
to outweigh the benefits of the positive ones. Widespread urbanization has adverse effects
involving environmental degradation, overcrowding, standard of living, and numerous other
issues which originate from the problems stated. The rapid growth of cities has led to large
amounts of unplanned infrastructure, which creates a domino effect on negative living conditions
and harm to the environment. However, most of the consequences mentioned can be mediated by
providing essential services and supplying citizens with green, affordable, and cleaner housing.
Widespread urbanization is a ticking time bomb filled with problems regarding environmental
degradation, overcrowding, and standard of living for the people and cities involved, to alleviate
the burdens brought on by this movement the clear solution is for urban planners to start
integrating vertical housing, sustainable buildings, and improved urban planning in order to
responsibly cope with urbanization.
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With the pursuit of white collar jobs and better living opportunities, many people have
started to migrate from the suburbs into the urban cities and towns. This trend, urbanization, has
begun to accelerate in the past few decades. Seemingly apparent as the next step to progress in
most developed and developing countries, people and governments refuse to take into account
the cons of this adjustment. As the Indian Department of Psychiatry states, “rapid and often
unplanned urban growth is often associated with poverty, environmental degradation, and
population demands that outstrip service capacity. These conditions place human health at risk.
Reliable urban health statistics are largely unavailable throughout the world” (Trivedi et al., 161).
Most countries are dead set on allowing this rise of urban areas due to their disproportionate help
to the economy, completely disregarding the impact this has on every aspect of living. A few
countries fail to provide for their populations, as Yue Zhang explains, “In the past 60 years, a
series of policies have restricted the land and housing supply in Mumbai,” rather than providing
“a favorable environment for the construction of large housing stock needed for the growing
population” (Zhang par.7). Urbanization is here and its onset is marginally more complex than
countries can currently handle. The prospect of better jobs and living that is causing this
migration from suburbs to cities is promising but only at a surface level, digging deeper into the
methodology and research reveals completely adverse problems.
Understanding urbanization and the promise of a better life in a city leads directly into
the reality of this movement and the numerous problems that arise. Large populations moving to
urban areas creates a lack of housing or housing that is not affordable. Perhaps one of the biggest
issues caused by urbanization is the development of slums, particularly in developing countries.
Developments like slums have poor living conditions, most notably overcrowded living spaces,
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water that is unsafe to drink, and poor sanitation, facilitating the quick spread of diseases. São
Paulo, the largest city in the country of Brazil, with a population of over twenty million has a
significant number of slums known as favelas. Nearly 14% of that population lives in these
favelas. Fernando Serapião writes about an architectural project taking place in São Paulo to
integrate new sustainable housing throughout the city’s favelas. He states the problem of water
quality faced by the region in the following statement, “the region has similar settlements that
lack public infrastructure, even including sewerage, and this affects the water quality of the
entire city” (Serapião 79). Due to the slums not having a planned infrastructure, they affect the
water quality of the whole city, basically forcing the city to redesign a better development of
housing and sewerage systems in the favelas. This alteration
in the slums of São Paulo is one crucial advancement to not
only improving the water quality of the city, but also
providing lower-income households with greater living
conditions. Furthermore, countries like China that have
several megacities, deal heavily with high amounts of air
pollution. According to studies done on megacities and their
air quality “high urban shape irregularity may result in
disorder and chaos in traffic...and a large volume of air
pollutant emissions” (Zhou et al., 12). A step in the right direction to dealing with this problem is
firstly understanding the problem as stated by the meteorological and environmental research
study “The pollute first, pay later model has become the past, and the pollution-control can
largely and directly reduce pollution levels...it is the urgent affairs to prevent the air pollution as
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much as possible from the aspects of urban planning” (Yu and Shang). Additionally to urban
planning, there has been a high scale of affordable apartment developments in the effort to
eliminate slum-like regions, but it has not come out completely beneficial. Much of this growth
has led to higher levels of pollution. Ilsiyar Gabdrakhmanova of Kazan State University of
Architecture and Engineering created “HIVE,” a development to move farmers into the urban
areas of China. Gabdrakhmanova’s design won second place in the Modern Collective Living
Challenge, the challenge being to relocate farmers in rural China. One of its most significant
functions as stated from the Jury’s commentary, “Hive presents an environmentally-conscious
solution to the relocation of rural farmers to urban cities in China. The Hive is conceptualised as
vertically-stacked agricultural plots within cities centres that not only provide communal
housing, but also help to grow the green skeleton of the city and act to reduce the effects of
heavy pollution” (Testado). As shown in the model above, any of these “vertical” developments
tend to carry the idea of vertical gardening to help counterbalance carbon footprint and reduce
emissions. Pollution is one of the more serious problems that comes with rapid and uncontrolled
urbanization. With planning and recognition of the problem, countries like China are aiming
towards taking a greener approach to city wide overcrowding.
In the hope to manage the complications that come with rapid urbanization, cities have
slowly started to develop a sustainable way of structuring living spaces known as vertical
housing or stack housing. The idea of building vertically is to slow down the massive spread of
unplanned infrastructure in cities that are experiencing high rates of urbanization. According to a
research journal studying vertical housing, “Vertical buildings with smaller footprints can offer
more green spaces as well as accommodate more families units by saving precious agricultural
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and industrial land. It also lowers the cost of facilities like drainage; transport and water supply”
(Hanif et al., 42). These types of buildings are meant to benefit in several ways; many of these
projects are being built with shipping containers making it a cost-efficient and sustainable way to
build as well as reducing shipping waste. More importantly, stack housing is a way to create
affordable housing, improve air quality, and provide sanitary replacements to slums. There are
many projects in development in countries like China and India, which have some of the highest
populated cities in the world. The following is an example of a project designed to house some of
the people living in the slums of Mumbai. Archdaily quotes, “CRG's “Containscrapers” propose
to house 5,000 city dwellers by
stacking 2,500 shipping
containers up to heights of
400-meters. If built, the radical
proposal would be supported by
a concrete structure and offer a
range of housing options, from
flats to three bedroom residences” (Rosenfield, par.1).
The unstoppable phenomenon of urbanization has already started spreading throughout
the whole world with promises of better living and higher paying jobs. In exchange, many
countries are slowly starting to feel the adverse effects of urban boom. From early on in the
2000’s many people predicted that the future for most workers around the world would lead them
straight to bigger cities and towns abandoning the idea of suburbs in search of financial well
being. Many people however, failed to comprehend the cause and effect of this massive shift and
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instead opted for lower living quality. Urbanization is happening in this day and age all over the
world and mutually shared feelings regarding the people suffering from this have prompted a
search for solutions to improve the lives of people. Rather than fight the unmovable object,
society is learning that it is best to find a way to live with it.
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Works Cited
Mairs, Jessica. “CRG Architects Unveils Shipping Container Skyscrapers Concept.” Dezeen,
Dezeen, 19 Aug. 2015,
www.dezeen.com/2015/08/20/shipping-container-skyscraper-crg-architects-replace-slumhousing/.
Rosenfield, Karissa. “CRG Envisions Shipping Container Skyscraper Concept for Mumbai.”
ArchDaily, ArchDaily, 20 Aug. 2015,
www.archdaily.com/772229/crg-unveils-shipping-container-skyscraper-concept-for-mum
bai.
Serapião, Fernando. “Linking the Formal and Informal: Favela Urbanisation and Social Housing
in São Paulo.” Architectural Design, vol. 86, no. 3, May 2016, pp. 70–79. EBSCOhost,
doi:10.1002/ad.2048.
Shazia Hanif; Syed Tauseef Ahmad; Saima Sleem (2016), " The Need to Build Upwards: A
Study on Perception of Vertical/ Apartment Housing Among Middle Income Group of
Lahore", Vidyabharati International Interdisciplinary Research Journal , pp: 39-57, Vol: 4,
Issue: 2, Standard: ISSN 2319-4979
Testado, Justine. “Modern Collective Living Challenge Winners Envision Accessible Housing
for Rural China.” Bustler, 8 Nov. 2017,
bustler.net/news/6110/modern-collective-living-challenge-winners-envision-accessible-h
ousing-for-rural-china.
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Trivedi, Jitendra K et al, “Rapid urbanization - Its impact on mental health: A South Asian
perspective.” Indian journal of psychiatry vol. 50,3 (2008): pp. 161-165.
doi:10.4103/0019-5545.43623
Yu Jing, and Shang Erping. “Study on the Layout of Urban Planning in Rapid Urbanization
Areas under the Background of Air Pollution.” Meteorological & Environmental
Research, vol. 5, no. 9, Sept. 2014, pp. 18–27. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=102940423&site=eds-live.
Zhang, Yue. “Building a Slum-Free Mumbai.” Wilson Center, 4 Mar. 2016,
www.wilsoncenter.org/article/building-slum-free-mumbai.
Zhou, Chunshan et al. “Examining the Impacts of Urban Form on Air Pollution in Developing
Countries: A Case Study of China's Megacities.” International journal of environmental
research and public health vol. 15,8 1565. 24 Jul. 2018, pp. 1-18,
doi:10.3390/ijerph15081565