According to Moran (Moran 2008), an urban city is an important place for people to live in. Due to its popularity, the urban city keeps on expanding. The city is the center of economic activity; however, it is not the planet’s most environmental friendly place. The city is not self-sustainable due to overpopulation and congestion. The bigger the city is, the more problems it creates, like crimes, pollution, slums, and shortages of water and power. For a city to flourish, it needs to eat up resources from its own environment and neighboring environments. Such depletions of resources has been experienced by the City of Los Angeles. According to the New York Times (Shabecoff 1988, Los Angeles is ranked as one of the nation’s cities with the worst air quality. Because it is populated, the city has a very high demand for water. In 1941, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began to drain Mono Lake in order to meet the growing water demands of Los Angeles (Mono Lake Committee). As a result, the volume of Mono Lake decreased to a half. Unable to adapt to these changing conditions, Mono Lake’s ecosystem started to collapse.
In recent years, Los Angeles has been trying to improve its environment. In a recent study, Mee Kam Ng (Ng 2005) indicated how urban regeneration could help boost a city's quality of life as well as provide a brief overview of the practice of urban renewal in Hong Kong. Like Los Angeles, Hong Kong deals with overpopulation, crimes, slums, and many other problems. The local neighborhoods in Hong Kong lack amenities or open spaces for facilitating community involvement because social amenities are not perceived properly. It is important to bring out the history and culture of a community in the course of restructuring spaces as well as the regenerative process, by being attentive to the needs of all stakeholders, especially those who are disadvantaged. The poor perception of the environment and economy in Hong Kong show that the city has not utilized renewal opportunities to improve the quality of its environment. This problem indicates that the Urban Renewal Authority should adopt new approaches in order to boost the structure of the community and society. Another problem that Hong Kong needs to look at is the discrepancies between the perceptions of the public, private, and community sectors. Many issues regarded as priority by the private sector are disregarded by the public sector. Conversely, the private and community sectors consider a collective project as important for Hong Kong because it can strengthen citizen, democratic, and political participation. However, such projects are absent from the public sector's priority list.
Urban renewal or urban regeneration is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high-density urban land use by replacing old buildings with new ones to provide better living environments and neighborhoods. The program encourages the rehabilitation of decaying buildings, maintaining and restoring buildings of historical and architectural value, and sustaining community characteristics by strengthening the socio-economic and environmental factors in urban communities. This research indicates that Hong Kong should put more effort towards sustainable urban regeneration. Moreover, all stakeholders have to work extra hard in order to create a better and more livable urban environment.
Moran, E. F. (2008). Human Adaptability: An introduction to ecological anthropology (pp. 307). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Shabecoff, P. (1988, August 30). Los Angeles Penalized for pollution. New York Times. Retrieved November 3, 2009, from http://nytimes.com.
Mono Lake Committee. (n. d.) The Mono Lake Story. Retrieved November 3, 2009, from http://www.monolake.org/about/story.
Ng, M. K. (2005). Quality of life perceptions and directions for urban regeneration in Hong Kong. Social indicator research, 71, 441-465.
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Your blog posting was very inspiring. It has caused me to think differently about how humans are destroying the planet by the ways that we choose to colonize. The portion of your blog where you discuss the near collapse of Mono Lake due to L.A.’s over-drawing of water left me wondering where Los Angles pulls their water from now that Mono Lake is unavailable. Where you able, in your research, to find out where they are drawing their water from now? Also, since L.A. is near the ocean have they looked into any desalination processes in order to tap into the abundant supply of water from the ocean?
ReplyDeleteAlong the lines of water and waste, where does L.A. and other mega cities, dispose of their waste. L.A. is located in such a close proximity to many agricultural fields, are they able to recycle their water or waste water in order to supply the farms with water? Thank you for your post, it has changed how I view the mega-cities of today.
your blog provided me with an insightful view into the effects or urbanization. I especially found the part about the importance of community as essential to developing a more sustainable urban ecology very interesting. Great job!
ReplyDeleteUrban regeneration is a great topic to discuss. It is a tool that all cities should take advantage of. Even in downtown San Jose there are areas with run-down buildings that could be transformed into something so much better, instead it seems that developers, and the city officials who allow it, prefer urban sprawl. Such a shame.
ReplyDeleteI was impressed by the ideology of human interaction and the ill effects the environment is going through as a consequence. The process of globalization is inevitable because of new technology that expands communication and creates a flatter earth (closeness’). So in other words, globalization is like a catalyst to the deterioration of modern urban societies. Good article!
ReplyDeleteI like how you mentioned the issues of "urban renewal or urban regeneration." I think those are important factors to look at when living or looking at the urban development of cities--particularly old urban cities. It is also important to note that it requires a communal effort to implement programs like these.
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