GROUP 5 Evaluations

FoodThe problem is food packaging, which is not recyclable. There are two possible solutions. Firstly the government can encourage factories to use recyclable materials for food products. However not every type of food can be stored in recyclable materials. Which means it will not be successful unless some new technology is used to package all types of food. Moreover not every city would be able to use this type of technology.

HealthThe problem is overuse of hospitals in urban areas. For example too many people use limited facilities to medical treatment. One possible solution would be to encourage people to move to rural areas, to stop hospital overcrowding. The advantage of this would be to relieve the burden of the city hospitals and improve rural area development. Unfortunately it may not be successful because people may not want to move out of the urban centre. However the government could increase the salaries of rural jobs to give city inhabitants and medical professionals an incentive to move. Although this may not work in every major city, as the move may change the economy.

HousingThe problem is the high density of population in urban areas, and land becomes increasingly expensive. One possible solution is building skyscrapers. It can be a successful method to provide a lot of housing in a small area, but people will only live in a very small area, which could lead to physical and mental health problems. When skyscrapers are constructed it can destroy the natural environment, which means less green areas for the city. However it will be impossible to use this method in some cities, such as London, or Paris because they are old and have already been constructed, and you would need to destroy the old buildings to build. Not only this but it would damage the skyline of these cities.

TransportThe problem is traffic jams. One possible solution is the vehicle restriction rule, which limits the number of cars on the road due to their vehicle registration. The advantage of such a scheme is that it is easy to set up the project, as you do not need to build anything, and can therefore save government money. Even though this has been used in Beijing it does not stop the amount of traffic jams, because some people have more than one car with different registration numbers. In addition it does not work for some businesses, such as food transportation which need to transport products everyday. Although the congestion charge scheme used in London may be an extra alternative.

PollutionThere is a lack of drinking water in urban areas. We need to make more clean water available by using a new water system in houses. This system can recycle waste water in the house for cleaning the toilet. It could be successful as it would not cost too much money in new houses. However it does have some implications, such as how to change the water systems in old and big buildings, but it will save money for residents and leave more fresh water. Unfortunately this will not deal with industrial waste water. Which is the biggest pollutant. So a new waste water system would need to be built by the government and companies. It may not be successful because most companies will not want to pay for this system, and the government will also need to give financial assistance to proceed with such a project. Moreover small cities would be at a disadvantage because of lack of funds.