Trinity Childs

In 1970, Tokyo and New York were known as the only megacities in the world, as of today it has almost doubled with 13 megacities in Asia, 4 in Latin America, 2 in Africa, Europe and Northern America. Now looking at them you think of how beautiful they are but I assure you it is anything but beautiful. This invasion has become unbearable for the defenceless animals that have been forced to be put into the middle of this, as well as us and our world. The need for a sustainable way of urban population is now. 

Urban sprawl, sprawl, or suburban sprawl is known as the rapid expansion of the geographic extent of cities and towns, this most of the time is done on undeveloped land which has led to some beautiful man made structures so beautiful that for a moment in time we forget about everything else and just focus on the buildings, almost. If you have been in the big cities I'm sure you understand how some places smell horrible or some places are hard to breathe in? Well that is because of the increased car pollution entirely connected to how much more car dependent we have become. This has led to a major increase of air pollution, but this isn't just some bad smell, scientists have confirmed that air pollution “increases respiratory illnesses like asthma or bronchitis” as well as heightened “the risk of life threatening conditions like cancer”. 

Risking something as serious as cancer just for what, a faster route to work?. 

As a result of this frightening rise in air pollution, it is mixing with our water supply. But this isn't the only drastic damage to our water. In addition to air pollution, connection to this, construction site erosion, fuel spills, oil leaks, paint spills, lawn chemicals and list goes on and on, even something as little as pet washes have developed into a massive water pollution problem with the rise of a household domesticated pet. This not only damages our long time effects but also lessens our water supply as a whole which is already lessening because of population growth. This means animals dying of dehydration, municipal water shortage till the drastic point of no return. In short, we run out of clean water. 

Between 1970 and 1990 metropolitan areas in the western united states experienced massive influxes of new residents, in California alone the percentage went from %1 to 91% between these years, the spatial footprint of these places have become overbearing, unfortunately this brings condescending problems for our society, the pricing for housing has skyrocketed over the decade, this brought the homelessness rate up to 39%, in this situation of the amount of buildings and home we have created you think the homelessness rate would lessen. Imagine a homeless man lying down in front of a building of free space and homes. 

In this situation there are only a handful of things we can do in order to fix this. Preserving natural resources like farmland or parks will slowly help the whole overpopulation issue. One of the biggest ways to help our world is to educate people and to help people understand the drastic problem this has. If we were to educate people on this problem then we would have a higher demand for a need for change, a need for something new. 

It should be clear now to see the damage and the change that's needed in order to live a more sustainable life, imagine a life where we live not fighting against the world but with the world.