Explain the evolution of uniform urban landscapes; the effects of common commercial activity, structures, styles of construction and infrastructure.
Homogenization: The process of people, products, and places becoming the same. (from Greenfieldgeography
Link: http://greenfieldgeography.wikispaces.com/Homogenization+of+landscapes)
http://www.starchitecture.it/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/header_5.jpg
Cities are becoming increasingly populated and to satisfy the demands people, there are increasing number of commercial activities. With that, infrastructure around the world are becoming similar which results in uniform urban landscapes. Cities mostly consist of tall building occupied with headquarters of transnational corporations or other companies as shown in the picture above. Moreover, there are different modes of transportation and highways nearby; roads have soft surface and have more lanes compared to those in rural areas as transportation is play an important role in cities.
Dubai in 1990
Dubai in 2003
Dubai in 2007
http://www.geographypods.com/4-environmental-change.html
Common features that cities have include sports facilities, shopping malls, global brands, restaurants, tourist sites, entertainments, schools and houses. Pictures of Dubai taken in 1990, 2003 and 2007 shows the evolution of uniform urban landscapes which are basically how cities in other countries have came to be. As shown in the pictures above, there were only few buildings and land around were mostly empty with the presence of minor roads. However, as population increased Dubai became one of the fast growing cities which resulted Dubai to have those common features mentioned.
I like the examples and explanation that you used here. I believe the issue with urbanization is rapidly increasing in the most of the countries as the world is globalized. Because of the globalization, people prefer something that is innovative and new. Global urban population is growing at a rapid pace from 17% in 1951 to 20% in 2001 and approaching 41% by 2030. Developing countries urbanize faster than developed countries so they face greater challenges of urbanization. Some problems associated with urbanization are pollution, unemployment, poor sanitation and increase crime. But urbanization usually leads to higher GDP because of higher levels of productivity. However, as you can see the graph here, (http://cdn.thewire.com/media/old_wire/img/upload/2012/10/17/farm-to-cities-economy/original.png), all five of the East Asia and Pacific countries show a steady increase in GDP per capita as people move to cities. But that did not happen for Sub-Saharan Africa. This is interesting. :)
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting since the prompt you focused on is different with mine. The issue of urbanization as a result of globalization is now worldwide problem. Also, we can find some cases other than your example in many countries like the Philippines and Korea!!
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