The world population in the cities continues to increase significantly. According to Chaffey J, Mexico City will have a population of nearly 20 million by the year 2000. Its population density is well over 10000 people per sqr km (Chaffey J. 1994). This is the period of urbanization that cities might realize when they grow up. Especially, the influence of the people who are going towards the cities from the rural areas is great. As the cities have grown larger, issues have emerged. Issues always depend on unsustainable urban development like traffic congestion, slums, environmental and health issues, social insecurity, economic losses, and myopic urban planning. Sustainable development can be demonstrated to be impressive overcome the urbanization’ s problems.
Traffic congestion is a typical issue in almost all cities. The 8.8 million people living in the country of Los Angeles ten years ago owned six million motor vehicles (Thisdell, D. 1993). The authors think that this has caused extraordinary effects on the economy. The authors specify that this problem is very influential on economic living pollution and climate change such as the more energy-consuming vehicles and beneficial activities are occupied by the sample. Traffic congestion leads to economic loss given a fact that 10 percent of GDP in Shanghai was lost because of traffic jams. In most slum areas, there are a rigorous urbanization and this problem brings many negative consequences along with. // Bolay indicates that 37 percent (850 million) of the urban populations lived in slum areas in 2007. Most of whom do not own land (Bolay, 2006). The number of slums in the world increased about 36 percent after 1990 (Bolay, 2006). Most authors think that the world’s slum population will be two billion by 2030. Golubchikov and Badyina (2012) demonstrate the effects of slums “pose a range of serious humanitarian and environmental problems for both present and future generations,” (p5). Infrastructures are identified as the effects of slums like that environmental erosion and devastation caused by water and air pollution, flooding, and landslides, human’s health issues and risks by exposing to environmental problems, poor living conditions and infrastructure, anarchical living situations, and crimes, unmanageable urban sprawls, caustic economies; and unlawful and precarious.
Traffic congestion and slums cause environmental and health problems and economic losses. Pulichino and Mollet (2003) prove that urban pollution leads to nearly $ 100 billion in health problems in 2005. According to McMichael (2000), Air pollution and nonhygienic conditions can cause many diseases such as diarrhea, respiratory infections, various vector-borne infections and physical-chemical hazards. Each problem affects people’s quality of life and their mobility, but most countries do not have an appropriate and impressive policy to manage transport.
The sustainable transport system is required to solve the traffic congestion problem for the long run. It is applied to system development that is secured, affordable and hygienic for both kinds of stuff and people involves social, environment problem and a balance of economic which are the components of sustainable development. Some authors suggest that various modes of public transports should be appropriate for people’ s travel purposes, earnings, gender, and disability.
Furthermore, Several strategies need to be developed to ensure that public transport is better quality and more economical. Firstly, to reduce the responsibility of governments, public transport should be run by the private sector instead of governments like that national expenses on constructing, operating, and maintaining services. According to Newman, Australian and Canadian cities are showing an interesting trend towards reduced growth in vehicle kilometers traveled. In the 1960s, Australian cities’ vehicle kilometers traveled grew by 4.5 percent, by 2.3 per cent in the 1970s and by 1.2 per cent in the 1980s.(Newman P. 1999). Secondly, the government’s public transport initiatives and subsidy encourage the private sector to invest in public transport services. Thirdly, the quality of service should be monitored and assessed closely by the government to ensure that the private companies follow the term of conditions. Finally, public transport should be organized from own cars to public services. Such strategies are for the development of public transport. Investing into sustainable public transport systems will not only reduce emissions and health impacts but also save money in the long term.
Both intervention and prevention methods are important to cope with existing slum areas and to prevent future slum areas. For the intervening method, it is used to deal with slum issue and there is a need for the participation of key people to work on planning, implementing and survey. A package of approaches is required accordingly with the situational analysis of slum conditions. For the prevention method, sustainable housing should be an impressive solution to handle with housing problems for a long term. Golubchikov and Badyina, (2012) indicate, “Sustainable housing offers a great spectrum of opportunities to promote economic development, environmental stewardship, quality of life and social equality, while mitigating the precarious convergences of the problems related to population growth, urbanisation, slums, poverty, climate change, lack of access to sustainable energy, and economic uncertainty.” (p.6). Golubchikov and Badyina, (2012) take care that sustainable houses must conform proper plan, construction, and management which can ensure natural catastrophic resilience, durability, job, and shop accessibility, affordability for people different incomes, energy saving, environment friendliness and healthy lifestyle.
In recent years, the number of people migrating from urban areas to rural areas has increased. Moreover, half of the world’s population come together in urban areas and this brings out many issues along with. traffic congestion and slums are two common urban problems. This increased lead to environmental and economic losses, as well as human health, deteriorated and climate change began to take place. In the long run, affordable and socio – economic plans are put forward to find solutions these problems like the removal of slums, sustainable public transport, and sustainable housing. Therefore, policy makers, governments, and urban planners think that urban issues will be reduced in the future fort the long term.