Essay: Health issues of living in cities vs rural areas

According to the history, people are used to live in rural areas depending on agricultural activities, hunting and fishing for survivals. All rural area’s activities are based on nature because they have many undeveloped land. On that time, only small numbers of human population are living in urban areas. However, when the world has experienced urbanization, the growth of urban population has increased rapidly. This is because urbanization has the potential to lead in a new era of well-being, resource efficiency and economic growth. Through most of references, urban area may be defined as a large city which is area that has significantly developed. Urban area also can refer to towns and suburbs. Living in urban has many advantages as well as drawbacks. This is where the urban criticism was raised. Most of urban criticism was premised by physical hardships that resulted from the obvious overcrowding of city inhabitants. Nowadays, men and women living in cities seemed unable to live comparatively long and healthy lives of their rural counterparts because of stress lifestyle and high rate of pollution.
Living in urban area offers stressful lifestyle to city dwellers. According to the reference, stress is the feeling of being under too much mental or emotional pressure (Jeanne Iegal, 2015). Stress comes when we unable to cope with many of life’s demands such as work requirement, relationship with neighbors and cost of living. Living in the city is not simple but very complex and complicated. An urban living can be suffocating if we have not enough space of our own, if we experience insufficient security or live under unstable economic conditions. These kinds of situations can increase stress. For example, cost of living in the city is higher compared to rural area because housing rents are higher and food staples cost more. To survive, some city dwellers tend to do multiple of works without get an enough rest especially people that have low monthly incomes. They left with no option in a way to survive in the city. In addition, those who have jobs complain of growing demands of them in the workplace, where they are expected to do much more in less time. This kind of situation is usually happens because all the companies in cities have their own target and they need to compete with each other in order stay at the top. When demands are getting increase, the level of stress is also increases. Another situation is the experience of feeling different from our neighbors because of socioeconomic status or ethnicity. There are several classes of people living in urban area which are high class, middle class and low class. Different lifestyle among the neighbors is one of the factors that lead to stress when some city dwellers prefer to associate with an equivalent group only. According to the psychology, all these situations seem to be urban stressors that impact on mental health when the situations become less controllable for the individual. This is related to research conducted by Dr. Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, who discovers that the city dweller’s brains, compared with people who live in the rural area, seem not to handle well (Leo Benedictus, 2014). Therefore, people who live in cities are more likely to have stress that could be one of the reasons why they unable to live comparatively long and healthy lives.
Furthermore, cities are places that has high rate of pollution such as air pollution, water pollution and noise pollution. For example, air pollution is caused by burning fossil fuels, industrial smoke and indoor activities. In urban area, air is easily get polluted with dust, smoke, motor vehicles and factories. Most of the industrial and factories are located at urban areas caused the unhealthy air. The smokes emitted from industrial and factories are containing chemical substances such as carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and organic compounds that cause air pollution. The air pollution is very harmful for health. That’s why people living in cities have higher possibilities to get different kind of respiratory disease such as heart attacks, bronchitis, asthma and Cancer. Noise pollution also could affects city dweller’s health because noise is undesirable and unwanted sound that may come from outdoor such as industries, factories, vehicular movement and constructions (Puja Mondala, 2015). Noise pollution can affect our emotional and psychology effects. People tend to feel irritated, anxiety and stress when unwanted sound that unreasonably intrudes into their daily life. Unbalanced emotional and mental fatigues are significant health effects of noise. Besides, men and women living in cities are exposed to water pollution. Water is important resource in our daily life. Water pollution affects drinking water and could lead to death if people drinking from polluted water sources. In urban areas, some irresponsible people dumping of industrial effluent and discharge of untreated waste directly to water bodies. Polluted water like chemicals in drinking water causes problem to health and leads to water-borne disease such as typhoid, cholera and paratyphoid fever. Thus, the health of people living in cities is threatening because of the pollution.
Men and women living in cities are able to live healthy lives. This is because cities have powerful planning, economic development and public relations tools for attracting and supporting healthy food retailers, farmer’s markets and community gardens. So, cities provide chances for city dwellers to access to healthy foods. In cities, there is a less of a risk that we will become obese because people in cities tend to be more physically fit and less likely to eat unhealthy foods that can cause obesity. Many campaigns are held either by government or non-government organization to spread information of having healthy lifestyles. For example, FitMalaysia campaign that starts by the Ministry of Youth and Sports is aimed to create public awareness towards a healthy lifestyle by keeping active and fit. The Youth and Sports Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin launched the first roadshow at Dataran Meredeka, in the middle of city, Kuala Lumpur to highlights on fitness activities. In addition, healthy food also is an important tool in a way to ensure city dwellers having healthy lives. By providing city dwellers with healthy, affordable, easily accessible alternatives to food can lead in the fight of unhealthy life. This is because people in urban areas are generally exposed to health information about food. Besides, easy access to better health care facilities is one of the factors that city dwellers are able to live the healthy live. The chances to get an early treatment are higher in cities compared to rural areas. Due to encouragement of campaigns and better health care facilities, people living in cities are able to lead a healthier lifestyle and build healthy community.
However, easy access to alcohol and cigarettes in cities risks the health of city dwellers. Alcohol known as intoxicating beverage made from fermented grains, fruits or sugars. Alcohol is one of the things that harmful and adversely affects the mind and the body either in small or large quantities of consumption. Alcohol clouds the mind and causes disease. In cities, most of supermarkets are provide special row for alcohol which comes with variety of brands. So, the purchase of alcohol is not impossible. Nevertheless, alcohol could give short-term effects to city dwellers include memory loss, feeling stressed, anxiety and diarrhea. This can be supported by Aisha Stacey (2009) who said studies have consistently revealed a link between heavy drinking and brain damage. Alcohol increases the risk for numerous cancers such as mouth, pharynx, larynx, liver and breast cancers. 6% of cancer deaths are related to alcohol abuse proven by research done in United Kingdom. Meanwhile, cigarettes also are the thing that harmful to city dweller’s health.