Urban environments are different from small towns because their centers are competitive in terms of growth, availability of advanced business services, creativity in industrial practices, innovations and increased learning institutions. Urban centers is the hub of entrepreneurs, professionals and lots of companies. Towns have very good infrastructure networks, which is the driving force of development. Urban centers are endowed with experts from different fields who improve the quality of the environment and life using their skills. Cities offer recreation opportunities and distinct identity of diverse cultures from its thriving centers of culture and good affordable leisure services. The urban environments have city councils responsible for maintaining and securing the city and its environs. The urban dwellers embrace the responsibility of ensuring that the cities are comfortable to work and live in. Urban dwellers accept the responsibility and the value of contribution they make to improve their quality of life, identity, and livability. The urban planners improve the quality of urban environments by ensuring they design new designs of buildings, infrastructure, and transport services to meet high standards required to sustain the design of urban environment (Burgess, 62).
How did these urban environments shape human relations and cultures?
The urban environment shapes cultures and human relations through their creativity. The people inhabiting cities and urban centers embrace new ways of thinking and innovate ways of arriving at solutions to present problems.
Only the most creative people survive and become successful in towns. The city dwellers are supportive and work towards fostering new relationships. Majority of the cities are metropolitan because people are properly connected to diverse ethnic groups nationally and internationally. The cities bear a strong identity that ensures each culture has elements of innovation and investment. Most cities give opportunities for people to exercise their creativity since they are connected to other global markets using technology and one-on-one interactions. The cities have advanced means to access internet, which is strong to communicate with people from all parts of the world.
The social interactions through social platforms such as Facebook and emails has made the world a global village. Thus, people living in cities are considered to be privileged as primary beneficiaries of technological developments. People living in cities manage the resources to meet their present and future needs of many generations to come. Urban dwellers together with the relevant bodies look for ways to reduce the adverse impacts of pollution to human health and natural systems. They work hard to reduce contamination of water and air through lowering production of waste, usage of water and consumption of energy. Moreover, urban dwellers use land efficiently and the available infrastructure (Sevtsuk, 10).
Identify the mechanisms that make cities more prone to freedom than other environments.
The cities and towns accommodate and offer opportunities to all people earning low and high incomes, healthy or disabled. There are jobs fitting all groups of people, the prices of homes are low making homes affordable, and the availability of community facilities. The cities celebrate diversity largely while caring for the disadvantaged in the society. Cities and towns give people more freedom to air their decisions and encourage others through social media platforms (Hall, 45).
People living in cities are prone to freedom than those in rural areas because of availability increased opportunities where people live and work. The city planners provide living places in attractive packages such as good leisure and facilities of recreation that support people to thrive through in life. The accommodating lifestyle offers choices to choose when looking for houses to live in, means of transport, and type of work and different choices of lifestyle. The services offered in the cities are accessible with varieties of integrated options for transport such as cycling and walking to various places. The public places offered n cities are easily accessible, safe and appropriately used. The places of living are healthy, lively, with minimal levels of crime because of available police stations in each area (Hall, 18).
- Hall, P. ‘The city of dreadful night’. Reactions to the nineteenth-century slum city. London, Paris, Berlin, New York, (1988):1880-1900.
- Burgess, E. ‘The Growth of the City: an Introduction to a Research Project, 1925: 47-62.
- Sevtsuk, A. ‘How we shape our cities, and then they shape us’. MAJA: the Estonian Architectural Review,2.72 (2012) :10-15.