How to Address Resource Scarcity and Environmental Pollution (Essay Sample)

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Addressing the Problem of Resource Scarcity, Congestion and Environmental Pollution in Urban Centers
Scarcity of natural resources and environmental pollution is a major problem in many American neighborhoods and cities due to the overreliance on fossil fuels and energy-intensive suburban living, necessitating the need to promote the use of renewable sources of energy and communal living to conserve energy and prevent the exhaustion of natural resources. Implementing a law requiring all architectural designs to integrate solar power systems and supportive of communal living, as well as promoting teleworking and the use of public transportation would reduce the cost of fossil fuels and minimize the impact of environmental pollution. The installation of solar systems will reduce the rate of electricity consumption for heating, lighting, and use of domestic appliances. In the transport sector, promoting public means of transportation will increase efficiency by allowing more people to utilize a common mode of transport. This will in turn reduce the number of automobiles on roads, thereby solving the problem of traffic congestion and its environmental impact. In addition, the use of a common mode of transport will address resource scarcity by reducing the demand for fossil fuels.
A major problem facing urban centers and neighborhoods is the scarcity of resources, which in turn increases the cost of housing and living in the cities. Rapid urbanization in the world’s major cities and the growth of the suburbia in the industrialized world has led to the overexploitation, and near exhaustion, of natural resources. For instance, scarcity of land is a big challenge for real estate developers due to the need to meet the expectations of potential home owners who desire to experience suburban living. Given the problems of land scarcity and urban congestion on the one hand, and the expectations of home buyers on the other hand, real estate developers and architectural designers have a big challenge to make use of limited resources (Gutman 55). Accordingly, there is a need to promote urban revitalization by pursuing an architectural design ethic that encourages communal living and sharing of resources, such as recreational facilities, water sources, and transport infrastructure. Towards this end, it is necessary to encourage a culture that embraces community life through re-urbanization. Urban congestion, for instance, results from the scarcity of land to accommodate urban sprawl and influx of job seekers and workers into urban centers. To address this problem, it is necessary to encourage people to live in high rise apartments that exploits more vertical than horizontal space. Environmental-friendly designs should focus on redesigning the urban landscape by exploring ways of preserving the suburban feel in compounds housing multiple families, as opposed to single families. This may involve designing houses with ample parking spaces and sufficient spaces for recreational facilities such as shared swimming pools and playing grounds.
Suburban living is particularly a big challenge in the U.S. and other developed countries due to its energy-intensive nature, as a result of home owners’ desire to have private parks, swimming pools, water sources, and sewage systems (Dunham-Jones and Williamson 2011). This lifestyle model is unsustainable due to increasing scarcity of natural resources like water, land, and fossil fuels, thereby making it costly for every family to live in a private gated home. Adopting environmental-friendly architectural designs will help to promote sustainable development by designing affordable houses, promote communal living and sharing of recreational facilities such as swimming pools, sewage and water systems. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to change the suburbia culture by encouraging communal living and sharing of resources. This will help not only to halt the pace of suburban sprawl, but also avoid the exhaustion of resources like land, forests, and oil. Given the threat that suburban living poses to natural environment, supporting communal living, such as purchasing an apartment unit instead of owning a suburban home will promote efficient utilization of resources, and in doing so promote environmental conservation.
Teleworking can also help to reduce traffic congestion and environmental pollution in urban centers. In developed countries, most people use private means of transportation to commute to and from work (Ezendu 224). The effect of this trend is having more automobiles on the roads, which in turn increases carbon emissions and environmental pollution. In addition to supporting the use of public transportation- such as by giving tax exemptions to employers who provide transport to workers- governments should promote teleworking by developing communication infrastructures, such as high-speed Internet connections, to allow more people work from home. The benefits of teleworking will include reducing the demand for and cost of office spaces, and a reduction in the number of people who commute to work. Consequently, it will reduce traffic congestion as more people will work from home instead of driving to their places of work. In this regard, teleworking is a viable solution through w...