Writer: Ahmet Tuna Balci
In today's life standards and current economic or social conditions, an important percentage of people generally prefers to live in rural areas against urban places or city centers. Why do they prefer to commute or migrate these places?
Actually it has many reasons and of course we will observe and mention all of those. Firstly, as we said, there is a global economic problem which affects almost all countries in such a bad way. This crisis started in 2019, with the Pandemic and its effects has continued still. In 2019, the first year of Pandemic, a virus named "Coronavirus" broke out in China and spread all around the world through Australia to Africa. Due to this there was a "State of Emergency" and anybody cannot get out of their home. Also all workplaces were closed by the government. Employment and trade suffered a big loss. As a result It caused an economic crisis{3}. Besides this in 2022 Russia & Ukraine war started and at the same time it affected the crisis in an agricultural way because %40 of Europe's agricultural resources and needs were provided by West Avrasia, mostly by Russia and Ukraine until this War{2}.
Although we observe or think that people are mostly affected by this negative situation economically by looking at these problems which we encounter, but there are actually social effects that force people at least as much as financial effects. In particular, the "Coronavirus" has been known with the deaths it has caused rather than its effects on the economy, or the psychological-sociological conditions, it has changed in the environment and caused the disease{3}. There is another example, in the Russia & Ukraine war, the subject states mostly care more about it than its effect on trade, and because of the confliction between two states during the war, so many people left their homes, their cities or even their countries and perhaps became "refugees" through other governments. No one who has not experienced the effects of this, will understand{6}.
I think we may analyze it at different perspective to the agenda by talking about a few events that have made an socio-economic impacts in the last few years, if we return to our topic after this short transition, we will see how living in "mega" cities or "metropolitans" affects people more than these economic-social problems that people experience globally. Let's look at it from different views.
First of all, we should know what a mega or metropolitan city is. Mega cities are cities that started with industrialization and emerged from the period of mechanization. In order to reduce these uses, cities have pioneered the forms of today's cities by having all kinds of opportunities, mainly economic facilities{8}. Thanks to the factories migrating from the villages to the new settlements was increased more and more(cities). Of course, with these migrations, some of these cities became megacities. At the same time, although the population increased in all cities, the population mostly centered on mega cities{1}. With this intensity, after the factories, the number of houses or workplaces in mega cities increased regularly and thus the present system was formed. Well, What kind of life do people have in megacities nowadays?
We talked a little more about economic conditions in the previous sections, so let's talk about sociological conditions now. Initially, while the crowded atmosphere of city life causes people to get extremely tired during the day, it also has many psychological effects. Also in some megacities which do not have convenient education systems , the increase in crime rates, especially due to the misdirection of the society, is an important problem that concerns all people who live in megacities. At the same time, the crowdedness of the city affects the environment and after that the environment affects people again. For example, pollution causes damage to the environment and in the simplest terms, although there are great opportunities at the moment, it still affects people negatively with many diseases caused by this pollution{5}. Of course, as we have stated in all circumstances, it does not seem possible for people to be economically balanced in these extremely big cities. In this case, it shows that while the prosperity rate of some people in the society is increasing, others are decreasing. The increase in this range causes people to be divided into certain statuses in the society, thus revealing their social, psychological or physical effects{4}{7}.
In conclusion, Of course, mega cities have many positive ways such as innovations in transportation, improvements in health conditions, and perhaps most importantly, unlimited technological opportunities, etc. but I think megacities are not safe for people in current conditions. If we want a "safe" living space, first we must learn to think as humanity and appreciate what we have, and then we must be much more sensitive to save the environment, which indirectly affects all these problems.
References:
1-The age of megacities. National Geographic Society. (n.d.). Retrieved December 17, 2022, from https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/age-megacities
2-BBC. (n.d.). War in Ukraine. BBC News. Retrieved December 17, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60525350
3-Cable News Network. (n.d.). Tracking covid-19's global spread. CNN. Retrieved December 17, 2022, from https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-maps-and-cases/
4-Kuddus, M. A., Tynan, E., & McBryde, E. (2020, January 2). Urbanization: A problem for the rich and the poor? - public health reviews. BioMed Central. Retrieved December 17, 2022, from https://publichealthreviews.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40985-019-0116-0
5-National Geographic. (2021, May 3). Urbanization effects. Environment. Retrieved December 17, 2022, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/urban-threats
6-The New York Times. (n.d.). Russia-Ukraine War. The New York Times. Retrieved December 17, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/ukraine-russia
7-Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, December 10). Urbanization. Wikipedia. Retrieved December 17, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization
8-Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, November 22). Megacity. Wikipedia. Retrieved December 17, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity