"Livable Cities" Reflective Post

“A livable city provides mixed-use development with safe and healthy neighborhoods, places for social interaction, interconnected green space, food, clean air and water, power from renewable energy, multiple modes of easy-to-use transportation, economic opportunity, and social inclusion (Robertson, 2017, p. 208.).”

The way this comes across to me is that our cities now are not livable cities. I’d always imagined non-livable cities to be like those in movies or in post-apocalyptic settings. Uninhabitable, extremely dirty, full of diseases and famine, scarce and deserted like in a ghost town, and nowhere near what we have now. While our current cities do have a lot of the livable characteristics mentioned above, such as places for social interaction and various modes of transportation, there are many needs that our cities don’t meet. Whether that’s because they can’t and are unable to, or simply because they choose not to, I’m not exactly sure. But needs are not being met and it’s a growing issue day by infuriating day.

Poverty runs amuck. People don’t have the money nor the means to properly feed themselves or their families. There is no clean air and water is often polluted and dirty. Economic opportunities are often there but like social inclusion, certain factors can contribute to it being excluded. Our power can come from renewable energy, but electricity and power from most places do not.

If these are the things we need to make sure our cities are livable, why aren’t we putting our ducks in a row and taking care of business? These changes don’t just happen out of nowhere.

Reference:

Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and practice. Routledge.

Photo 1: https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Post-Apocalyptic

Photo 2: https://ramboll.com/ingenuity/creating-liveable-cities-together