An increasing number of people choose to live in big cities. What problems will this bring about? Should the government encourage people to live in small towns?

Cities act as magnets to many from rural areas. As a consequence of this migration many problems arise in the cities. This essay will discuss these problems and also give opinion on whether or not the government should encourage people to live in small towns.

A major problem is the pressure on the cities’ infrastructure. For example, as more and more people crowd into cities, water delivery and sewerage disposal systems are often found to be inadequate to cope with demand. Moreover, unlicensed construction of dwellings usually leads to further problems for water and sewerage systems. Roads and transport services also suffer when they are overused. As more and more people attempt to travel, the roads quickly become overcrowded and traffic slows. Examples of this situation can be found in many cities throughout the world. Not only this, these congested roads become more and more accident prone.

Certainly, if the government encourages people to live in small towns, it would have a positive impact on the overcrowding of some cities. There would be less traffic, less people in the city centre, and this would obviously be highly desirable. In addition, there would be less strain on the services offered by the city – ¬banks, public transportation, restaurants and the like. This would mean a reduction in queues and faster customer service.

However, the problem however would be that a dramatic reduction in numbers of people in the cities would mean that many businesses would go broke. Restaurants, cafes and other service areas would suffer tremendously. What would happen is that overcrowding would occur in the small towns. More and more people offering services would spring up - restaurants, shopping centres and other businesses would be needed to service the increasingly larger numbers of people who live in that area. So, although the idea seems good in theory, it would be very impractical. The better solution to the problem would be a careful planning of the city keeping in mind the future population predictions.

To put it in a nutshell I pen down saying the because of migration of people from rural to urban areas, many problems arise in cities but the solution is not in encouraging people to live in small towns as this would be a short sighted approach.