IELTS essay - In many cities, planners tend to arrange shops, schools, offices, and homes in specific areas and separate them from each other. Do you think the advantages of this policy outweigh the disadvantages?

City planners incorporate urban development to facilitate tourism, growing populations, and the citizens' needs for modern public facilities. In this quest, they arrange shops, educational institutes, offices and residential complexes in specific areas which are separate from one another. There are advantages and disadvantages of this policy but overall the advantages are much more.

The first and foremost advantage is that such planning helps in organizing traffic. Such places are also generally well linked by public transport because public transport is also part of urban planning. When all offices are in one location then people using their own cars can also do car pooling. For example, if five persons of one residential complex have to go for work in one area, then each one can take his car for one day in a week. It would be a win-win situation for both the people and the environment.

This would also keep the residential areas free from noise and traffic and worth living in. The cost of land in residential areas also remains less as they can never become commercial areas. Effective green spaces such as parks can also be maintained with this careful planning. What is more, if all shopping is confined to one area then such places can also attract tourism. For example, sector 17 Chandigarh is a well known shopping centre and is an attraction for tourists. Finally, such planning is cost effective because it is cheaper for the government to concentrate water supply and sewerage disposal in restricted areas.

On the other hand, there are some disadvantages. It encourages the use of cars because people have to cover long distances to go for shopping or to their work places. This is not good for the environment. It also wastes a lot of time of the students because they have to spend lot of time commuting to and from school. Some areas may be very near to schools and some may be very far off which is not suitable.

To put it in a nutshell, I pen down saying that, careful urban planning is the need of the day. Shopping complexes and offices should be in separate areas and away from the residential areas. However, each residential area should be fed by one school nearby so that students are benefitted. Overall, the pros of city planning outweigh the cons.