The Problem
In Mississauga, there are beautiful homes and green parks everywhere. When you though that there is nothing possibly wrong with this place, YOU. WERE. WRONG.
Urban Sprawl is a big problem in Mississauga. Unfortunately, nobody has taken action to the problem. In case you hadn't known, Urban Sprawl is the uncontrolled expansion of urban areas. We have a lot of lovely houses and green gardens but often only 1-5 people live in these houses, and these houses take a lot of space. Apartments can solve that problem, where up to 150 people can live in it, and takes up very little space (wide). In Mississauga, we barely have apartments and we have the population of approximately 758,000.
The effects of urban sprawl are tremendous. Due to the Mass urbanization of the city and all the areas around it, there are no residential areas around it. Which means that all the workers that work or want to get in these areas need to live outside of the area. What does that mean? It means that there will be an increase in single family vehicles which leads to a greater CO₂ production, and even if people do use public transit like buses, the amount of vehicle pollution will still increase. Urban sprawl deals both human damage and environmental damage, to the nature and animals. Spreading the urban area means destroying the suburbs and rural areas that may be near the cities.
a Cost We Can't Afford
A lot of people think it's great to have a city with good technology, huge shopping malls and recreactional centers, but have you thought about what we had to give up to make these places which some, not really needed to get built. In the place of all those building and shopping centers which you really didn't use, were once forests and wildlife. Us humans, of course, the destroyers of the world, had to make a big hole in this forest to make these useful buildings. Who really needs four Old Navy's in one neighborhood?
What can we do?
Living close to work can have a lot of benefits. Getting to work easier and faster, reducing pollution caused by automobiles, and being close to everything needed. This way, the city can stop expanding since all the works will live within that area of what is already built.
Urban sprawl has a limit of how much it could grow, and once that limit is reached, there are no more space. So if we limit that space more, protecting areas that has a natural environment within, urban sprawl could be stopped with ease. Think as if the city of Mississauga is confined to maybe half it's size, then develop only the side that is used for urbanization. Making everything more compact and space efficient which helps both urbanization and the accessibility of these urban features at once.
In order to recover the damage done by massive urban expansions, making use of the space that are normally left idle is very effective. Planting on rooftops help with lowering the CO₂ levels as well as acting like an in-city farm. This brings back what the urban sprawl took and helps environmentally as well.
Reclaim
After urbanization and urban sprawl has occurred, it is possible to return parts of the urbanized areas back into the nature, reclaiming the area to a more environmentally friendly state, adding nature into the city. This act both helps the environment also creates a new attraction to the city, an uniqueness and an advancement.
After you read this, have you solved all those questions in your head? Or have you added more? Well you now know what problems Mississauga is having, and how you can stop it. Urban sprawl is redeemable. Return the nature so the world will become a better place for all humans and other species.
"A common mistake people make when trying to design something foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." -Douglas Adams, Author The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (1952-2001)