04/07/2023

Reading time: 6min

Newsdesk

Sweco UK

Half of the world’s population and three quarters of Europeans live in cities. Developing urban spaces more resiliently and sustainably therefore has an enormous, positive impact on the living environment of a large number of people – and how we all live, work and play. Here, we explore how our next generation of #SwecoDifferenceMakers perceive the megatrend of Urbanisation.

Henry Giblin, Environmental Planning Consultant (recently promoted graduate)

“To me, Urbanisation is a constantly mounting challenge that requires careful consideration…but provides great opportunities.

Urbanisation has several associated challenges such as water and air quality, overcrowding and inequality. I do believe one of the largest challenges is the urban sprawl that is causing precious ecological environments to be lost, which can lead to increased flood risk and causes damage to valuable wildlife habitats and species. The other key challenge is the fact urban areas are responsible for a higher level of energy consumption and are often vulnerable to climate change events. Extreme climate events often highlight the lack of resilience and interdependencies within our infrastructure and often leads to a ripple effect, causing significant issues for our cities and society.

But these challenges provide an opportunity to improve and enhance our urban areas and to further improve the quality of life in our society. I believe we need to integrate the best parts of rural living within our urban areas, such as the provision and enhancement of green space and incorporating this green space into our buildings design. Public transport can play a greater role within and be enhanced to reduce the requirement for cars, which ultimately reduces pollution and can help encourage people-orientated cities.

Ultimately, I believe Urbanisation provides the opportunity rethink our urban areas and help to reshape spaces around people by building interdependencies within our infrastructure to help improve people’s quality of life.”

Browse our library of Urbanisation insights

Faris Zakieh, Graduate Highways Engineer

“To me, Urbanisation is about bringing people together. It means creating sustainable solutions to living together. It means making efficient use of the space we have in cities. It means finding a way for our growing population to live in harmony with our planet.

We are not looking to destroy nature to make way for urban areas, we are integrating nature into our cities and building around it so that both humans and nature can thrive together. Urbanisation is shaping society for the benefit of all who live in and participate in it.

I come from the region of the world where the first city sprouted, Mesopotamia, and I have lived in urban areas my whole life. Urbanisation shapes our culture and economy and is the inevitable future that any society will converge towards.

The steps we take to define our urbanisation standards today will impact urban areas in the next hundreds of years.”

Shamod Athulathmudali, Graduate Engineer

“I am a product of urbanisation. Born and bred in a rural village on a small island, and then moving from that village to a town…and then to a capital city, and from there on to have lived in a bustling metropolis in the most populated country in the world, I have experienced first-hand how societies migrate from rural villages to bustling cities to access its treasures of wealth, education, housing, and safety and it’s crucial for social development.

However, how we go about it can make or break human civilisation – we have only one planet and the world Overshoot Day is not far away thanks to our linear way of thinking about urbanisation. Linear consumption of resources in a closed system leads to resource depletion. This is the root cause of wicked problems such as human conflict leading to homelessness, poverty, unsustainable urbanization and environmental degradation.

Urbanisation needs to be a sustainable mechanism that allows human civilisation to grow and evolve in symbiosis with planet Earth. A circular way of thinking about urbanisation needs to be adopted. We need to design self-sustaining cities which are energy-efficient, carbon-neutral and have smarter supply chains for the sustainable use of resources.

Read our FREE report on ‘Circular city transformation’

Ayanda Mhlanga, Graduate Civil Engineer

“Urbanisation, to me, represents the natural human desire to seek out better opportunities and improvement of life. On a mass scale this leads to the growth of urban areas which requires careful planning as it presents a variety of challenges and opportunities alike.

The UN predicts that by 2050, 68% of the global population will live in urban areas. Humanity has reached the stage where we have become intelligent and self-aware enough to predict our future, meaning we have an increased responsibility and greater opportunity to prepare for it and give future generations the best chance at success.

Some of the challenges associated with Urbanisation include increased pollution, waste management challenges, competition for resources such as clean water and organic food products. Each of these poses a threat to the long-term health of people if not managed properly.

Conversely, Urbanisation offers opportunities for increased collaboration in development of solutions to humanities existing challenges, with greater concentration of manpower. By committing more minds to problem solving, we can produce far more creative and innovative ideas.

Urbanisation also has the potential to stimulate economic growth through the development of infrastructure to support the growing urban population and the increased economic activity associated with this. Ultimately, the three things which I think will transform society when it comes to urbanisation are collaboration, innovation and creativity. With the important role that Sweco plays in delivering urbanisation in its communities, we know how critical it is that these philosophies are at the core of our strategic focus.”

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