Cities all around the world are similar in terms of the cosmopolitan hum-bum, the abundant machinery, and the constant reshaping of landscapes. Planners, in recent times, have started setting up and relocating common places of public gathering, e.g. schools, shopping malls, and offices, out of the inner-city spheres for cascading the citizens over a wider and uncongested territory. I believe this, despite someinconvenience, is ultimately beneficial for city dwellers.
Traffic, of humans and automobiles alike, haunt us in an otherwise unnatural urbanity, day and night. Cities, ailing of congestion, are hard up for air. We venture out every day, in the city streets, schools, offices, stores amidst millions others, on the prowl for sustenance, prosperity and indulgence. So we bump along, with or without harmony, like workers do in a termite colony, and that’s ok! But the problems rather are the clogs that halt our lives, in office going traffic and school going ques. But urban socio-economic does not allow us to stall, yet stall we must. This paradox is born of the centripetal convergence of establishments in cities and will remain until and unless cities are decentralized.
Some recoil from the prospects of relocation of city establishments looking closed-mindedly at only the geographical distance. But reality moves over space that must be measured in respect to travel time also. Due to relocation of schools, shops, and so on, we may have to travel further, but, thanks to the evolution of modern transports, for shorter periods of time. Hence, relegation of places of communion to more strategically poised vicinities actually reduces the time-distance that the modern man is more concerned about.
No development comes without compensation, and if sacrifice we must – to see better days, then accept we should – the extra mile that we have to stride on, for becoming a faster and more agile citizenry.
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