Spaces and Exchanges: the global cities

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However major cities create major problems.

Many global cities suffer from congestion. And, too much people means pollution.

For me, the pollution is the most impressive problem of global cities.

The Great Smog of London in December 1952 which causes 12.000 deaths. We have listen to an amazing audio document where witnesses were scared. They were describing the fog (bouillard) as dirty, black warm, acid and oppressive just like a « killer in the night ».

During the industrial revolution, London has already faced this pollution issue. This reality has been very well depicted (described) in Charles Dickens novels. In Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend, he is denoncing pollution and poverty.

Regarding Singapore “perfect” society, there is also a price to pay.

Starting from primary school, everyone is obsessed with work and efficiency.

You need to excel to survive in that country.

Singapore used to have the reputation of being very boring (Singapore Swing)

Indeed, there is no place for fun, culture or the arts.

Bars are closed very early, chewing gum is illegal because it makes the city dirty.

A magazine like Cosmoplitan is judged too sexy and banned.

That's incredible for us but, in that too efficient life, the governement decided to launch a smile campaign to get people to relax.

Singapore has too many rules and as a consequence, it's a very controlled society, where there are no real individual freedom and no real creativity.

All this remove personnal freedom and creativity.

People don't want to take any risk and leadership is rare.

Too much security means less liberty.

At the end, I am not sure that humain conditions are improved in Singapore « perfect » society.

Conclusion

To sum-up the main ideas, (To conclude,) we can say that the growth of global cities have impacted people's everyday lives. It has brought cultural and ethnic diversity and opened new possibilities of exchanges.

However, this dense populations have led to serious problem in term of environment. And the too strict legislation in Singapore put in place to control the society is not the right answer.

The challenge for global cities is now to find ways to reduce their carbon footprint and improve urban living conditions.