Reader's Response Draft -1

Reader's Response Draft -1 for topic "Developing Sustainable Infrastructure in New Cities."

In the article “New Cities Foundation”, Cho (2014) believes that urban challenges must be considered in developing a sustainable infrastructure. She further mentions that 'Envision Sustainability rating system' is design to ensure the performance of infrastructure. Infrastructures in this era should efficiently serve the community by improving the quality of life. She further shares her focus on its assessment on King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) and its key challenges of urbanization. In context of sustainability against population growth, she hopes that with the right projects, it will be able to help the communities and cities to function more efficiently as a whole. However, she did not emphasize on how much will the growth of population growth in Asian cities effects the economic and thus improving the cities as a whole.

The first reason that makes Cho’s believe is inadequate because the article only discusses urban challenges must be consider for an enhanced city as a whole. From an article, “Explosive growth in Asian Cities” KHANNA (2015), he proposes that the trends seems be to be that Asian cities are now the leading in urbanization. With Asian cities facing large population growth, it can result to poor utilization of infrastructures if the authorities are not making the right plans and decisions. For instance, he mentions that in Jakarta, the traffic congestion is the worst compared to most cities. He also mentioned that the authorities must adapt to the arising problems. However, Cho’s article did not analyze in depth as to how important the authorities flexibility and decisiveness can affect the placid the population growth. In this way, the article could leave readers with only understanding it will affect, but not how it affect, impeding her debate as insufficient. 

The writer shares that with Envision rating system, Nuevo Necaxa - Avila Camacho Highway in Mexico, Highways Vias Nuevas De Lima in Peru and KAEC, as to how they improve the lives of the communities. She observes through sustainable road infrastructures, the accessibility of transportation leads to access of education, businesses, boost in housing. From another article “Advancing Sustainable Infrastructure with Envision” Nelson, (June 2015), the writer claims that Envision put forwards designing sustainable infrastructures it assist in judgement, enriching funding plans. From above, we can then understand that building sustainable infrastructure is important. With the introduction of Envision, it further assures the decision makers, executers and end users that the project will be the most transcendent in the right areas implementing it.

In a nutshell, while Cho’s article does not emphasize ample on how the population growth will affect the communities in the long-run. In contrast, she asserts that Envision rating system is useful as it opts how well the project will impose on the respective areas. Apart from acknowledging that natural disaster, the explosive population growth, economic factors. The issue is real, developing sustainable infrastructure should be implement from the very beginning if possible, and of course advancing with technology and times.

References :

1) Heidi Cho (2014,December 14). Developing Sustainable Infrastructure in New Cities. Retrieved from http://www.newcitiesfoundation.org/evaluating-sustainable-infrastructure-development-new-cities/

2) PARAG KHANNA (2015, June 15). Explosive growth in Asian cities: Bright ideas to 'seize the urban moment' Retrieved from Straits Times

3) Denise Nelson, P.E., ENV SP, LEED AP (2015, June) Advancing Sustainable Infrastructure with Envision civil + structural Engineer. Retrieved from Feature Aricles , Sustainable Design.