Reader's Response Draft -2

Reader's Response Draft -2 for topic "Developing Sustainable Infrastructure in New Cities."

In the article “New Cities Foundation”, Cho (2014) states that urban challenges must be considered in developing a sustainable infrastructure. She mentions that 'Envision Sustainability rating system' is designed to access the performance of infrastructure. Infrastructures in this era should efficiently serve our communities by improving the quality of life. She further shares her focus on the assessment on King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) as to how it helps the communities in certain ways and its key challenges of urbanization. In context with sustainability against economy and 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.  In the other hand, as the writer did not clearly emphasize on the consequences if the future infrastructures do not consider these challenges which will in the long run affect communities as a whole, therefore more evident supports is needed to support her believe. 

The first reason that makes Cho’s stand inadequate is because the article only discusses how urban challenges should be considered to enhance the cities as a whole. Take for instance, 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. In contrary, Asian cities are facing with large population growth, which 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 are much worst when compared to most cities. He also emphasizes that the authorities ought to adapt to these arising problems. However, in Cho’s article, she 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 affects the communities, impeding her debate as insufficient.

Moving on, Cho did shared that with Envision rating system projects like " Nuevo Necaxa - Avila Camacho Highway in Mexico, Highways Vias Nuevas De Lima in Peru and KAEC ", it will create a difference by improving the lives of the communities. Take for instance, she observes through sustainable road infrastructures, how can accessibility of transportation contributes to access of education, local business opportunities, boost in housing, in return benefiting the communities. Speaking of which, from another article “Advancing Sustainable Infrastructure with Envision”, Nelson (June 2015) claims that Envision put forwards designing sustainable infrastructures. Not only it assists in judgement, but the system also enriches funding plans. From above, we can then understand that building sustainable infrastructure is important In addition with the introduction of Envision, it further assures the decision makers, executes and end users that the project will be the most transcendent and it is implemented in the right areas.

In a nutshell, while Cho’s article does not amply emphasize on how urban challenges will affect the development of infrastructure 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 disasters, explosive population growth, economy 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.

(558 words)

References :

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

Khanna, P. (2015, June). Explosive growth in Asian cities: Bright ideas to 'seize the urban moment' Retrieved http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/explosive-growth-in-asian-cities-bright-ideas-to-seize-the-urban-moment

Nelson, D. (2015, June). Advancing Sustainable Infrastructure with Envision civil + structural Engineer. Retrieved from http://cenews.com/article/10098/advancing-sustainable-infrastructure-with-envision