Urbanization Blog Post

By. Assanti Kearney

What is the largest city you were in and what was it like there?

The largest city I have gone to has been New York and it was actual recently. When first getting to the city it was holiday season and Christmas was approaching. Therefore, the traffic was extremely busy before getting there. Then finally arriving there were so many different types of people all over the place. People walking in many directions without stopping. Everyone had somewhere to go and seemed as if they were late, it was an overwhelming feeling walking through Times Square and seeing all of the buildings and realizing that we are just so small. I felt like just a speck with all of these people walking around and being in the center of all of these large skyscrapers. Then we ended up in the train station were we saw new York for what it was and the city stops for no one it keeps going without any second chances. So much walking around felt as if I lost about ten pounds, felt like we walked around the whole city within the five hours I was there. The people had no since of personal space and people would just randomly talk to you as if they knew you which was interesting and I enjoyed meeting the kind new  people but overall it was an overwhelming feeling.

  

I disagree with the myths about that the poor are poor because they have have a poor mentality off life. Poor is embedded, its structured my where the dictators making it harder for people to grow and develop, for example taxes are raised even though majority or the U.. relies on government funding creating a threshold on society for lower class people to stay in lower class. Not because of laziness its because of the structure of society is to keep them down.

Would you ever take a job away from your family to help support them?

Yes, if its to help them in any way to reduce the strain hey may have from other things. As a family member your job is to help uplift them and gain them to a better destination. For example, i have an older cousin and if it wasn’t for the knowledge he gave me during such a desperate time in my life, i wouldn’t be here writing this blog post. However instead of him just letting me figure it for myself he gave me advice that stuck with me forever into becoming a better person with goals and dreams that i will accomplish. Family is there to help you when their is no one else to turn to you have an unconditional support and love that is willing to pick up the slack to help you.

Would you want to live in a major international city like Paris or NYC?

I would much rather live in NYC because that city in the place to go for anything as far as anything, business, arts, engineering, Technology. Anything that you could think of you would be able to get in New York City the opportunities that are present there are amazing because of the amount of outlets available for someone to have a career there. There are hundreds of businesses in NYC that range from various fields so looking for business is not an issue. Housing would be little more difficult because of the demand for housing their, the prices for them are going to be an arm and a leg. Everything as far as living there is very expensive because of the placement.

What are the most important lessons you learned from being in NYC?

Personally being in NYC everything is very fast and you can easily be distracted while anything could be happening, so being there made me become more aware of my surroundings, more observant so i am aware and not just walking around blindly, because after being there people just walk around as if the people around them dont exist. Another would be patience, since there are alot more people, people tend to take there time while going place to place or on the other hand someone could be rushing you so it just helps you develop skills on how to handle people and understand there feelings.

What do you think are the biggest issues facing developing cities today?

I would say it would be to much poverty slowing the growth of the city could be an issue because all of the money would be directed to the public due to the poverty rate in that city. Another would be Gentrification and them trying to develop new property and by doing that they raise the prices of the property so the lower income people can afford it anymore and forces them to move out, and its unfortunate because alot of these people may not be in the best position to even be able to get a new place so that would increase the poverty rate even more

In your experience is U.S. Cities to be fairly clean or relatively dirty?

i would say relatively dirty because when you go to a large city you see alot of trash all over the city in the street in the ally ways, its there and sometimes it will be on the sidewalk where people walk. because of how busy a city is it collects waste pretty quickly because either people litter or there is just alot of garbage laying around because the trash companies havent been able to get to it yet because of how large the city is

what do these article suggest the links between poverty and crime?

It suggest that the higher the poverty rate the higher the crime rate because of the demand for needs which isnt always the case, some of the wealthiest places in America could have a higher crime rate for example for NYC the poverty rate is 17.5 thats less than most places and the crime rate is 57.7 percent so it can show that crime isnt driven by poverty. So the connection of poverty and crime is false because so of the poorest places in the world have less crimes a year than we have raises in the U.S.