Analyzing the Solutions for Environmental Difficulties of Modern Cities

Environmental pollutions and population growth are inevitable difficulties in modern metropolises. Governments and various organizations are trying to control these difficulties, and enacting many policies toward controlling them. Underestimating such difficulties may cause serious social, economical, health and other problems for society. Moving toward sustainability and sustainable development policies are the most acceptable responses to these difficulties that governments use to respond to their own environmental problems. These policies have different structures and are even totally different from each other, but they all have a unique purpose with is reducing environmental difficulties. For instance, improving public transportation services, increasing urban green spaces, improving bicycling culture, changing the plan of city toward population deconcentration and… . In the following research, we are analyzing modern cities difficulties and policies toward a sustainable development. We use international environmental agendas for recognizing environmental difficulties. By analyzing different approaches and policies in every unique context, we try to present a charter for these policies. To this end, specific cities are chosen for the analysis based on different policies. Seoul as a city that succeeded in optimizing urban spaces, Barcelona as a city that exceled in urban transportation, Copenhagen as a city that decreased the usage rate of personal automobiles by the means of improving public transportation and bicycles, Curitiba as a city which reformed the structure of the city to decrease producing pollutions, Vancouver as a city which utilized periodic planning and finally Portland as a city which implemented Spatial (zoning) and development policy based on Urban growth boundaries. Taking into account of all the factors, we understand that all the policies are following a unique purpose which is reducing environmental pollutions by many different methods such as controlling energy use and catharsis policies.