Urban Sapiens

“Parking is a narcotic and ought to be a controlled substance. It is addictive and one can never have enough”- Victor Dover

Urban Sapiens tends to embrace urbanism as a human quality with a fundamental aim of sustainability to preserve the existence of our species. Homo Sapien is now predominantly an urban-dwelling creature. The root ‘home’ means man, and the root ‘sapien’ means being- so human being. A modern day human, which is also a homo sapien-is a human being. Homo Sapien is the scientific name for the fleshy, pink, and carbon based creature that currently has the most dominance on the planet known as Earth. All people today are classified as Homo Sapiens. Humans, the dominant species in the globe have shaped the world to suit its own needs. A major step in our evolution occurred when we first began to organize and settle in cities. Cities have been around for thousands of years, since the first were settled in Mesopotamia between 4000-3000 BC. But only over the last several centuries have humans moved into cities en masse. Now, more than half of the world’s population can be found in urban areas. Cities are very much the dominant habitat of our species. By 2030, more than five billion people, that is six out of ten human beings will live in cities and urban centres.

Urban Sapiens move towards more sustainable urbanism and their relationship to urbanism is expected to continue with inherent interdependencies. Current population can no longer survive in solely rural lifestyles, and need to embrace their inner urbanites and become Urban Sapiens. The characteristics of urban life are not just density but intensity, not just quantity but quality, and not just location but connectivity. This astounding increase in density in our central place has created a demand for how citizens interact with services, transportation, and infrastructure within cities. The cultural, political, and economic divides are certainly play out in and on our cities via online, and offline, publicly, and privately. The growing global popularity of urban living, makes cities face challenges of quality living. We struggle to contain, plan, and organize capitalist urbanization so as to facilitate to tie the question of urban life to environmental determinism. The idea to move into cities with the right planning could be a strategy toward a more sustainable future. We have to plan for the complexity, and density of our cities, as we experience the higher levels of disruption, which can be stressful, noisy, and dusty.

Urban Sapiens has slim grounds for identifying the key factors possessed by the human brain that accounts for their unique reasoning abilities. Cities are one of the greatest inventions as they are the engines of innovation, providing the density, diversity, interaction, and networks to make us more creative and productive. We are distracted by the lure of shiny, digital, smart technology, and forget the human story anchored in the narrative of city making. Cities must determine to make them a place for smart citizens to not only want to live in, but to improve and reap the value of what makes the place special. We have to fuel the Internet of Things innovation, and turn a beloved community hub into a smart living lab. Cities are now very much the dominant habitat for our species, and we move towards more sustainable urbanism. There is more variability in the social organization of human societies. New situations, and problems arise and make population to change their behaviour. We are becoming city-dwelling Metro Sapiens to achieve sustainability. The term’ Metro Sapiens’ refers and characterizes city-dwellers of the future.

Urban Sapiens or Homo Sapiens as human is a diurnal creature designed to sleep at night, and to be up and about during daylight. Our longer lower extremely associated with our upright, bipedal locomotion. Like all humanoids, we have a relatively short trunk, long arms, and slender fingers. As primates, we humans are uniquely cosmopolitan, and we are also the most terrestrial of all primates. Human societies are generally multilevel structures of small subsistence units grouped into larger communities. There are many implications of this massive urban growth on biodiversity, ecosystem services, and conservation. Expansion of urban areas is on average twice as fast as urban population with significant consequences for greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Urbanization implies an increase in job types that are less active than rural ones, this being favourable for the development of problems such as excess weight and obesity. The promise of jobs and prosperity, among other factors, pulls people to cities. The cost of living in urban areas is very high. When this is combined with random and unexpected growth as well as unemployment, there is the spread of unlawful resident settlements represented by squatters.

Urban Sapiens life encourages sedentary lifestyles and consumption of food with few nutritional benefits leading to chronic diseases. Urbanization usually occurs when people move from villages to settle in cities in hope of gaining a better standard of living. It is driven by pull factors that attract people to urban areas and push factors that drive people away from the countryside. Employment opportunities, educational institutions, and urban lifestyles are the main pull factors. Poor living conditions, lack of opportunities, and poor health care are the main push factors. Cities also have advanced communication and transportation networks. Many low-income families gravitate to informal settlements or urban slums that proliferate in and around cities. The provision of water and sanitation services to growing urban settlements, peri-urban and slum areas present critical challenges. Solid waste management in cities is inefficient, which means the proper collection, transfer, recycling, and disposal of all throw away materials. Urban waste often ends up in illegal dumps on streets, open spaces, waste lands, drains or rivers- a problem in peri-urban areas.