The Built Environment in Asia Asia contains some of the most populated and fastest-growing cities of the world. Shanghai, China, and Mumbai, India, are the largest cities in the world. They are also among the most densely populated. Other cities, such as Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Delhi, India, are growing rapidly. A surge of economic investment, primarily funded by the oil, technology, and pharmaceutical industries, has fueled the development of medium-sized cities into important metropolitan areas. Two urban areas that demonstrate this are Hyderabad, India, and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Hyderabad, India, the capital city of the state of Andhra Pradesh, has a population of more than 5 million people. Nicknamed “Cyberabad,” the city has developed into one of the world’s major hubs for information technology, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical production. Hyderabad has aggressively promoted its skilled labor force and cheap investment opportunities. In fact, the city inaugurated a township known as HITEC City in 1998 in order to attract international IT firms. Today, HITEC hosts offices from an array of national and international IT companies, including Oracle Corporation, General Electric, and Microsoft. Microsoft’s largest research and development campus outside the United States is in the HITEC complex. Hyderabad has also invested extensively in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Biotechnology is the manipulation of living things to produce useful products, such as changing genetic material to create medicines. Much like HITEC City, Hyderabad’s Genome Valley is a large campus of facilities that houses more than 100 biotech companies, including Novartis, Monsanto, and Pfizer. The city has also developed campuses for the study of nanotechnology and the manufacturing of advanced semiconductors and solar technologies. This aggressive investment in high-tech industries will most likely continue to bring revenue and jobs into the city. As a result, Hyderabad must deal with a swelling population in need of more goods and services well into the future. Dubai is one of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). An emirate is a political territory that is ruled by a Muslim monarch called an emir. Dubai’s population has grown rapidly to roughly 1.8 million in 2010 as a result of intense economic growth. Real estate and construction represent more than 20 percent of the city’s economy. Urban infrastructure has expanded at a rate unparalleled in modern human history. Dubai has the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. The Burj Khalifa stands at slightly more than 828 meters (2,700 feet)—almost a kilometer tall. The city’s Persian Gulf coast is the site of the Palm Jumeirah, an artificial island shaped like a palm tree. The Palm Jumeirah hosts 4,000 residential lots and has doubled Dubai’s shoreline. The city’s transportation infrastructure is also expanding at a rapid rate. The city’s international airport will soon be the largest airport in the world. The Dubai Metro system is the first urban train network on the Arabian Peninsula. Dubai’s rapid growth, warm climate, and luxurious lifestyle have attracted many foreigners to the city. Dubai was the 10th most-visited city in the world in 2009. Known as the “shopping capital of the Middle East,” Dubai has more than 70 shopping malls. Dubai has also been referred to as the “Expat Capital of the World” because of the foreign majority that lives in the city. More than 75 percent of the city’s population is male, represented mostly by laborers from countries such as India and the Philippines who have come to work in Dubai’s construction business. The laborers’ poor working and living conditions have come under criticism from the international community, especially in contrast to the city’s image as a luxury capital of the world. Asia has a number of state-of-the-art engineering marvels that solve complex infrastructural problems. China’s Three Gorges Dam is the world’s largest hydroelectric power station. The dam stands at 185 meters (607 feet) high and stretches for 2,335 meters (7,660 feet) across the Yangtze River. It supplies millions of homes, businesses, hospitals, and schools with safe, affordable electricity. The massive project, however, has had a devastating effect on the human and natural environment. The damming of the Yangtze River created a reservoir that flooded 632 square kilometers (244 square miles), taking out hundreds of towns and villages and displacing more than 1.2 million people. It submerged hundreds of factories, mines, and waste dumps, allowing industrial pollutants and garbage to enter the reservoir. The reservoir has also threatened the habitats of birds, fish, and other wildlife populations. The Jamnagar Refinery in Gujarat, India, is the world’s largest oil refinery. An oil refinery is a factory where crude oil is processed and refined into useful products, such as gasoline, kerosene, and diesel oil. Referred to as the “Refining Capital of the World,” Jamnagar has a refining capacity of 1.24 million barrels of oil per day. The factory covers an area larger than the city of London, England. Japan’s Shinkansen train network is one of the world’s fastest high-speed railway lines. The so-called “bullet trains” can reach speeds of 300 kilometers per hour (186 miles per hour). Shinkansen links most major cities on the islands of Honshu and Kyushu. The Tōkaidō line, which connects Tokyo and Osaka, is the world’s busiest high-speed rail line. Since the railway lines were laid in the mid-1960s, it has transported roughly 5 billion people. The Baikonur Cosmodrome is the world’s first and largest spaceport. The facility opened in the late 1950s, when the steppes of Central Asia were part of the Soviet Union. The world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched from Baikonur in 1957, and the first spacecraft to carry a person into orbit (Vostok 1, carrying Soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin) was launched in 1961. Today, the Baikonur Cosmodrome is in southern Kazakhstan, although it is leased to and maintained by Russia. The state-of-the-art facility allows for the launch of both manned and unmanned spacecraft, and is vital to the support and maintenance of the International Space Station (ISS). - Jasper
Posted on: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 08:11:25 +0000
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