Reader Response to : "Explosive Growth, Asian Cities" Draft 2

In the article “Explosive Growth in Asian Cities: Bright Ideas to Seize the Urban Moment”, Khanna (2015) reports that Asian cities have become the centre of the world’s urbanisation trend within the past decade. The author observes that these cities are experiencing a population influx, and reactive policies to population growth and global warming are becoming ineffective. Khanna states that South-east Asian cities are assuming control with capable governments, enterprising citizens and local infrastructure innovation. She further discusses the government needs to be productive to build a deep-rooted generative legacy as they face complicated challenges in delivering basic necessities on urban productivity. She concludes that South-east Asian cities are proving that their potential is greater than the difficulties they face. I feel that this might be true to a certain extent because most of the efforts by the community are often short-lived thus making the urban advancement in South East Asia countries rather slow. Also, it is rather difficult for developing countries to implement strategies to combat the problems faced as foreign investors are hard to come by.

After reading the article, I am not convinced to how the policies could help in the development of the cities because the writer did not provide concrete examples in which the strategies implemented by the government in Jakarta was effective. However, I find it interesting that through a smartphone application, the locals are able to communicate with the authorities to improve their neighbourhood. The government representative are required to respond with a photo report so that the users are aware of the completion of the request (Anisa, 2015). This mobile app shows great promise in urbanisation but many users are facing a lot of problem with internet connectivity (Tommy, 2015).

This brings us to my other point on why investing in “smart” features in an infrastructure should be made priority. Almost everyone possess a smartphone but without excellent signal coverage, it would be close to useless. Khanna stated that Philippines are introducing free Wi-Fi in 997 cities in infrastructures. With this in place, citizens will be able to get online easily thus will be well informed of the situation in the country. These types of investment are vital for cities in Indonesia as they are making use of social media to improve their region. Despite the vision, it is difficult for them to attain investors to the country. Foreign companies face long processes in setting up an operation as they have to go through lots of agencies to attain the required business permits (Leslie, 2015).

In conclusion, Khanna’s article represents the potential of some of the South-east Asian cities very well. However, she should further discuss the difficulties the government has to face with the policies that will be implemented by them. Communication between the government officials and the locals can be further improved. Also, policies in bringing investors to the country should be reviewed to provide growth in the country. All will benefit from the country’s success only if the problems are settled swiftly.

References

Anisa, Menur (2015, September 22). Qlue, the app that keeps officials in Jakarta accountable. Yahoo! News. Retrieved from https://sg.news.yahoo.com/qlue-app-keeps-officials-jakarta-accountable-075702447.html

Leslie, Shaffer (2015, March 16). Why Indonesia struggles to attract foreign investors. CNBC. Retrieved from http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/16/why-indonesia-struggles-to-attract-foreign-investors.html

Parag, Khanna (2015, June 11). Explosive growth in Asian cities: Bright ideas to ‘seize the urban moment’. Straits Times. Retrieved from http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/explosive-growth-in-asian-cities-bright-ideas-to-seize-the-urban-moment

Tommy, Harianto (2015, September 17). Qlue - Make valuable complains. Android Play Store, review section. Retrieved from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.qluein.android&hl=en

edited on 2/10/2015 1:12am 

Reader Response to : "Explosive Growth, Asian Cities" Draft 1

In the article “Explosive Growth in Asian Cities: Bright Ideas to Seize the Urban Moment”, Khanna (2015) reports that Asian cities have become the centre of the world’s urbanisation trend within the past decade. The author observes that these cities are experiencing a population influx, and reactive policies to population growth and global warming are becoming ineffective. Khanna states that South-east Asian cities are assuming control with capable governments, enterprising citizens and local infrastructure innovation. She further discusses that the government needs to be productive to build a deep-rooted generative legacy as they face complicated challenges in delivering basic necessities on urban productivity. She concludes that South-east Asian cities are proving that their potential is greater than the difficulties they face. While this may be true to a certain extent, I feel that most of the efforts by the community are often short-lived thus making the urban advancement in South East Asia countries rather slow. Also, it is rather difficult for the third world countries to implement strategies to combat the problems faced.

After reading the article, I was not convinced to how the policies could help in the development of the cities. The writer did not provide concrete examples in which the strategies implemented by the government in Jakarta was effective. However, I find it interesting that through a smartphone application, the locals are able to communicate with the authorities to improve their neighbourhood. The government representative are required to respond with a photo report so that the users are aware of the completion of the request (Anisa, 2015). This mobile app shows great promise in urbanisation but many users are facing a lot of problem with internet connectivity.

This brings to my other point on why investing in “smart” features in an infrastructure should be made priority. Almost everyone possess a smartphone but without excellent signal coverage, it would be close to useless. Khanna stated that Philippines are introducing free Wi-Fi in 997 cities in infrastructures. With this in place, citizens will be able to get online easily thus will be well informed of the situation in the country. These type of investment are vital for cities in Indonesia as they are making use of social media to improve their region. Despite the vision, it is difficult for them to attain investors to the country due to the prevailing land dispute in Java (Bloomberg, 2015).

In conclusion, Khanna’s article represented the potential of some of the South-east Asian cities very well. However, she should further discuss of the difficulties the government has to face with the policies that will be implemented by them. All in all, the hardships that these cities are facing are overshadowed by the effective efforts by the community. 

Summary : Explosive Growth in Asian Cities

In the article “Explosive Growth in Asian Cities: Bright Ideas to Seize the Urban Moment”, Khanna (2015) reports that Asian cities have become the centre of the world’s urbanisation trend within the past decade. The author observes that these cities are experiencing a population influx, and reactive policies to population growth and global warming are becoming incompetent. Khanna states that South-east Asian cities are assuming control with capable governments, enterprising citizens and local infrastructure innovation. She further discusses that these megacities’ enormous size can create complicated challenges for local governments when delivering basic necessities; they need to become productive to build a deep-rooted generative legacy on urban productivity. She concludes that South-east Asian cities are proving that their potential is greater than the difficulties they face.

My English Language Learning Journey

Thanks to the internet my learning journey are boundless. I often find myself communicating or chatting up with people who are not Singaporean and they are somehow amazed to how I could speak the language fluently with them. It is strange to how a minority of them still thinks that Singapore is a part of China.

Anyway, I do not consider myself fluent as English is not my native language. "Read more books." That's what majority of my teachers told us to do so that we could improve our English. I hated that. Just reading a paragraph will give you an impression that I took some highly dosage of drowsy pills. Most of the time, I find myself reading the newspapers and watching American TV series. It might not be the most effective way to others but it got my attention and definitely keep me off the bed.

Well, those were the later part of my learning journey. I could not remember much of my earlier learning days. I remembered listening to lots of local nursery rhymes and reading lots of Enid Blyton books just because it has pictures(I am visually inclined).

To end off, I feel that reading articles has helped me a lot in improving my English in the past. Maybe, through the Effective Communication lessons in SIT, I could improve further. For now, I will continue doing what worked out for me. Why change a winning strategy?

Edited : 11/09/15 12pm