2. High-rise buildings and skyscrapers are becoming common sights in many countries

2. High-rise buildings and skyscrapers are becoming common sights in many countries. Choose either high-rise buildings or skyscrapers - in your country - and talk about the problems those buildings have and the solutions to those problems.

We live in Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan, it is considered as the most populous city in Central Asia with more than 3 million people, today, due to high increase in its population, and we can see lots of newly built high-rise buildings in all parts of the city. Although high-rise buildings have been very appealing to our city with handling the accommodation issues of large population, there are some problems that are causing for their residents and people of the city in general. Today, we will talk about three main issues of such buildings in our city, first - heavy traffic on roads in such areas, second – neighborhood problems, third – shadowing smaller buildings.

First issue is heavy traffic in places since majority of the roads are old in our city, and their capacity do not much with the hundreds of apartment residents owing a car in those areas. Therefore, especially in rush hours in the morning and evening, people find it difficult on roads, waiting for even for considerable long periods of time, which causes stress for people, delays for many, even it can lead to serious consequences in case of emergency situations like Ambulance hurrying to a hospital with a patient in a life and death situation.

The second issue is that today there are many people complaining because of social conflicts with their neighbors. Since Tashkent is a capital city, there are a lot of people from other regions living in such buildings temporarily for work, education or some other reasons, obviously, permanent residents find it unsecure and not comfortable to live next to strangers. Because, when problems arise, when day to day problems happen like inter-floor noise from the next door, having been to deal with people you do not know well is not easy at the times and it may even end up with more serious conflicts. Therefore, due to unhealthy relationships between neighbors, some of the communities are suffering from a toxic social environment that is causing health problems like stress, anxiety, etc.

The third problem is that tall buildings are blocking the sunlight or even the natural daylight for lower structures, leading to serious health related illnesses amongst the population. Because, a human body needs certain amount of sunlight in order to produce and function some vital vitamins and minerals, while the natural daylight is also beneficial in many ways, like better sleep-patterns, higher performance, and improved mood. Therefore, recently residents of low-story buildings living without or with less natural light are complaining about their health issues such as Vitamin D deficiency, depression, and weakened immune system.

Moving to conclusion part, we are going to provide solutions for each above mentioned problems.
First, issues related to traffic jam could be addressed to some extent if the government on redeveloping road infrastructure and improve public transport system in those areas such as more bus-lines or other means of public transport, which would somehow decrease the usage of cars.
Second, stopping temporary rents of apartments is nearly impossible but improving community rules and regulations and more active intervention of each community officials when problems arise would be the most practical solution for the neighborhood problems.
Third, for preventing blocked light problem, the most practical solution would be avoiding to build those kinds of high structures in enough distance from the lower ones in the future and for the existing ones, replacing the windows with light-reflective ones to maintain the light balance in the surroundings

4. Many older neighborhoods are being redeveloped these days. Talk about some of the problems and solutions to this re-development.

As more and more people are moving to urban areas, the demand on housing and other up-to date infrastructure is increasing rapidly. Therefore, many old areas of cities are going under the redevelopment in order to accommodate that much urban population and build modern infrastructure such metro, stadiums, cinemas, restaurants, educational intuitions. However, despite the benefits of this trend, there are three serious issues of it that we will talk about. First one is conflicts with local residents, second is loss of identity of historical and traditional sites, the third one is local businesses being destroyed.
The first problem is that, although some part of such declining neighborhoods are empty or not in use, there still may be people living in that area, and most of the cases it is not easy to convince them to leave their homes. Because, some of them may wish to keep their house because of their past memories and values associated with that specific place, others may not be able to find affordable rent anywhere else because usually housing is cheaper in old neighborhoods compared to the other. Another reason may be due to importance of the location to their work place, school etc. Therefore, high amount of compensation is required or others not willing leave create a lot of conflict and even may go up to the court, costing the building company spend much money and time on the process.
The second problem is related to loss of character and traditional values of the old site, when buildings of national architecture are replaced with modern western-style ones creating a same environment everywhere. The reason is that, when we look at the modern big cities, Dubai (Arabic country with different traditions, cultural identity from Singapore, you can almost see the similar city image, most of the infrastructure is made by steel and glasses and have the similar style. Which is a very serious threat to the culture and society of countries, since the young generation growing up in such a place, do not get to know the core values of their identity associated with their traditional buildings and it leads us to the truly boring world without cultural diversity.
The third issues is that long-time local business are disappearing due to increased cost of rent and operating, change in demand because of new flow of residents and competition with new businesses. Since a modern infrastructure requires more advanced transportation system, financial organizations, educational institutions, healthcare centers and many others made with high-standard expensive resources, the overall cost of land and maintenance goes up. Therefore, as an example, apart from the burden of increased rent cost for the small grocery store from the old neighborhood, customers would probably go for a brand-new supermarket. Besides that, locals leaving the area due to higher cost of living, makes the old dining restaurant loose its regular customers in a new competitive market, where a new luxury business takes all the new customers. That’s way, local businesses most probably end up with closing or may need way more investment in order to cope with other competitors.
Moving to the conclusion part, we are going to provide solution for each problem mentioned above. The solution for the first problem would be renovating those old houses, buildings, so that some owners can still live with their memories and others will not suffer from inconvenience of distance to their workplaces. Second problem could be well addressed if we consider keeping the harmony with the style of the neighborhood, by replacing some building materials and style with the ones fit the image of the area. Although the third problems is more inevitable, some amount of monetary compensation or incentives by the government or local authorities, such as temporary reduction on income taxes could ease the hassle of the old-local businesses to some extent.