I lived in Hangzhou, China, which can be classified as an urban-downtown neighborhood. It has been estimated that there were about 6,670,200 people in the metropolitan area of Hangzhou in 2015, which means the urban density is very high. Hangzhou is the capital city of State Zhejiang, and it is adjacent to Shanghai. If Shanghai like New York City in China, Hangzhou will also be a highly developed city like Philadelphia. However, unlike Shanghai with so many skyscrapers, Hangzhou is famous for its beautiful landscapes and abundant culture. In addition, because of significant improvements of technology, Hangzhou now marches into the Information Age. Now when we go out, we even don’t need to bring money or credit cards. All what we need is cell phone and ID because we can do any thing using app. We all have an online bank app to store money, and we now can use app to pay check at any store by scanning QR code, and it is much safer than using credit cards. In short, people have very convenient lives in Hangzhou than other places, and I love this city so much.

I would like to discuss Shanghai, China because I am familiar with this place. Shanghai is a harbor city, and because of its environmental advantages and some historical problems, it becomes the economic center in China. Shanghai also has high urban density. It has a larger population than Hangzhou, which is about 23,019,196 people live in the metropolitan area. People could choose walking, taxi, and bicycle as their way, especial the subway system. The subway system is well designed for efficient transportation. It contains 13 transport lines crossing the whole city, so that people can arrive any place quickly and conveniently by subway. Although lots of people drive in Shanghai, more and more people choose to take subway. Comparing to drive, subway is more efficiency and sustainable, so my city is exploiting the second line of subway now.

The second city I will be discussing is Venice, Italy. Even though Venice is also a harbor city, it is very different from other places in the world including my city. Hangzhou also contains many rivers, but unlike Hangzhou, Venice is surrounded by water; so that the transportation is mainly rely on gondolas. People in Venice use gondolas as their daily vehicle to go from one place to another. It can be defined as sustainable development in Venice since people make good use of environment advantages and produce less pollution than other vehicles. This is the factor that I am looking at when I am discussing this city. However, due to the Greenhouse gases and Global warming problems, the sea level raised, and maybe in one day Venice will disappear.