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IMAGES PROVIDED BY:

1) Flickr Select / Getty

2) Getty Images

3) Gavin Heller / Getty

4)

5) Carl Skaggs

6) Panoramic Images

7) Joseph Plotz / Getty

8) Marc Crumpler / Flickr

9) Andy Sacks / Stone

10) Martin Barraud / OJO

11) Danita Delimont / Gallo Images

12) Denis Jr. Tangney / Getty

13)

14) Getty Images

15) Dennis Macdonald / Getty

16)

17) iStock / Getty

SOURCES:

American Lung Association: "State of the Air 2016."
Maricopa County, AZ Air Quality Department: "What is Ozone?"
City of Ft. Collins: "About Ft. Collins."
American Lung Association: "Report Card: Colorado."
Las Vegas.com: "Las Vegas Weather."
National Resources Defense Council: "Air Pollution: Smog, Smoke and Pollen."
Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles: "Smog Spotter."
Denver: The Mile High City: "Weather."
Denver: The Mile High City: "Denver at a Glance."
Britt Coyne, air quality programs coordinator, American Lung Association, Colorado.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: "Geographic Area of Focus: San Joaquin Valley."
Climate Central: "The Heat is On: U.S. Temperature Trends."
USGS: "The Central Valley: Sacramento Valley."
American Lung Association: "State of the Air 2015: Most Polluted Cities."
Greater Phoenix Convention & Visitor's Bureau: "Phoenix Weather."
Arizona Central: "Phoenix still sixth-largest city in U.S.; officials say population undercounted."
AirNow: "You Can Help Keep the Air Cleaner -- Every Day."
American Lung Association: "News Release."
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American Lung Association California: "County Trend Charts San Joaquin Valley Region."
American Lung Association: "State of the Air 2015: Bakersfield."
Bakersfield Visitors and Convention Bureau.
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Salinas, California: "Community Profile."
Monterey Herald: "Salinas ranked 6th in nation for air quality."

Reviewed by Luqman Seidu, MD on May 04, 2016

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Slideshow: 10 Wost Smog Cities in America

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IMAGES PROVIDED BY: 1) Flickr Select / Getty 2) Getty Images 3) Gavin Heller / Getty 4) 5) Carl Skaggs 6) Panoramic Images 7) Joseph Plotz / Getty 8) Marc Crumpler / Flickr 9) Andy Sacks / Stone 10) Martin Barraud / OJO 11) Danita Delimont / Gallo Images 12) Denis Jr.

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Levels of pollution reached record highs this week across India. In Delhi the government declared the poor air quality an 'emergency situation'

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City Pictures, High Quality Desktop Photos (45+) | GZHaixieR Collections

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City Pictures (45): City Wallpapers New, City HQ Definition Wallpaper Download, Charlesetta Bendel, City Awesome Photo | 44809600 City Wallpapers, 4226x2783

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BY: Oswaldo Paulo Forattini

The inconveniences of the urban environment for the quality of life of man are admitted in a consensual way. They consubstantiate themselves in their polluted, exhausting, violent, stressful, socially insulating and difficult to solve aspects. The nature of the problems of this environment is reasonably well known, but the same can not be said of the awareness that cities are also the major contributors to the planet's environmental threats as a whole. The acceleration and the excessive increase of the urbanization process, with the increasing concentration of the human population, besides deteriorating the quality of life, tends to exhaust, in a never seen rhythm, the resources of the biosphere.

In the face of this alarm, there is the beginning of reaction to this state of things, with the emergence of individual and collective consciousness. Hence the recent emphasis on the development of what is known as "urban ecology" as an area of ​​study and planning. In countries where this orientation is in progress, it is assumed that the existence of an ecologically sound city ("ecocity"), ie in balance with the natural environment and the society that inhabits it (Bruning2 , 1991). Thus, there would not necessarily be an incompatibility between the installation of an urban center and the quality of life of man. The question is mainly how to install it, so as to offer its inhabitants culture, education, health, leisure, social interaction, work opportunities and an efficient and fair distribution of services and benefits. These objectives are currently a field of intense study in so-called developed societies, ie the First World. As for the third-largest city of São Paulo, the immense problems with which it finds itself in arms, challenge the studies destined to find suitable solutions to the quality of life of its inhabitants. It is to be hoped that future generations of Paulistas will engage in this goal and find ways to provide better life for themselves and their descendants.

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BY: Oswaldo Paulo Forattini

In Brazil, urban development since the colonial period has been the subject of numerous studies and publications. In our country, this process of formation of the cities began as a necessity to establish nuclei of stable colonization and military defense, and later, with the advent of the industrial era, to reflect the consequent economic development. This was particularly significant in the case of the State of São Paulo, whose Capital, after the first decades of this century, had its intense growth as a translation of this development of the local economy (Reis Filho, 1968, Singer21, 1968; Thus, in general, the country condition, basically urban, was reached by Brazil, in the short period of time corresponding to the period from 1940 to 1970.

Before that time, the country was still essentially rural, since 69% of its population lived in the countryside in 1940. In the decade of the 60, the evolution of the eminently urban character of São Paulo runs parallel to the decrease of the rural contingent, evidencing the progress of the urbanization of the regional population.

During this period, the industrial outbreak of the city of São Paulo grew intensely, based on infrastructures originating from previous decades, when the coffee economy expanded (Ronca19, 1983). This is the end of the 80's with this city transformed into a metropolis or megalopolis, in which the consequences for the quality of life of its inhabitants result from this evolution without any prior and adequate planning, at least in the proportion that would be desired.

Collective Aspects

In a recent publication, the São Paulo City Council released information aiming at the possible future adjustment of life in this city (Rolnik et al., 1990). The main data concerning the demographic profile, the distribution of income, the use of space and other aspects that, in the words of this document, have made São Paulo the "city of industrialized underdevelopment" can be found there. Much of the data presented below has this origin.

The region corresponding to the so-called Greater São Paulo, currently has a population of 17.4 million inhabitants, with vegetative growth influenced by the increase in life expectancy at birth and consequent population aging. This growth is not uniform, but it stands out in certain areas ("rings") and in the decade of the 80s there was a certain balance between the decennial vegetative (16.33%) and the migratory (17.16% ) in the same period. However, this rapid growth, leading to the expansion of the urban area, was not accompanied, to the same extent, by adequate expansion of basic infrastructure, such as sanitation and transportation. As a result, there was a progressive deterioration of the quality of life, whose direction assumed a centripetal aspect, that is, walking from the periphery to the central zone. It is true that, as from the 1970s, there was considerable expansion in water supplies, medical care and vaccine coverage for certain infections. This resulted in an increase in life expectancy, with infant mortality declining to an estimated 35.1% and at the end of the 1980s. However, in the same period, it was observed the occurrence of localized increases in this coefficient, in relation to Certain neighborhoods, and attributed to pulmonary diseases in children less than one year of age, suggesting a worsening of housing conditions (Baldijão apud Rolnik et al.18, 1990). This phenomenon was associated with the proliferation of tenements, that is, occupation of residential buildings deteriorated "a posteriori". In the metropolitan region of São Paulo in 1985, the number of poor and non-poor people who did not have a potable water supply or a domestic sewage system could be obtained (Rocha17,1990) :

Which resulted, for that year, in more than 4 million inhabitants deprived of these basic services.

The percentage corresponding to poor families reached 42.1 in 1987 (Lopes and Gottschalk12, 1990). At the end of the 1980s and at the beginning of the 1990s there is still no evidence to suggest a significant change in this situation. As in previous years, in São Paulo, the cost of living for the poor continues to be the highest in the country, especially due to food expenditures (Rocha17,1990). Thus, this situation reflects a marked level of social inequality and a change in the trend of spatial distribution by the low-income population. Over the last ten years, in several districts or sub-districts, there has been a trend towards an increase in the participation of low-income groups, with some receiving up to 60.0% of the poor among their inhabitants. Thus, in 1977 there were 34 areas with a predominance of low-income population, but predominantly located in the limits of the municipality. After 10 years, and therefore in 1987, although they were reduced to 25, and still in the periphery, it was noticed its appearance in more central areas, through the proliferation of tenements. This decrease does not reflect an improvement in the inequality picture, since there has been a multiplication of neighborhoods where poor and intermediate layers merge. What actually happened was the reduction of family income levels, also reaching the middle standard layers. As a result of this flattening in the levels of remuneration, the various strata approached in various regions of the city. In other words, many poor people abandoned their dwellings on the outskirts and began occupying tenements in the center of the city. In turn, the remedies had to move from their central residences, and move to more peripheral areas. To this phenomenon, the already deceived publication17 calls the "perverse diminution of socio-spatial segregation". As a final result, pauperization occurred, affecting most of the inhabitants of São Paulo.

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By: Oswaldo Paulo Forattini

The city constitutes an anthropic ecosystem, where the degree of artificiality reaches its highest level.

Nowadays, there is the effect of the urbanization process, in an increasing number of nuclei, practically untying the human being from his relationship with nature. This results in particularly intense and concentrated aspects in relatively limited areas. The consequences are felt at considerable distances. This is due to the need for massive energy input into the urban area. In addition to that represented by food, they stand out from fuel and electricity. Taken at distant sites, they are transformed, concentrated and, where possible, stored for further use. As a consequence, there is intense production of residues that represent the reversion to the unconcentrated state, and which are mainly composed of the excrement and the heat.

It is therefore to be considered that the development of the urban environment results in intense and profound manipulation of the environment. Hence there are marked changes that affect the landscape, the community, the psychological and physiological state of the inhabitants, as well as giving rise to cultural factors, both economic and political, that individually or collectively influence or even determine the quality of life of the population there resident. Thus, the characteristics of the urban environment can be enumerated, as follows:

1 - remoteness and absence of contact with the natural environment.

2 - concentration and high population density, in limited space.

3 - predominance of industrial activity and service rendering.

As already mentioned, indicators related to the urban environment have been used in their concrete character. Thus, we have evaluated the aspects concerning morbidity, mortality, life expectancy at birth and many others. In this order of ideas, the quality of collective life is seen as representing or not, social problem. And this since it, respectively, reaches or not, level considered unsatisfactory, according to these indicators. In case of being a problem, it is certain that its solution is independent of the performance of individuals, taken in isolation, but rather depends on the behavior of the population, structured in society. This, placed in front of the problematic, will adopt attitude that could be of acceptance, of coexistence or of attempt of solution. Therefore, it is necessary to consider how the previously mentioned factors act in the way and satisfaction of living, in other words, in the well-being of the inhabitants of the city.

Since the end of World War II, there has been a marked increase in the phenomenon of urbanization, for which the authors have put forward many explanations. To the classic theory of industrial development that has made cities grow, there is added that of the agricultural mechanization that leads, as a result, the labor to concentrate in the urban environment. Who, why, and how, engages in rural-urban migration are issues that are related to aspects of social structure and socio-economic conditions, that is, the wealth distribution system. For some, one can distinguish voluntary migrants from those who have no other alternative for survival (Du Toit, 1990). Be that as it may, this tendency has led, due to its disorderly character, to the exacerbation of urban aspects, consubstantiated in concentration, communication, transportation, security and pollution. As a consequence, they begin to have an intense influence on the quality of life of the population, falling on the aforementioned determinants that compromise the satisfaction of living, both individually and collectively.

In an article like this, it will be difficult to obtain a global and detailed approach to all the aspects currently involved in determining the quality of urban life. Although society, as an ecological phenomenon that is not a private feature of the human species, is peculiar to the extreme complexity that has reached and continues to grow. Leaving aside the inevitable interrelationship of multiple factors, one might consider the pre-eminence of those mentioned in the previous paragraph in the characterization of city life.