If you take a break for a minute and look around in a comparatively busier city, one thing might attract you.
A massive number of billboards, brightly shining advertisements, telephone and television cables scattered everywhere like demonic creatures, very little management of public hygiene, and so on.
Simply saying, one can find it not so bothering at first. But we all know that surroundings affect the psyche of city dwellers on a large scale. Here, the issue of visual pollution comes.
Visual pollution is another form of pollution that has severe consequences for our lives and places. The familiar sources and causes of visual pollution also cause other forms of pollution.
So, giving importance to visual pollution will help prevent other forms of pollution. The impacts of visual pollution should be taken into account seriously and controlled with the coordination and cooperation among the central government, municipal authorities, and citizens.
Before knowing the Visual Pollution Facts, we should know what’s the actual meaning of visual pollution.
What Does Visual Pollution Mean?
Psychologists say that views of a city largely affect a citizen’s mental condition. Think. Middle-class inhabitants of big cities are always in a hurry.
Comparatively, a farmer who produces a food crop leads a less stressful life, although works very hard. City life needs glamour and glittering.
Too much of these often hampers the usual way of vision. That’s how visual pollution takes place at present.
The contamination which weakens a person’s ability to enjoy a view is visual pollution. Often, people don’t consider visual pollution as significant as other forms of pollution, such as air pollution, noise pollution, water pollution, littering, etc. That is the main reason visual pollution is an aesthetic issue.
Visual Pollution Facts: What are the familiar sources of visual pollution?
- Construction: City areas can’t rise without a massive amount of buildings. Too much quantity of buildings hinders the natural state of a city. Without proper planning, the constructions of a town often become kind of hazard. The same thing is true about visual pollution. Today, it’s one of the prime issues which creates this problem.
- Cables: Electric wires which we use for connecting telephone or TV create visual pollution. One can consider cables as the primary source of visual pollution, as it notifies its presence more often. In developing countries, this problem is more acute in cities. Not only that, it frequently creates accidents.
- Advertising: Today’s economy is unimaginable without advertising. Big cities are the heart of modern marketing, so publicizing is a must. Too much of it can create a sort of psychological cacophony. Undoubtedly, today’s way of advertising seems like a silent altercating of images and words.
- Littering: In the third world, many cities in developed countries lack proper trash maintenance. People often throw garbage at unexpected places like roads and sidewalks. Cigarettes, polybags, plastic bottles etc often create unnecessary mess. Littering indeed is visual trouble.
- Junkyard: For a city, proper waste management is essential. Especially in developing countries, landfills repeatedly cause irreparable climate problems. Moreover, for many years developing countries send their waste to developing countries. As a result, landfill conditions in this region are getting worse gradually.
- Light Pollution: Cities need light sources and need more for proper traffic control, publicizing, and different government or private events. Sophisticated and extended lighting systems are inseparable parts of modern cities. With many other obstacles, light pollution in the cities creates visual problems. City dwellers often suffer from mental alienation, delusion, and other issues.
- Airports: Without airplanes, one can’t imagine modern megacities. Air transport is essential for international trade, export-import, and intercontinental issues. Airports often maintain too many comings and goings of airplanes. The excess appearance of aircraft creates visual pollution.
Causes of visual pollution
- Lack of control over city construction and design.
- Over commercialization of cities by machinist way of being.
- Uncontrolled consumerism.
- Present lifestyle which provokes to ignore everything without the thinker.
- Excess Usage of mobile and television technology.
- Conservative way of thinking which doesn’t allow any change.
Visual Pollution Facts: Effects of visual pollution
- Mental Effects: Visual indiscipline can affect mental health. People living near the main road or a place full of lights often lack proper rest or sleep. It can become fatal gradually.
- Result on Plant and Animal Life: Although some animals and plants have adapted to the existing city ways, visual pollution has negatively affected animal and plant life. Especially, plant diversity faces excellent danger because of visual pollution.
Health Effects: Visual pollution affects public health frequently. Research shows that people affected by visual pollution experience more diseases than other people. Recent health problems like early hair fall, sudden hypertension, etc., are often the result of gradual visual pollution.
Inferior Life Quality: Quality of life depends very much on surroundings. Visual corruption hampers the quality of life on a huge scale. For example, living in the corner of the city full of trashes or worst construction can seriously affect the physique.
Top countries that are affected by visual pollution
Though there is no such index where statistics show which countries are influenced mainly by visual pollution, we can use the causes of visual pollution to predict those countries.
Countries with flawed urban control systems without proper waste management will likely be the probable countries with many industries.
Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, and the USA are more likely to be the countries that are affected by visual pollution.
How to prevent it?
Preventing visual pollution will require cooperation from the government, municipal authorities, and citizens. Worthwhile steps are necessary to reduce this pollution. Here, some ways to lower visual pollution. Viz:
- Shortening Physical Advertising: Advertising is an excellent issue for visual pollution. Mainly, billboards in the urban areas cause much somatic distraction. Authority should make and apply proper laws to let a certain number of billboards for commercial needs. Too much usage of billboards shouldn’t be allowed.
- Preventing Littering: We often blame only the expected mass for littering. But municipal authorities are not less responsible for it. City administrations should introduce appropriate signs to aware its people about the bad sequences of littering. Experiments show that these signs help people to know about it.
- Private Transport Issues: Private transports, primarily cars, are a significant source of visual pollution. An increasing number of vehicles escalate physical decay as well. City dwellers should avoid cars as everyday means of transport. Instead of this, public transport users can be an easy and worthwhile way.
- Consciousness About Waste Production: One of the prime causes of visual pollution is the waste problem. Not only in developing countries, but even developed countries also face this problem. Ordinary people, especially the affluent and middle-class mass, often produce much waste by their everyday works. Food consumption, shopping, maintaining household creates waste at an unexpected level. The visual pollution problem can be easier in many ways by reducing waste production.
- Construction Rules in City Areas: City authorities should set new rules for buildings. Urban administrations should allow those buildings only that don’t hamper that part of the city’s visual quality. Moreover, a city’s plant ecology is serious about increasing its visible state.
- Changing Lifestyle by Social Means: We should change several sides of our lifestyle. But it should perform creatively. Instead of imposing laws everywhere, social activities can help improve various aspects of lifestyle. Awareness about urban aesthetics can help it out in many respects.
Current situations in USA, England, Australia, New Zealand etc.
- The USA is suffering from visual pollution because of unimaginative house developments, glaring shopping centers, and roadside commercial billboards.
- England is also suffering from visual pollution as Campaign to Protect Rural England in 2007 demonstrated that almost half of the total area of England suffers from visual and noise pollution, with 70% of the southeast being affected.
- Australia and New Zealand do not suffer much from visual pollution. Those countries are well-governed and planned with industrial zones are adequately restricted, and authorities banned billboards in residential areas.
What are our responsibilities?
- Choosing the right and appropriate authority for the cities is the primary responsibility. Leaders who rush for only physical development don’t think about the visual quality of a city that much. So, eco-friendly leadership would be convenient.
- Instead of teaching aesthetics in art colleges traditionally, its application in city arrangements should spread. Sounds funny, but it can work if used properly. We should update our outlook to think accurately.
- Visual pollution footprint can be applied. Like carbon footprint, we can make it measurable, and thus the ways of correction can appear quickly.
- Cultural campaigns can work very nicely. We often notice that this sort of activity can perform much better than other sorts. Visual problem is a cultural issue and environmental one, so the cultural medium can do the best if used accurately.
FAQs.
- What Relates Visual Pollution with Real Pollution: Well, there is no direct link between visual pollution with actual environmental pollution. But it has mental and psychological sequences. Examples are abandunt. Cities with much visual pollution often bring much natural pollution as well.
- How Visual Pollution Damages a City: Experience shows that visual pollution frequently occurs by a lack of proper maintenance and planning. It doesn’t damage a city directly, but sound thinking can answer this question. City planners should include visual issues to avoid pollution.
- Does Visual Pollution Affects Mentally: Yes, it’s true. The gradual appearance of visual pollution can affect the psyche of the city inhabitants. Researches show that people who experience inferior visual quality every day suffers from obsession in many ways.
- Do Commercial Ads Increase it: Yes, they increase indeed. Megacities around the world pollute the visual horizon of the city dwellers in every aspect of life. But it’s not the only scenario. Even an irregular transport system that works against the very spirit of a city can pollute visual attributes.
Conclusion
Though visual pollution is still not recognized by governments and citizens as many other pollutions, it is time to give importance.
It isn’t an aesthetic issue anymore as it has severe consequences for physical and mental health and affects the country and its economy.
We can reduce visual pollution by introducing appropriate laws and regulations, educating and convincing citizens to abide by those laws.
Cooperation and coordination among the central government, municipal authority, and citizens must ensure this in this regard. After reading this article you will get everything about Visual Pollution Facts.
Summary of Visual Pollution Facts
At present, urban lives around the world have become harder to survive. It sounds exaggerated, but pollution and ecological damage have agonised human lives.
Again, our collective activities also damaged the natural world’s visual appearance. Thus, the matter of visual pollution comes.
Many people can say that it’s not a big issue, but they say the same thing about other problems.
It’s not just an aesthetic issue; many crucial certitudes also matter. Over modernization, negligence about nature and ecology, commercial interest-centric planning, and ruthless speed of collective life are the main reasons.
Awareness among people, authorities, leaders, and scientists is mandatory to prevent visual pollution. On the other hand, a humanistic and nature-centric view of reality can support building city lives with lesser visual pollution.
References
- www.environmental-conscience.com
- www.euston96.com
- www.content.sciendo.com
- www.pollutionissues.com
- www.lightpollutionmap.info
- www.nationalgeographic.com
- www.globeatnight.org
- www.darkskiesawareness.org