some people think that the best way to reduce time spent in traveling to work is to replace parks and gardens close to the city center with apartment buildings for commuters, but others disagree. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

With the sweeping trend of urbanization, people in increasing numbers are inclined to spend more time traveling back and forth to work. Under this circumstance, an absolute consensus can hardly be reached whether building apartments instead of parks and gardens near the city center is the most suitable approach to address this problem. I will make an objective analysis of this argument in my following essay. Some people harbor the belief that this practice does a great job in reducing the commuting time of many employees if well carried out. To be specific, living in apartment buildings close to the workplace is extremely effective in saving a large amount of time for the reason that commuters do not have to travel too much, even they can walk to their offices. In effect, this is a beautiful dream for those who have been plagued by heavy traffic congestion in major cities on their way to and from work. However, others maintain that it is an extremely demanding job for people to imagine what the city center would look like when millions of people flooded into numerous apartment buildings there. It would become much more crowded and polluted than ever before. When people intend to find a park or garden for leisure and relaxation, they have no alternative to spend a few hours traveling out of town. Not to mention that working in a concrete jungle, people can hardly gain the pressure which is of paramount importance in their work and life. From my own perspective, I side with the stance of the latter to a larger extent, believing that the benefits they have gained from shortened traveling time by building more apartments would be undone. Actually, more effective and feasible measures can be adopted with the aim to reduce commuting time. A case in point is that tele-commuting through advanced telecommunication technologies enables people to work at home and the government should invest more to improve infrastructure construction and perfect road system. In addition, the meaning of public areas is more than beautifying the city and they have more practical functions such as providing urban residents with the space to do outdoor activities to keep healthy and relieve their pressure. Accordingly, city planners should consider comprehensive planning towards the problems triggered by urban sprawl.