AN IDEAL ENVIRONMENT

First of all, an ideal environment would be an environment which has both natural and artificial features in balancing degrees, and the effects of one is not harmful to the other. I also believe that any "ideal environment" would have both natural and artificial structures working as a system; that is they complement each other in one way or a lot.

     Take a country like Nigeria for example. Every state should be demarcated by well-cared for thick covers of vegetation. Except the coasts, so that the trees do not act to prevent sea breeze, and the excess heat from the land can smoothly flow into the sea which has more capacity for heat.

     Every state should have economic, social, administrative and residential areas, all interspersed with social and cultural buildings.

     These types of areas would be in different numbers (i.e, there can't be one specific type of area in a state due to transportation cost) and scattered fairly well.

     The residential areas would be dotted with all sorts of ornamental vegetation for shade and oxygen sufficiency. And would be reasonably demarcated by roads,  ( which are also dowered with ornamental vegetation along them) from economic and administrative buildings. 

     While economic and administrative buildings would be built alongside each other and closer to the residential buildings. This way, buildings close to the residential ones would be government administrative and services buildings like secretariats, hospitals, schools… economic buildings like hotels, markets, restaurants, fashion houses, filling stations etc…

     Interspersed among the economic and administrative buildings would be socio- cultural buildings like the theatres, club houses, worship places ( which hold vigils) and so on,  so that residential areas would be peaceful at nights.

Now, these buildings, no matter their use would be built close to or far from residential buildings depending on factors such as noise and air pollution.

     With landscape cordinations as this (or better), places with delegated functions would be ideal for those functions as they would have every necessary infrastructure to make the life of its users as comfortable as possible; there won't be wasted projects (like rail lines along residential buildings) or city congestion and alot more benefits.

     The buildings that produce more amounts of greenhouse gases would be located such that the economic and administrative buildings would demarcate them from the residential buildings. This way, their emitted CO2 would be as far as possible from human habitation (per sé). This is to say also that residential, economic and administrative buildings should have little CO2 emissions as their power sources are not generated there and there are no generators that emit CO2. (ok, except from vehicles if they are not yet electric).

     All sorts of factory buildings would be located outside the residential, economic and administrative buildings. But then, the lighter industrial factories would be located nearer than heavier industrial buildings. The point is that more-emitting CO2 guys would be located farther away from comfort places.

     Not all states would have industrial areas; I mean facilities would be located in different locations based on comparative advantage. That said, all state's would have all forms of facilities, but in varying levels of complexity.

     And for some extra beautification and even carbon sequestration, not very broad waterways, with life such as fishes in them which are not exploited for food, would be constructed within every state; yes every state. It would be expensive though, but psychologically, having a water body in an area means there is more space, no congestion. And physically, it allows for fresh breeze which calms people and can thus improving productivity.

     This is just an idea for more equitable distribution of social amenities as well as wealth. It exists to discourage megacities like Lagos in Nigeria, whose status, I believe is born out of bad policies and backward goal setting. And the effect of the existence of which is evident in expanding slums, increase in the prices of houses and lands, congestion in almost every public place especially the roads and markets and higher levels of corrupt practices among government officials and so on.

     Although thanks to growing tech, we don't have to worry about noise when we are working; we have noise-cancelling headsets and soundproof windows and so on. We don't have to worry about cool breeze from our windows; we have ACs and the likes. But even so, our conventional landscapes are not ideal for good and healthy living. Except you teleport yourself from your house to your workplace or have your house and food store and everything you need in one place, you can't hide from the reality of the chaos of the world. Plus the issues we try to solve using our present level of tech can only last us so long and more importantly, are characteristic features of a scattered (though complex) world which is slowly but steadily falling apart; the policies of world leaders are acting only to cushion the fall. The world is complex enough for many people as it is, let's remove that "scattered-landscape" quality.

     In my opinion, an ideal environment should not harm its inhabitants even as the landscape provides you with all you need to live a good comfortable life; like the forests and other natural habitats are ideal for the animals that dwell in them without (or at least with little human influences). Anything outside this is an anomaly that should be corrected.

     Now this landscape description is far from all-encompassing. I've not mentioned locations of prisons which I believe should be in thesame category as industrial areas (obviously for security reasons) and other human features which are not in my train of thoughts. But I hope we reason with it, make it better and make it work.

     Even in a country like Nigeria, with over 200 million people, there (I believe) would still be some level of serenity in all parts of the country if this were the case with our cultural landscape setting.