The ever increasing levels of population creates concerns arise in relation to matters of territory, personal space and privacy. With an increasing population, the world is becoming densely populated resulting in overall effect on personal space and privacy. It is instructive to appreciate the fact that as population increases, the overall habitable area on the earth remains constant in most cases thereby occasioning a relative strain on resources. The paper shall examine matters of territoriality, privacy and persona space. From the onset, it is essential to acknowledge the fact that with increased population, people have to compound with less privacy and space for their own persons.
Territoriality refers to the philosophy of a person relative to sharing of space with others. In logical scenarios, it would be expected that a person be willing and ready to share whatever little space available with others. In that context, the shared space is in respect of public and or private spaces. However, it is not true that every person would be willing to share the public and or private space. Territoriality refers to the extent to which one would be willing to share the space. The willing is often revealed by the character of the person shown in the way one conducts himself or herself.
Privacy refers to the concept of being private. The state of being private entails being left alone from the presence and scrutiny of the public eye. Ordinarily, one would want to enjoy a degree of privacy under which he or she can do his or her things undisturbed or unnoticed. The level of privacy demanded and desired by persons differs depending on one’s own personal philosophy. There are those individuals who would want maximum privacy while others would want minimum privacy.
Finally, personal space relates to the area or region that surrounds an individual that one would naturally regard as being his or hers. In that context, personal space needs to be examined from a psychological perspective. It refers to that surrounding within the immediate surroundings of the person that he considers to be his. In that vein, personal space ought not to be invaded without the consent of the individual.
With population becoming denser, there has been a real strain on territoriality, personal space and privacy. This is because of the relative lesser space available. Consequently, it has become important for regimes to seek to define and enforce some of these elements. For instance, the need has been created for the inculcation of the concept of privacy. With limited space, people have been confronted with situations in which they invaded the privacy of others. It has become necessary to define what space belongs to one and to what extent the law expects others to respect the space. In addition, it has been important for people to limit their territories to the least space possible. In that vein, people have had to contend with other people and thereby shared their spaces with others.
Nature has equally had an effect on people living in urban environments. This is a result of the competition for space between nature and the development needs of the urban environment. In many cases, nature has had to be sacrificed through reductions, sharing and even elimination in worst cases. This has been the consequence of an increased demand for space. Often nature is sacrificed because of its low economic returns as compared to other development needs such as industries, roads, and housing, among others. The final output has been the detrition of the quality of environment for human habitation. The effect has seen the urban environment become less friendly for habitation as compared to the quality of rural areas.
Noise refers to the disorder sounds that do not make sense to persons. In the industrial and knowledge age, noise has been a major by-product of industries and mechanization. In that scope, noise levels have increased to levels that have previously not been felt and or anticipated. It has had several effects on individuals. It is instructive to note that the levels of noise experienced in modern industrial areas has reached levels now considered as noise pollution. The effects have been in social and health manifestation. Noise population has occasioned cases of destroyed ear drums, reduced or lost hearing abilities, among other health implications. On a social context, noise pollution has been credited for reduced communication between persons, inability to peacefully coexist and correlate due to noise inconveniences, tension and conflict among community members, among other inconveniences. In the overall, noise has led to the reduction in productivity and the health status of affected communities. It is equally important to tie the levels of noise experienced to the increased levels of population. With the population having increased to record numbers, noisy industries have had to settle even within areas of human habitation where the noise released leads to high levels of pollution. The reduced geographical areas has had the effect of limiting the space available. The net effect has been the previously mentioned reduced health standards and productivity of populations.
It is this paper’s contention that the noise problem is mainly experienced at the workplace. This paper, therefore, seeks to propose two main strategies that industries need to employ so that they ultimately reduce the levels of noise at the workplace. The process of noise reduction must assume a technical character since the noise pollution is courtesy of a technical process. It is the proposal of this paper that the industries affected by way of contribution to the noise pollution need to examine their devices and operational systems. The first strategy need to be premised on mitigation and minimization concept. Under this strategy, industries need to only use the noisy machines if and when need arises. By this it is the assumption that other options would have been exhausted and that the processing would be structured in a way that only allows machines to run on the minimum time possible. This strategy equally involves mitigating the effects of the populace. Measures towards mitigation include the use of protective gear for personnel working directly in the work place, rotation of personnel so that not a set of personnel are continuously exposed, location of noise machines in non-residential sites, among others.
The second strategy entails the eliminate system. Under the system of elimination, the organization examines its systems and elects to replace all the stages, processes, and or systems that contribute to noise pollution. Safer and less noisy alternatives are pursued. Often these alternatives come with increased costs but the costs would be justified by the long term benefits attendant to the implementation.
References
Francis, J., Corti, B., & Wood, L. (2012). Creating sense of community: The role of public space. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 32(4), 401-409.
Steg, L., & Vlek, C. (2009). Encouraging pro-environmental behaviour: An integrative review and research agenda. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 309-317.
