Posted by Hiro on May 24, 19102 at 13:05:04:
In Japan where I live, we have much land developed for housing and industry already. I agree that the land developed was one of the key points to promote Japanese economy. However, there is enough land developed. I personally think we definitely need more land to be natural because natural land would provide us with some merits but direct economic promotion.
First of all, we can keep mental health in natural land while most of us in Japan have stress due to living in city. Many kinds of researches mention even walking in forest can make people at home and provide relief.
Second, natural land can support agriculture. For example, forest in mountain can keep water right after rain and later provide some part of water gradually to lower land so this function is very helpful for agriculture.
Finally increasing land to be developed leads not only benefits but also side effects. One of example is pollution. In Japan, unfortunately we had several diseases related to pollution from chemical plants. Of course we improved technologies to solve such the problem but we do and will not have a perfect solution.
Therefore, I think that it is important to have more land to be natural in Japan.