City...

I have just been to Melaka and Kuala Lumpur again last week.. now back to Kuching.
What I saw and experienced made me to ask, why are we hurtling towards becoming a huge city with all its so called modern contraptions? Why cant we stay as we are and maintain our ecology?
These questions came about as I sat in taxi after taxi, car after car, in traffic jam after traffic jam, yet the city guys showered praises of their city. Yet it took hours just to move from one place to another. People were rushing everywhere and were rather rude and inconsiderate. I could barely see any greenery, and even as I flew back I could only see cement and brown (see pic). Do we in Sarawak want that? While I was there people were talking of water rationing, the increasing cost of electricity and cost of living. My dear old friend in Melaka told me that the prices of everything has gone up so much. Yet everyone seemed to want to live in a city... which was weird for me.
I wonder is this becoming a concern for me because I am getting older?
I understand the economics of the matter at hand.. but then why can those in the far off European countries can have self sustaining cities, renewable energy, use run off water and the like for their cities. Somehow or rather I feel like we are wasting our resources in order to become modern, instead of managing our resources. But the question remains.. can we manage our resources in such a way that we do not have to be cities? Can our people survive? Must we become cities?
I like how Kuching is.. now... and yet I know it is growing and becoming the nightmare that I do not wish to be in. More and more buildings and housing developed in haphazard ways, more and more cars (and associated bad drivers) and less roads and car parks with no significant public services, more and more older / sick / ets persons and less and less services to cater for this (unless you have wads of cash to pay for it in private institutions). I now understand why my mother moved house, from town to suburban to rural and I also understand why so many persons have land at their village or dream of having a place away from the maddening crowd.
Yup.. the maddening crowd.. that sums it well.
Maybe its old age.. thats why I dont want to be in a maddening crowd... hmmm.
Your thoughts..
E