From your comment, I'm getting the sense that you live in a besieged fortress. It doesn't have to be so extreme though. Singapore is no dystopia, and neither i

From your comment, I'm getting the sense that you live in a besieged fortress. It doesn't have to be so extreme though. Singapore is no dystopia, and neither is London (in fact, I'd prefer living in the latter than the former if only because of the weather). They just make different tradeoffs in how they're organized. And they deal with different (though overlapping) sets of issues.