Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions on it. Living in urban areas has its challenges. To obtain accommodation in cities, one spends a lot of money. An average civil servant surrenders about half of his monthly salary to a landlord. Even so, the space for which one pays is severely limited. There is usually not much room for outdoor recreation, gardening, or parking of vehicles.
Yet, the situation, rather than abating, continues to worsen as long as there are far more accommodation seekers than available space.

The cost of a plot of land in cities, especially the central business districts, is several times the annual salary of a senior civil servant. When you work out the cost of constructing a house, and you arrive at a figure fifty times your annual income, you resign to your fate of being an eternal tenant. Year after year, the land available for sale continues to diminish and the cost of construction continues to rise.

Cities are not food producing, they are simply consumers. Food producing farmlands are far away in the rural areas. So, the cost of food items is very high in cities. A plate of food in a modest eatery in the city cost three times what a similar plate costs in a rural setting. Thus feeding an average family in a city is a task. In most cases, the average worker in any city works in a location many kilometres away from home. Therefore, he spends a lot of money on transportation. While it is true that cost of transportation in any city is not much different from that in the other parts of the country, when the daily sum are computed on a monthly basis, the difference is very substantial.

There is also the social side to contend with. Whereas in smaller communities, the pressure for social activities is not particularly high, in cities the need to go out with friends for one event or the other is always there. Every weekend, there are funerals, weddings, house dedication and graduation ceremonies. Each outing has its own financial demands. The number of events is great principally because in large community one’s circle of friends continues to expand. Whereas in rural setting, your friends and associates are few, in a city the higher one rises in status, the more friends one has.

Thus, when one considers the high cost of living in a city, and the low quality of air, food and water there, one might ask, “Why rush to a place that is extremely costly?” Is it not time for us all to encourage a return to the rural setting where the air is clean, the water is pure and food is not only cheap but also fresh? It time to locate industries, academic institutions, national and international offices in the rural areas. The earlier this is done, the better for all.
a. In four sentences, one for each, summarize the factors that make the cost of living in cities very high.
b. In two sentences, one for each, summarize what the writer considers the way out.