Title: Urban areas swell.

POPLINE Document Number: 133849

Author(s):

Mitchell JD

Source citation:

In: Vital signs 1998: the environmental trends that are shaping our future [by] Lester R. Brown, Michael Renner, Christopher Flavin, Linda Starke, Janet N. Abramovitz, Seth Dunn, Hilary F. French, Gary Gardner, Brian Halweil, Nicholas Lenssen. New York, New York, W.W. Norton, 1998. :108-9.

Abstract:

750 million people worldwide lived in urban areas in 1950. Now, however, that number has increased to 2.64 billion, with approximately 61 million people added to cities each year through rural-to-urban migration, natural demographic increase within cities, and the transformation of villages into new urban areas. In most countries, the number of city dwellers is growing faster than the national population such that people living in urban areas account for a steadily growing share of world population. UN estimates indicate that more than half of the world will live in urban areas within the next decade. One-third of all city dwellers live in industrial countries. The number of urban areas is also increasing, including the addition of rapidly growing megacities, urban conglomerations with more than 10 million people. The quality of life in many urban centers of the developing world is poorer than that in rural areas due to the overwhelmingly large and growing populations competing for limited available resources. The heavy influx of poor people lured to urban centers in developing countries by the prospects of jobs, better education, and/or improved services tends to lead to high levels of homelessness and unemployment, pollution and congestion, the loss of agricultural land, and the accumulation of nutrients and waste. Massive infrastructure investments will be needed in order to preserve the comparative advantages of cities.

Keywords:

Global
Developed Countries
Developing Countries
Urbanization
Urban Population
Urban Population Distribution
Population Distribution
Geographic Factors
Population
Population Characteristics
Demographic Factors