modern city outline

The world’s population is growing rapidly, but the world’s urban population is growing four times as fast. Megacities, cities over 10 million in population, are increasing in number but only in the developing world which now accounts for 13 of the 20 largest urban agglomerations… If one were to compare a map of the world as it was around the year 1900 with one of the world in 2000, two changes would be strikingly apparent: _1. The proliferation of independent nations and 2. The mushrooming numbers and the sizes of cities. Around the year 1800, perhaps 3% of the world’s population lived in urban places of 5,000 people or more. The proportion had risen to more than 13% by 1900 and skyrocketed to more than 47% by 2000. By 2007, the “blue marble” on which we live had become an “urban marble”. For the first time in human history, more than half of earth’s people made their homes in urban areas.

In the industrial countries of Europe, North America, some of Asia, and Australia—the more developed countries (MDCs) as the U.N. calls them—urbanization accompanied and was the consequence of industrialization. Although far from utopias, cities in those regions brought previously undreamed-of prosperity and longevity to millions. Industrial and economic growth combined with rapid urbanization to produce a demographic transformation that brought declining population growth and enabled cities to expand apace with economic development. In the developing countries of Latin America, Africa, and most of Asia—the less developed countries (LDCs)—urbanization has occurred only partly as the result of industrial and economic growth and in many countries it has occurred primarily as the result of rising expectations of rural people who have flocked to the cities seeking escape from misery (and often not finding it). This march to the cities, unaccompanied until very recently by significant declines in natural population growth, has resulted in the explosion of urban places in