World Population Becomes More Urban Than Rural

Source: NC State University

There’s no big countdown billboard or sign in Times Square to denote it, but Wednesday, May 23, 2007, represents a major demographic shift, according to scientists from North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia: For the first time in human history, the earth’s population will be more urban than rural.

Working with United Nations estimates that predict the world will be 51.3 percent urban by 2010, the researchers projected the May 23, 2007, transition day based on the average daily rural and urban population increases from 2005 to 2010. On that day, a predicted global urban population of 3,303,992,253 will exceed that of 3,303,866,404 rural people.

“So far, cities are getting whatever resource needs that can be had from rural areas,” he said. “But given global rural impoverishment, the rural-urban question for the future is not just what rural people and places can do for the world’s new urban majority. Rather, what can the urban majority do for poor rural people and the resources upon which cities depend for existence? The sustainable future of the new urban world may well depend upon the answer.”

Read more: http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/2007/may/104.html

Growth in many of the biggest cities has slowed as they come up against environmental (and perhaps distance) limits, and developing-country birth rates have come down faster than expected, meaning fewer excess rural inhabitants to move to town. The NCSU piece is rather pessimistic in tone: cities don't just pollute, they provide livelihoods to the countryside's surplus. Half of today's global urban population derives from the countrydwellers of 1950: that's a lot of rural poverty alleviation, even if urban life for hundreds of millions still offers a precarious and overcrowded alternative.

... on the way we live our lives this century, than most of the headlines from today! The shift to an urban population has had tremendous effects on economic, social, and political conditions in Canada (and then the US) this past century. In the developing world, we're now looking at cities with bigger populations than some countries -- tremendously exciting (and also of concern).

Thanks for posting.