Well i just got out of a UN meeting on the future urbanization of the world. Turns out by 2050 (edit its not 2020 its 2050) (rough estimate using todays continuing growth rates) we will have 23 Mega cities. Cities with more then 100 million people living in them. Just to point out in comparision Karachi has only 16 million people.
By 2050 it is expected that 2/3s of the world will be living in huge cities, and that cities would be forced to expand. Consider it like NYC taking over Trenton and New Jersey city to form one city.
Then of course with all this info comes to mind the Judge Dread Scenerio. Large cities being built to the sky, or say star wars were Coursant is a planet which is just one large city built layer upon layer.
So the future seems high rise orientated the question is would it be possible to have such huge cities and so many people and maintain law and order. Considering the threat of terrorism would be much stronger with such large cities.
Depends on the continued rate of obesity NYA. NYA you want to insult me open a new thread i will more than willingly oblige for a stupid fight. However i would like to discuss this matter seriously.
On topic; there is the issue of the environment. Land Degeneration and the like makes it worse for agriculture. That means less people work on the lands as they won’t grow food stuffs. That forces them to move to the city to get work.
Of course unless you are the US and use extremely efficient technology to grow food, its is forseeable that there will be a food shortage along with the population growth rate.
Food shortages act as a means to control population. When a region’s population exceeds it ability to provide food, that means the region is overpopulated. The resulting starvations and deaths will reduce the population to a level that the land can support once more.
Estimate of 23 cities by 2020 with population of more than 100 million each is too unrealistic. We are talking about only fifteen more years here. Tokyo is the most populated city with 26.5 million people. So you are saying that in just 15 more years it’s population will reach more than 100 million? I want to know what kind of grass they are smoking at UN?
According to what they said the population of the world will be 9 billion plus by 2050. That is a typo. That should be 2050. Will edit that.
Medic true but consider it an issue of law and order. Not to mention terrorism. The Developed world produces food far more efficiently thought it is less cost effective. The amount of surplus food the US produces in a year could feed africa the whole continent for 4 months.
So be it NYA. Could you comment on the matter at hand?
That quote, no man is an island, it certainly won't apply anymore huh. Well it doesn't now either but the saddest thing about megacities and increasing urbanization is not the crime or the ugliness of steel and concrete but the robot-ness of life and the isolation from neighbours. I wonder what will happen to all the beautiful places in the world, whether they will be completely chopped down.
By the way, as a kid I was taught in a class that huge chunks of places like Bangladesh will disappear because of increasing global warming, more flooding, higher water levels. Doesn't that apply to NYC as well?
Sarah that is why many wish to live in the suburbs. However you can see that current suburbs closer to the cities becoming more and more run down with increasing social and cultural tensions within the city. Karachi is a perfect example of this. Do you consider increased urbanization to be basically a move away from "natural" environment (this question is posed to all just not Sarah.)
Nope. This i am clear on as i reconfirmed it. 23 Mega cities with 100 million. You see there are easily more the 50 cities in the world with over 10 million people. So 23 with 100 million works in 2050.
Yeah of course increasing urbanization is a move away from environment, we've seen that time and time again with species in droves becoming exinct. If it's not cutting down trees for us, it's indirectly for us thanks to pharmaceutical companies. Someone was scouting a forest for an AIDS drug and think they had found it but when they went back, I think after a day, it was gone and they thought it had become extinct. Luckily they found it somewhere else.
And suburbia is no better. Isn't Edward Scissorhands, the movie, warning enough? God, ugly ugly suburbia. Closed communities. Virtually identical houses. Not In My Backyard syndrome.
Your figures are Bermuda-like. They are way off. There are currently only 17 cities with 10 million or more inhabitants, forecasted to increase to 26 by 2015. So 23 with 100 million does not work. It is impossible.
Never heard of the movie nor the AIDS story. The question is though will social and religious tensions increase with the close proximity of so many people together? Again applied to all.
As law and order breaks down, fatalities rise, again acting as a check on population.
You’re right about the amount of US surplus food being able to feed the whole African continent, but right now, and for the conceivable future, Africa has a zero chance of accessing that surplus food.
This means that the African continent lacks sufficient food for its population. There is only one way that Africa can feed itself with its currently accessible food - that is, if the African populace drops dramatically.
CM, check out the chart on page 8 of this UN report and tell me how 9 cities with a projected population of 16 million or more in 2015 will parlay into 23 cities of 100 million or more in just another 35 years.
:rolleyes: Scroll down to page 9. Notice the report is 2 years old based on data from 2002. In 3 years there has been an increase in population growth.
the matter may be put into perspective by looking at the ratio of population growth with the growth in size of the major cities of the world. Extrapolate that to future population growth and further urbanization as a disruptive change, similar to how the industrial age impacted cities,
for all intents and purposes this is already happening, while many cities maintain their separate entities, but as you drive through them its hard to see the boundaries, suburbia merging into brief stretches of open space merging into suburbia again.
The growth rates do seem rather large, but maybe with some analysis they may seem more realistic.
Would the size of cities grow? pending some major change event, all signs point to yes. couple that with population growth rates and migration trends, and does it indicate a jump, yes. Such a large jump.. dunno.
