AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.
Create a link to this page
Copy and paste this link tag into your Web page or blog:
Meeting the urban challenge.
Every week urban areas gain another one million people. Within four years half of the world's population will live in urban areas. How governments and communities meet the concurrent challenges of rapid urbanization, poverty, development, and protection of the natural environment will largely determine the world's future.
In the future, nearly all population growth worldwide will take place in urban areas of developing countries. By 2015, the UN projects, there will be 21 "megacities" of at least 10 million people--all but 4 in developing countries. While big cities attract attention, most of the world's urban population lives in smaller settlements.
Urban areas in developing countries are at the crux of the struggle to achieve better living standards. Worldwide, urban areas large and small have become engines for economic growth in the global economy as well as centers of diversity and change. Yet, facing rapid population growth, rising poverty levels, and often inadequate public institutions, many urban areas are hard pressed to provide infrastructure, housing, services, and opportunities. If they are not able to meet people's needs, poverty and hopelessness will increase.
How can conditions improve for the growing millions of urban residents? Meeting the challenges posed by rapid urbanization will be as important to the future as addressing rapid population growth itself has been in the past half century.
Developing World Becoming Urban
The developing world as a whole has been predominantly rural but rapidly is becoming urban. In 1975 only 27% of people in the developing world lived in urban areas. In 2000 the proportion was 40%, and projections suggest that by 2030 the developing world will be 56% urban. Although the developed world is already far more urban, at an estimated 75% in 2000, urban areas of developing countries are growing much faster, and their populations are larger.
Rapid urban growth reflects migration of people to cities as well as natural population increase among urban residents. Rural areas have virtually stopped gaining population. Among regions as a whole, only in sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania will rural populations grow at all in the future.
- Farming in Urban Areas Can Boost Food Security.
- Press release article from: PR Newswire June 3, 2005 700+ words
...rapidly, farming in and around urban areas needs to play a bigger role...2030 will be concentrated in urban areas in developing countries, so that by then almost 60% of people in developing countries will live in cities. Urban...
- Environmental problems and developing countries. (The Global Environment)
- Magazine article from: Finance & Development June 1, 1992 700+ words
...increasing globally, as well as in developing countries as a whole. Soil depletion...sanitation continues to increase in urban areas. The result is a host of water...people living in urban areas in developing countries that do not meet World Health...
- Urban insecurity hits world's poor.(GENERAL)(urban areas' problems)
- Magazine article from: Community Action October 15, 2007 700+ words
...60 per cent of all urban residents in developing countries have been victims of crime. This is not...today's one billion slum dwellers live in developing countries and in the urban areas of the least developed nations. They account...
- Study of 16 Developing Countries Shows Climate Change Could Deepen Poverty.
- News wire article from: Ascribe Higher Education News Service August 20, 2009 700+ words
...rains, on those in 16 developing countries. Urban workers in...poor households in developing countries," said Noah Diffenbaugh...concentrations from rural to urban areas in virtually all of these developing countries." With nearly 1...
- Rapid growth of urban areas creates environmental problems in...
- Newspaper article from: Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service Glantz, Michael April 26, 1996 700+ words
...population from rural to urban areas is not only a Brazilian...problem confronting most urban areas in the Third World...growth will be in the developing countries, and 90 percent of that will end up in urban areas. Therefore, no matter...
- Infection Reducing Coating Technology and Affordable Housing for Transient Job...
- Press release article from: Business Wire May 19, 2006 700+ words
...CentroMigrante, Inc. Impoverished people in developing countries leave their rural hometowns and flock to urban areas to seek employment but are usually...each year, which occur primarily in developing countries and during natural disasters or epidemics...
- Developing countries still hurting from high food prices UN.
- News wire article from: PAC - Pacific Islands Broadcasting Association July 17, 2009 700+ words
...international food prices and good cereal harvests overall, prices in developing countries remain high, hurting millions of poor people in both rural and urban areas, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned in...
- Rodent control in urban areas: an interdisciplinary approach.
- Magazine article from: Journal of Environmental Health Lambropoulos, A. Soula Fine, Joshua B. Perbeck, Amy Torres, Donald Glass, Gregory E. McHugh, Patrick Dorsey, Elias A. January 1, 1999 700+ words
...is a problem endemic to many urban areas, affecting the quality of life...occupational exposures or epidemics in developing countries, has been identified in inner...of rodent control programs in urban areas throughout the world showed...
Source: HighBeam Research, Meeting the urban challenge.