From 2 to 6 billion in 60 years

In 1985, the global urban population was 2 billion. By 2045, it will be 6 billion. That’s a 300 percent increase in just 60 years.

An urban milestone

2008 was a milestone for the world’s cities. For the first time in human history, more people lived in cities than in rural areas.

The first city

The city of Uruk is considered the oldest city in the world. It was settled around 4500 BCE. In 3700 BCE, Uruk had a population of roughly 14,000 people.

The rise of the city

Rome was the first city to reach one million inhabitants around the year 1 CE but the population then declined. As late as 1700, the largest city in the world, Beijing, had just 650,000 inhabitants. By 1800, Beijing had reached a million people. 

The rise of the hyper city

Today, more than 400 cities have a population of over a million - 145 cities in China alone. Globally, 37 cities have a population of more than 10 million. By 2050, Mumbai, India is expected to be the first city with a population of more than 50 million people and by 2100, the city of Lagos, Nigeria will reach a whopping 88 million people - more than the population of Germany or about the same as the combined populations of California, Texas, and Florida.  

"Homo Urbanus"

The world’s urban population grew more than 10-fold in the 20th century - from 220 million to 2.8 billion people. By 2050, 68 of the world population will be urban - 64 percent of the population in the developing world and 86 percent in the developed world will live in urban areas. 16 countries have an urban population percent over 90.

Is humanity alienated from nature?

Could urban life pose the risk that we lose connection with nature? That we lose the understanding that we live in symbiosis with Earth and awareness that Earth provides us with food and resources for living?

Something does point to yes…

• An astonishing 7 percent of Americans think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. That's a whopping 16.4 million people in the US alone who think that you can enjoy a chocolate milkshake directly from a cow's udder…
• Most urban consumers interviewed in a study carried out at the University of Arizona did not realise that meat, dairy and fruit come from living things that use natural resources to live and grow.

Such ignorance makes it more difficult to change consumer behaviour since people cannot see how their actions and choices affect the world we live in.

Disappearance of the wild

Environmental author Jeremy Rifkin warns that global urbanization is not without consequences. He even foresees the disappearance of the wild:

"Our burgeoning population and urban way of life have been purchased at the expense of vast ecosystems and habitats. ... It's no accident that as we celebrate the urbanization of the world, we are quickly approaching another historic watershed: the disappearance of the wild"

Jeremy Rifkin stresses the need for mankind to reconnect with nature:

“In the great era of urbanization we have increasingly shut off the human race from the rest of the natural world (...) In the next phase of human history, we will need to find a way to reintegrate ourselves into the rest of the living Earth if we are to preserve our own species and conserve the planet for our fellow creatures”.

- Jeremy Rifkin, Environmental author, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, 2006.

The food chain

Reconnection includes a basic understanding of nature’s “food chain logic” (that could be lost to a world population increasingly living in cities). A human being requires the equivalence of almost three tons of grass per day:

“Three hundred trout are needed to support one man for a year. The trout, in turn, must consume 90 000 frogs, that must consume 27 million grasshoppers that live off of 1 000 tons of grass”.

- G. Tyler Miller, Jr., American Chemist (1971)

But the city also holds possibilities

Experts find that population density is potentially useful for the promotion of sustainable solutions and that cities therefore hold a potential for long-term sustainability.

“If cities create environmental problems, they also contain the solutions. The potential benefits of urbanization far outweigh the disadvantages: The challenge is in learning how to exploit its possibilities”.

- UN “State of world population 2007 - Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth”