Market Portrait by mjbeng
As I have been rooting around in the journal searches I came across a very well written, produced and documented report published in 2007 by the United Nations Population Fund and written by George Martine and edited by Alex Marshall: State of the World Population: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth .
I highly recommend this report to those of my readers who have an interest in urban sustainability issues. There is a new section to the Urban Studies Reading List where I have added additional journal publications on this specific and very important issue. I will be adding more documentation as time allows.
I have said here before that we will live or die by cities.
We are now at the turning point.
From: State of the World Population: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth
Peering into the Dawn of an Urban Millennium
“In 2008, the world reaches an invisible but momentous milestone: For the first time in history, more than half its human population, 3.3 billion people, will be living in urban areas. By 2030, this is expected to swell to almost 5 billion. Many of the new urbanites will be poor. Their future, the future of cities in developing countries, the future of humanity itself, all depend very much on decisions made now in preparation for this growth. While the world’s urban population grew very rapidly (from 220 million to 2.8 billion) over the 20th century, the next few decades will see an unprecedented scale of urban growth in the developing world. This will be particularly notable in Africa and Asia where the urban population will double between 2000 and 2030: That is, the accumulated urban growth of these two regions during the whole span of history will be duplicated in a single generation. By 2030, the towns and cities of the developing world will make up 80 per cent of urban humanity. Urbanization-the increase in the urban share of total population-is inevitable, but it can also be positive. The current concentration of poverty, slum growth and social disruption in cities does paint a threatening picture: Yet no country in the industrial age has ever achieved significant economic growth without urbanization. Cities concentrate poverty, but they also represent the best hope of escaping it.”
UPDATE: 9/18/2008
The citations for the new journal articles are now complete. If you have any books or articles you would like to recommend or add please let me know.
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