What will it mean to live in an urban world?
New York City (Photo: Andre Natta)
For several years now, we’ve heard the story about Earth’s becoming a more urban world. In 2008…
Carl Haub: The United Nations – who estimates these things and does a rather detailed job of it – will in fact say that over half of world population is now urban.
That’s Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C. He talked about what ‘urban’ means.
Carl Haub: I think people should not get the impression that half of world population is living in places like Rio de Janeiro and New York. That’s not at all true. A city of 5,000 or more in India whose labor force is not wholly engaged in agriculture is considered urban. And if you’ve ever been to a town of 5,000 in India you would not really think of that as being terribly urban.
He said the definition of urban was first used to identify a nonagricultural population.
Carl Haub: When you think about the U.S. at the time of its founding, we were essentially a nation of farmers. So we came to define the nonagricultural population and we used the word ‘urban.’ It’s a much smaller share of people that are in fact living in the Shanghais and the Bombays and the New Yorks of this world. However, it’s not insignificant that people have moved into towns as opposed to living off the land. It’s still a sociological benchmark for sure.
Carl Haub on the direction of global population growth
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