The future is urban – but is it sustainable?

For decades – centuries, really – warnings have been issued: The burgeoning human population will outgrow the planet’s capacity to sustain us. The formula seems simple. More people equals fewer resources and greater environmental damage.

But today, we have a more nuanced understanding of the population-environment connection. We know that the relationship between human beings and the environment is complex, mediated by systems of production and consumption. And we know that population growth is not the only demographic change that matters: age structure and population distribution also shape environmental impact.

In other words, the planet’s “carrying capacity” is not just about human numbers, but about how people live, and where.

Urbanization Rising

Where we live is – increasingly – in cities. In 1950, cities were home to 750 million people. In 2008, for the first time in history, more people lived in urban than in rural areas. This trend is expected to continue. According to the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2030 report, over the next two decades the number of city-dwellers will soar to nearly five billion, 60 percent of the world’s population. Most of those new urbanites will live in developing regions of Asia and Africa, and as many as two billion will live in “informal settlements,” or slums.

This means that building sustainable, prosperous cities is an urgent priority for the 21st century. It is difficult to comprehend the magnitude of the task. As Global Trends 2030 reports, “the volume of urban construction for housing, office space, and transport services over the next 40 years could roughly equal the entire volume of such construction to date in world history.”

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