Thursday, June 28, 2007

milenio urbano (the urban millenium)

It might not be apparent from most planning discussions in the United States which tend to inevitably focus on sprawl, the suburbs, and the relative advantages and disadvantages of this type of metropolitan form. However, in most of the rest of the world the trend is the opposite. More and more of the world is becoming urban. An op-ed piece entitled Milenio Urbano in the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre pointed me in the direction of a new study by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) which is the State of the World's Population for 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth.

In 2007 for the first time in the history of the world more people will live in urban areas than in world areas. The most rapid urban growh is occuring in developing nations. For the planners and others who care about cities and the people who reside in them there is no shortage of work to be undertaken in the coming years.

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