In its State of the Population report in 2007, the United Nations Population Fund made this ringing declaration: “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.”
The agency’s voice was one of many trumpeting an epoch-making event. For the last several years, newspaper and magazine articles, television shows and scholarly papers have explored the premise that because most of the world now lives in urban rather than in rural areas things are going to be, or at least should be, different. Often the conclusion is that cities may finally get the attention they deserve from policy makers and governments. This optimism dovetails nicely with a sizeable literature of urban advocacy chronicling the rejuvenation of central cities and extolling the supposed virtues of high-density city living, even predicting the withering away of the suburbs.
To read the full, original article click on this link: The Ambiguous Triumph of the “Urban Age” | Newgeography.com
Author:Robert Bruegmann
