The urban transition

It is widely thought that sometime this year, the world as a whole will have made the long-feared urban transition; that is, more of the world's people will live in cities than do out in the country.

This has implications the developed world needs to pay attention to. Most of the industrialized democratic world made the move a century or so ago; Canada is split roughly 80-20 between urban and rural populations. It's not as big a problem as it once was, as with roughly equivalent access to health care mortality rates in town and country are nearly equal. In the early years, though, death rates were much higher in the cities because of course of then poor sanitation protocols.

But it's in the developing countries, especially what used to be called the Third and Fourth Worlds, that things are still in flux. The rates of migration to urban areas far exceed what was experienced in Europe, North America and Australia. Slums are rampant and growing, and with no effective land use policies or zoning laws it's every person for him or herself. One only has to take a look at Shenzhen, the area next to Hong Kong. Barely 30 years ago this was a fishing village of about a couple thousand people at most. Today it has over 8 1/4 million and it shows no sign of stopping. This has been repeated in various scales on nearly every country on the planet.

It's not just the urban sprawl that's daunting. It's that people are leaving their farms in large numbers and hoping to seek their fortunes in the city. That's always been the case in Canada and the US, of course, but multiply it by several magnitudes and you have to wonder not only about the futility of the hopeless but also potential food shortages caused not by droughts or floods but by lack of farm hands. And with that, the implications for global security.

Once we cross that dreaded threshold this year of 50.1% of humans living in cities worldwide, there is unfortunately no going back. The least we can hope for is to contain the growth. We should at least insist that development dollars go into sustainable development. We insist on it for ourselves or at least should, with such policies as Greenbelt legislation. We should do the same for the developing world and help them manage the growth in smarter ways. A breakdown in the system there could lead to even more unsavoury characters we'll be forced to negotiate with.

Such as terrorists, who hold their own people hostage as well as ours.

On the other hand, if people have a reason to hope, then we take away the very thing terrorists need -- oxygen and money.

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