Rapid Urbanization – Bane or Boon?
By Dr Arvind Kumar
Currently, the largest population shift in human history is taking place in different parts of globe. Every month, there are 5 million new city dwellers created through migration or birth in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. China alone has an estimated 200 million “floating” citizens with one foot in a village and the other in a city. If current trends continue as expected, between 2000 and 2030, the urban population of Asia and Africa will double, adding as many city dwellers in one generation as these continents have accumulated during their entire histories. Between now and 2050, the world’s cities will add another 3.1 billion people. This will be matched by an almost as dramatic decline in rural population. The United Nations Population Division predicts that the population of the world’s villages and rural areas will stop growing around eight years from now and that, by 2050; the rural population will have fallen by 600 million due to migration to cities and urban encroachment on villages.
This shift from rural areas to cities makes itself felt in the rough-and-tumble transitional neighborhoods where rural migrants first land, both in their own countries and in places like the United States, where they are make up the largest group of immigrants. There is a need to pay attention to these neighborhoods, and to the huge demographic shift that is shaping them. These neighborhoods are eager to succeed and they can be the birthplace of a new middle class. But they can also spiral into violent failure and threaten entire countries when barriers are placed in the way of migrants’ natural inclination to succeed.
