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World Population Becomes More Urban Than Rural
biohack writes "A major demographic shift took place on Wednesday, May 23, 2007: For the first time in human history, the earth's population is more urban than rural. According to scientists from North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia, on that day, a predicted global urban population of 3,303,992,253 exceeded that of 3,303,866,404 rural people. In the US, the tipping point from a majority rural to a majority urban population came early in the late 1910s."
Soon to be renamed: Trantor!
How do they calculate that? I mean, they cannot have that high of a confidence level in those numbers.
I guess we better get to building some coliseums, or the citizens will stop being productive.
Could this put more people in a dangerous position of dependency on a fragile infrastructure run by people without your best interests in mind? I moved away from the city because that very thing makes me feel very uncomfortable. There are very many small family farms only a few hours away by bus(couple of days by donkey cart if need be)...just in case. Never know when Oscar Mayer might quit making my dinner for me. Good thing I like beans and tortillas. And some of the home made liquor is pretty tasty too.
What?
The 50/50 tipping point doesn't have much other than symbolic value, of course, but it is another signpost on the road forward for humanity. Cities can be - and are - miserable hellholes, of course, but remember that even a bad slum is often a substantial step up compared to a life of rural landlessness.
A city is also quite a lot more efficient than having the same number of people spread out in small communities over a vastly larger area. This goes both for providing seeded services and for pollution - it's far easier and more efficient to process the concentrated waste water from a million people in one set of facilities than try to process the same amount spread out over many small, disconnected systems. Critical services like high-quality health care, communications infrastructure and so on is also much more efficient - or only doable at all in some cases - in an urban environment. Having 200k people taking public transport to work every morning (and an equivalent number walking or bicycling) is a lot better for everybody than having those same people take individual cars. Osaka is a good example, with just about a quarter driving, a quarter using public transport and a quarter walking or bicycling (the last quarter is split up into combinations of more than one mode). By contrast, in a rural environment, the vast majority would list car or motorbike as their mode.
So stop playing in the mud and come to the city! We're open all night!
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I wonder how much of it is really the rural people heading for the city versus the city inching towards the rural areas. The town I live in had around 12,000 people when I moved here around 15 years ago. Its around an hour from the city. Around 5-6 years ago the cost of living in the cities suburbs started getting out of hand, builders starting buying up farms and wooded areas and building these huge "communities" where all the houses are the same shape and color...they advertised it as a quaint getway from the big city and shortly after started building WalMarts, Mega grocery stores, starbucks, etc and now its just like the area they all left.
I often marvel at the civilization we live in.
Millions of people drive to work at 65 miles per hour on giant freeways only one wrong move away from dieing an unexpected death. These freeways are spectacular monuments to our society. They are closest most of us will ever get to flying under our own control and they are what make a giant city possible. Crossing a large city takes over an hour at freeway speeds. The scenery of giant buildings and thousand of other buildings and residences rushing by seemingly endlessly is beautiful in a way.
I'm glad the world's population is more urban than rural. cities rock.
Could happen. For instance, bird-flu or limited nuclear warfare, which decimates urban populations with much less impact on rural populations. This would leave the earth with more rural than urban people. Then, when the urban population bounces back, the 'earth's population will become more urban than rural' for the *second* time.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Learn a bit of economics. Supply and demand and stuff. Not enough people to milk the cows, the price of milk goes up, more people want to stay in the country and milk cows. It all works out.
Don't worry. Soon we'll be so efficient all the physical labor can be done by a single Australian man.
IOU one (1) signature
Yes, that is why they invented the "Voluntary Milking System." Yes, it runs on Linux!
l
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4275702675.htm
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity....Calvin
What can the "urban majority do for the poor rural people"? That sounds awfully condescending and elitist, and assumes not only whether they should run the lives of others, but how to.
Instead, why don't we consider systems that have worked successfully. Those of the Electorial College and US Senate, where rural states are represented and protected from exploitation, from the larger populations of urban states.
> ...a predicted global urban population of...
"predicted"?? Does that mean they think it's going to happen sometime in the future, or that some time in the past they thought it was going to happen now (ok, day before yesterday)?
Max.
That "major" shift: One guy left his house in the country to move to a house in the city! Perhaps five. It's a landmark occasion.
-- ToroThere were probably decimal places on those numbers too. My guess is they just predict a monthly or yearly growth number and then divide that out day by day and end up with a number that probably has many decimal places that they round off to the nearest whole number. I'm sure they have a margin of error if you look into it.
Does it really matter if it's 3,303,992,253 or 3,304,000,000? It's actually kind of silly to round that high, because the first number is probably going to be closer.
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1. Form First Foundation.
2. Create new "technology" religion.
3. Watch the old Galactic Empire crumble from within.
4. Get taken over by The Mule.
5. Find the Second Foundation.
6. ??
7. Write Foundation's Edge due to publisher pressure, and profit!!
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
To quote the poet/philosopher Lee Ving:
Spent my whole life in the city,
Where junk is king and the air smells shitty.
People pukin' everywhere.
Piles of blood, scabs and hair.
Bodies wasted in defeat,
People dyin' on the street,
But the suburban scumbags, they don't care,
Just get fat and dye their hair!
I love livin' in the city [x2]
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
freedom isn't some mass produced, commoditized beast of a city, it's the sleeping on the porch without fear of some gang banger popping a cap in you.
Freedom is living your life how you like. You like sleeping on the porch. I like having a bunch of stuff to do within walking distance. If you think the city is just a "mass produced, commoditized beast" then you're just as prejudiced as the stereotypical urban dweller who thinks everyone in the country has three teeth and marries their cousins.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Quick! Now that Lower East Bumblefuckistan is so empty, let's move out there and take over!
Out where there's fresh air and open spaces.
And cows...
And...dirt...
And broadband is more myth than reality...
And even phone service is barely out of the "two cans and a piece of string" era!
Uhhhh...Forget I said anything. I'm just going to go beat myself about the head and shoulders with an old solid steel XT-style keyboard...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You need more terms of the Taylor expansion rural_pop(t) = 3,303,992,253 - 125,849*t + c2*t^2 + c3*t^3 + ... to be able to extrapolate 71 years ahead.
OMG 23! 23! 2+3=May! it must mean something.
It does not have to be a disaster. Just as technology changed things to allow people to live in the city, it can change things to allow them to live in the country.
If all jobs move online, no one would want to pay 30% of their salaries for cramped apartments in the city. Everyone wants to own a house with a big backyard, heck an acre of forest and raise big dogs/horses.
Allow the transport of food and purchased goods to anywhere real fast and people will start leaving the city. Another catalyst will be much improved transportation, allowing people to work anywhere without having to live close to work.
In fact seeing how cramped some cities get, I'd almost swear urbanization will be reversed.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I was a little doubtful about the people who released this information. I mean, what do THEY know? But, they used the phrase "tipping point," so I guess they know what they're talking about.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped. --Sam Levinson
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
and after they're all concentrated in the cities..
Remember what is says on the Georgia Guidestones:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones
* Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
[forced abortion and sterilization of reproduction offenders]
* Guide reproduction wisely--improving fitness and diversity.
[selection of the fittest, neutering/castration of the less desirable]
* Unite humanity with a living new language.
[
* Rule passion--faith--tradition--and all things with tempered reason.
[it's okay no matter how cruel and inhumane]
* Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
[and install a world court over those who might otherwise be free]
* Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
[and a world army that will put down dissent fast]
* Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
[don't elevate excessive amounts of serfs to capo status]
* Balance personal rights with social duties.
[you bet!]
* Prize truth--beauty--love--seeking harmony with the infinite.
[Right. Your infinite or mine?]
* Be not a cancer on the earth--Leave room for nature--Leave room for nature.
[Humans are cancer and you are the cure. Right]
I think that this statistic just shows the course of modern society. More and more people are seeking "better" lives, and arguably this is what the city symbolises to someone from a rural community. Furthermore, I doubt that there will be food shortages if this trend continues rapidly in the favour of urbanisation because agriculture is an industry, and a heavily modernised industry at that. Our food does not come from poor little people working barefeet in harsh environments - it comes fat, rich bosses who owns agricultural industries. However, yes, it can be said that the actual workers are quite poor. Thinking about it, the growth of urbanisation and the decline of the rural populations will actually boost the industries dependent on it because the demand for products will become higher and the supply will have to be matched - and working for these firms will probably prove more profitable than cleaning tables in the urban areas. Just a few thoughts...
I believe this is impossible, by definition.
No, by no means is it impossible.
If group A comprises 30% of the population, while groups B, C, D, E, F and G comprise 15, 15, 14, 13, 12, and 11% respectively, then while the majority of the population are part of minority groups, they are still minority groups, as each group comprises less than half of the population.
However to assume in this case that the remaining group (let's just call them "white males" for argument sake) then constitutes the majority would be a logical fallacy, though a commonly accepted one. In a political sense this does in fact constitute a simple majority when comparing the discrete groups, but often people think of these things in a sense of "most people". "Most people" in this case actually associate themselves with some defined "minority group" hence disturbing the distinction.
To further complicate things, consider that these concepts of majority and minority are defined and displayed in different scales, and will inherently represent differently in any demographic modification. Enter certain areas of business or society and "white male" is actually a majority. Enter another one and "white male" is an aberration. IE, Donald Trump is, in his field, a member of a relative majority, while Marshall Mathers represents, in his field, a minority.
Race relations are complicated? As a member of a (racial) group that has been generally discredited in this area, I can make no claims to expertise or Clue (TM). I can only speak about simple things like math.
The more people concentrated in an urban area, the greater the zombie apocalypse will be! Just wait, another 28 years later and you'll see. Hopefully Milla Jovovich will still be young enough and hot enough to kill them all.
This is something that has annoyed me for a long time now. Those who own homes get tax deductions from the interest on their home loans. As a result, not only do home owners see the value of their home increase over time, but they get tax deductions on the interest from their home loans, so the cost of living for homeowners will end up being lower in the long term.
Those who rent tend to pay more in rent, get nothing for it, and in the long run have nothing to show for their cost of living. There are no tax breaks in any way for those who rent, which makes the cost of living higher, while having less to show for it. If the majority of people are living in an urban environment, that implies that the majority of people are renting, not owning where they live. So, why is the attitude of government always focused on things that would help home owners, rather than on the majority, which ends up renting?
If the government wanted to really boost the economy(which would improve tax revenues), there would be a shift to provide tax deductions for those who rent. The money people save would allow them to save up for a house, which would help reduce the NEED for social security(in the long run). Help raise the social standing of the low and middle income people, and there will be more non-credit spending. Renters need tax breaks too.
Much of that "urban" population lives in smaller cities and towns, not in the large megalopoles most people think of when you say "urban". For every city of a million people, there are ten cities of a hundred thousand people. For every city of a hundred thousand people, there are fifty cities of ten thousand. And for every city of ten thousand, there are twenty or thirty smaller towns and villages. Taken individually, their population is small, but there are a lot of them.
These kinds of surveys count them all as "urban", because the residents don't live on farms, but they are, culturally speaking, nothing like the big cities.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
In uncertainty analysis there is something known as implied uncertainty it is the uncertainty of a number given by the instrument that measured the number. 53,103,102 just as a number has an implied uncertainty of +-.5 which for people is clearly bunk, so for something that partials don't exist the number appears exact. 53,000,000 has implied uncertainty of +-500,000 this show considerable range of possible numbers. The first number is implied by the second, but the second reflects a much less accurate measurement.
It makes me cringe when I see numbers like 53,103,102 +- 623,103, that number is clearly crap. They admitted that there is a large uncertainty, but the excessive significant figures implies a high degree of confidence in the numbers. If you understand the normal distribution you would know that it is safe to call that same number 53,100,000 +-620,000 because the true number has a high probability of being within that range
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared