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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!
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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.
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.
-- Toro1. 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!!
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And occasionally whores for Karma.
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.
Those of the Electorial College and US Senate, where rural states are represented and protected from exploitation, from the larger populations of urban states.
You're right.
There is only one problem though. They seriously screwed up when they made California a state. California is 163,707 square miles. Rhode Island is 1,545 square miles. 163,707 / 1,545 is 106. California is big enough to have been made into 106 states instead of just one state. Then Californians would have 212 senators (enough for 2/3 control of the senate... not merely enough votes alone to pass or block any law or any decision in the senate but even enough alone for a senatorial overturn of a presidential veto). Californians would have 318++ electoral votes, almost enough alone to elect the president (in that electorial college it would take 400-odd votes to elect the president).
You're right that the electoral college is a FANTASTIC... nay.... the electoral college is a PERFECT system. They just royally screwed up when drawing state lines. Anyone with half a brain should have known better than to draw California as just one state.... anyone with half a brain should have seen and seized the opportunity to grab almost total control of the US government.
It's too late to do anything about California.... but there is still a good opportunity that may come up. I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but for a long time there has been simmering back-burner serious discussion of the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico officially gaining statehood status. The population of Puerto Rico is nearly 8 times the population of Wyoming. If Puerto Rico does join the union, I say we should look at whatever internal districting already exists in Puerto Rico and let those districts independently vote on whether they want to join the union, and let them join as 8 separate states. If Puerto Rico joins the union I say they should get 16 senators and 24 electoral votes. Woohoo I love the Electoral College! It makes perfect sense! The Electoral College allows us to so much better represent and protect Puerto Ricans from exploitation from other states by letting them join as 8 separate states.
Nymz, my brother, my compatriot, I am so pleased to count you as a friend and electoral ally. That you and I both see how perfect and logical the Electoral College is, that we both see how perfect it is for better representing and protecting people... that everyone should get as much representation and protection as possible, and that if and when Puerto Rico joins the union that they should get as much representation and protection as possible... that if and when Puerto Rico joins the union that it should get as many extra imaginary lines drawn across it as possible... at a minimum enough extra imaginary lines for them to join as at least 8 states.
Yes, because where imaginary lines are drawn around people and how many imaginary lines are drawn around people is the KEY to giving people better representation and better protection. The Electoral College is the KEY to giving some Americans several times as much representation and several times as much protection as other Americans.
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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
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