Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts

5/07/2007

How many of us live in the city ?

Here is one of the city picture I took last weekend. Spring is great time for my beloved city, slush are gone, cherry blossoms.
Like majority of people in US, I am a city person all my life. Since 2000, according the US census, 79.22% of people live in cities. That number is similar for all other developed countries. In France, about 78% of population live in Paris. In developing countries like China, although majority of people still live in the country side, city population is increasing very rapidly.
Here is an interesting research explained economically, why more and more people move to the city. According to researchers, as the city grew in size it required less energy/resources to sustain it (in a proportion called sub-linear scaling). But as cities grew, the scaling of creative output (jobs, wealth generated, innovation) is super-linear, meaning as the city grew its creative output grew faster and faster. In summary, "the increase you get in wealth creation is greater than the increase in size of the city".
Today a little more than 50% of the world's population live in large urban areas. By 2030, it is estimated to be 2/3 of the world's population will be living in urban areas.