[Zardoz]

Worst hit is Sub-Saharan Africa where 72% of urban inhabitants live in slums rising to nearly 100% in some states.

A billion people now live in urban slums. The number will rise to 1.4 billion by 2020.

How can you be an optimist when we're watching our doomer scenarios unfold before our eyes?

[Raxozanne]

sub-saharan africa is hell on earth.

[Cynus]

Slums: coming soon to a town near you.

[thor]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', 'H')ow can you be an optimist when we're watching our doomer scenarios unfold before our eyes?

[Aqua]

Read an interesting article in the times last weekend about what our future holds from a top UK military strategist someone who presumably advises the government on future policy.

“Parry expects the world population to grow to about 8.4 billion in 2035, compared with 6.4 billion today. By then some 68% of the population will be urban, with some giant metropolises becoming ungovernable. He warns that Mexico City could be an example.”

"When you combine the lower prospects for communal life with macho youth and economic deprivation you tend to get trouble, typified by gangs and organised criminal activity," said Parry. "When one thinks of 20,000 so-called jihadists currently fly-papered in Iraq, one shudders to think where they might go next."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 67,00.html

There are some bad neighbourhoods around as we all know but I think nobody has seen anything yet.


Staying on topic I read but don’t have a link that some 870,000 people per day move into towns and cities every day and at some point in 2007 for the first time in human history more people will be urban dwellers compared to rural dwellers. Needless to say that most of these people end up swelling the shanty towns of the Third World.
That is an astounding figure and its no surprise to me that we have a global slum problem.

[Revi]

I lived in Guatemala in the 80's and saw some of the slums that had been created after the earthquake of 1976. It's a desperate poor existence for those barranco dwellers. They have no sewage system, no running water and only had electricity because somebody climbed a pole and spliced a wire into the electricity supply from the city above. Tin shacks clinging to the edge of the ravines. We visited a friend who lived in a semi slum. 4 people lived in one room, with an outside communal outhouse and a water spigot for perhaps 100 people. This guy was a police officer in Guate City, and yet he could barely keep his family fed. It has only gotten worse since then. I imagine we'll have half the population of the earth in these places soon.

[Zardoz]

Six views on how things may be in 2050. Of course, not all of them even take into account what we know is coming:

Viewpoints: The urban world in 2050

One who does acknowledge the coming energy issue thinks that it will have become a "big deal" by 2050. We wish we had that long, huh?

Only Dittmar has a fairly realistic handle on it:

"The thing that I worry about most for the future is if energy becomes unaffordable and more scarce. We could move into a situation where those who can afford energy sort of withdraw and continue to use it and those who don't move into more deprivation.

This could lead to further destabilisation. A lot of the cities where people are urbanising are being fed by petroleum-based agriculture and petroleum-based economies - and that's mighty scary."

Scary, indeed, Hank, but you don't know the half of it.

If anybody cares to submit their own scenario of the state of the world's great cities in 2050, please have at it. Considering what we know will be happening between now and 2050, I think it's safe to say that the six writers in that BBC article need a reality check.

I'm sure there are plenty of forum regulars here who would be up to the task of giving it to them.

[Revi]

I think the world in 2050 will be similar to some parts of the world today. The world's dwindling rich will live in gated compounds much like they do today. They will continue driving, but in armored vehicles and with escorts or heavily armed men. They will live clustered around mid sized cities. The megacities will become almost unliveable. They will have so many desperate people living in them that life there will become untenable.

"Failed states", like Somalia will become the rule. There may be a government, but it will exist only in concept. Think Iraq, with the green zone as the government. There will be some structure, but just enough to extract resources that get whisked away to secure manufacturing compounds. Most young men are employed as soldiers or security people.

The lowest projection for population is 7.8 billion by 2050. That means that we have 2 billion more mouths to feed. The projections for food per capita is that there will be less. Famines start around 2020 that drive people towards what's left of the cities. When they get there there won't be enough to feed them. They'll die around the large cities. Lagos, Mexico City, Houston. The few people who can make it in the rural areas still have to deal with bands of desperate people. They'll build stockades and walled compounds. Around 2020 the national electricity grid fails because they don't have enough energy to push down millions of miles of unguarded copper wires. Some of the rural compunds may have microgrids fed by hydro and solar.

I think that there will be a few places that will remain fairly ok places to live. They will attract people that are willing to live simply. Milk the cow, spin the wool, cut the wood. Cars will disappear. The whole high energy lifestyle will seem like a strange dream by 2050.

[Battle_Scarred_Galactico]

How can you be an optimist when we're watching our doomer scenarios unfold before our eyes?

Good question, from my experience there are two main reasons.

1. A complete lack of will to look at the world.

2. Live in a Western country.

[nocar]

From the linked article starting this thread:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')r Tibaijuka told journalists that urbanisation in itself was not the problem as it drove both national output and rural development.

"History has shown that urbanisation cannot be reversed," she continued.

[Zardoz]

This story says it all:

Omar and his ten young kids

Crazed birth rate, grinding poverty, illiteracy, movement into urban slums, drought, water shortage, etc., etc.

There is no hope for these sad people. Huge die-offs are coming.

[strider3700]

Actually I found that story pretty happy. His fields turned to dust from a lack of water so he packed up and moved into town where he grows and sells vegetables. He has land and a mudbrick house to keep a roof over the heads of his family. I'm assuming if he's selling vegetables then he's got enough to eat himself. Yes he's ultra poor and unlikely to get ahead in life but it could be far worse.

It's the ones that live in cardboard or discarded tin houses that I wouldn't want to be like.

The thing that stuck out the most to me is when he went back to his old village and pointed out how bad it is all that the people that stayed could say was why hasn't anyone helped them. I guess it's not just lazy westerners that expect someone else to fix all of their problems.

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('strider3700', 'A')ctually I found that story pretty happy...

[Raxozanne]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', '
')
Sure, for now.

Problem is, it's just a matter of time before all his villagers, and all the other villages, try to move to the city. It won't be so happy then.