Watch closely, and you could see cities grow

We’ve all got or heard similar stories. Take a small village I know in the south of France. Thirty years ago there were no street names and just a handful of houses. Now the town has grown so much that the sign signalling the entrance had to be moved further down the hill so the “suburbs” felt included.

In itself, not much to worry about. But if you add up all the expanding villages, towns and cities around the world things look a bit different. According to research in Biological Conservation, humans are building the equivalent of a city the size of Vancouver every week. Yes, every week.

The authors of the study are concerned about the effects this expanding urbanisation is having on wildlife. In a way, urbanisation means we’re getting closer to nature: in Eastern Asia, the authors say the average distance from a city to a protected area will be 22.5 kilometres by 2030, compared to 43.5 km in 1995. This isn’t really a good thing, however.

New Scientist