World More Urban Than Rural
The world passed a big demographic milestone this week. On Wednesday, May 23, the earth’s population became more urban than rural. From now on, the average human will live in a city instead of a farm or village.
While the date is symbolic, the trend couldn’t be more important. Sociologist Ron Wimberly at North Carolina State University and two colleagues began with United Nations estimates predicting that the world will be 51.3 percent urban by 2010. They calculated the average daily rural and urban populations from 2005 to 2010 and the tipping point came last Wednesday, when an estimated 3,303,992,253 people lived in urban areas and 3,303,866,404 lived in rural areas.
This transition happened in the United States between 1910 and 1920. Our growth since then has been almost completely urban. Between 1950 and 2000, U.S. cities gained 127 million people, while rural areas gained just 4 million.
The lesson in all of this is interdependence. In the US and around the world, small towns and open spaces provide cities with clean air, water, food, and other natural resources. In return they get urban garbage, air and water pollution, and have higher rates of poverty. “Cities must depend on rural resources,” said Wimberly. “The question is, what can the urban majority do for poor rural people and the resources upon which cities depend for existence?”
If all of this makes your head hurt and you just want to get out into the country to think it over, the majority of the U.S. population is still rural in Vermont, Maine, Mississippi, and West Virginia.