But urbanization is usually a good thing, both for those moving to cities and for civilization in general. Urban families live more compactly, do less damage to fragile ecosystems, burn less fuel, enjoy stronger social ties to larger numbers of people and, most significantly, produce fewer children, since large families have less economic utility in densely settled areas than they do in marginal agricultural areas.
AGAINST THE TIDE
The world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2042. That’s an increase of seven times the current population of the US, or of the combined current population of India and China. If we are to sustain a world of that size, growth must occur almost entirely in cities.
Unfortunately, many global trends are pushing in the opposite direction. Dependence on automobiles is growing in parts of the world that formerly got by without them. China’s pool of licensed drivers is growing exponentially, and India is a decade into one of the largest road-building projects in history, a 5,800km superhighway known as the Golden Quadrilateral, which links the country’s four largest cities, plus an extensive network of feeder roads.
All those new highways, in combination with India’s brand-new “People’s Car,” the US$2,500 Tata Nano, represent an environmental, economic and cultural disaster in the making.
If the US’ long history of energy-and-emissions gluttony proves anything, it’s that an automobile-dependent society is vastly easier to create than to un-create. Moving from walking, bicycling and public transit to driving is relatively simple, because it requires only wealth, a desire for independence and status, and an inability or unwillingness to look very far into the future.
Moving from driving back to transit, bicycling and walking is far harder, because the cars themselves are only part of the problem. Much more critical is the inherent inefficiency of the way of life that cars both enable and make necessary, and of the sprawling web of wasteful infrastructure that high levels of individual mechanized mobility lead affluent societies to create.
Sooner or later, whatever else happens, the world will run out of inexpensive oil. Countries with expanding economies would be better off using their new wealth to create ways of life that can be sustained beyond that inescapable point, rather than recklessly investing in a future that has no future.
Not jumping off a cliff is easier than turning around in mid-fall.
David Owen is author of Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability.
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