Hans van Ginkel Rector, United Nations University The challenges of the
world's future are linked to the growing share of the global population
that will reside in urban areas. UN projections indicate that by 2030
the world's urban population share will rise to 60 percent. Of the two
billion added to the global population, 99 percent will be added to the
urban areas of the world. Of this number, 95 percent will be in
countries of the developing world. As most people will live in urban
areas we had better work to build and organize them as both attractive
and less resource consuming places. That is, to promote sustainable
urban development is to promote the creation of dense human settlements
that are livable and have reduced their impacts on larger scale
ecosystems. While much attention has been focused on the "mega-cities,"
those with a population of over 10 million, the amount of people living
in these places will remain almost constant while the smaller and medium
size cities will be the great absorbers of the world's urban population.
Indeed, it is predicted that while the absolute number of people that
will live in urban centers of 10 million or more will increase from
approximately 263 to 375 million between 2000 and 20 IS, their share of
the total urban population will only increase from 9. 2 percent to 9. 8
percent, a 6. 34 percent increase.