Over Populated - Are We There Yet?
The quotes below come from Urban and Slum Trends in the 21st Century by Eduardo Lopez Moreno and Rasna Warah (UN Chronicle Online Edition, The State of the World's Cities Report 2006/7). Emphasis added.
Sometimes it takes just one human being to tip the scales and change the course of history. In 2007, that human being will either move to or be born in a city, and demographers watching urban trends will mark it as the moment when the world entered a new urban millennium in which the majority of its people will live in cities. It will also see the number of slum dwellers cross the one-billion mark, when one in every three city residents will live in inadequate housing, with no or few basic services.
There are now about 6 billion people on earth and 1 billion of those people live in urban slums. Also from the report,
This report unfolds a new urban reality, showing how poor living conditions impact slum dwellers: they die younger, experience more hunger, have less or no education, have fewer chances for employment in the formal sector and suffer more from ill-health.
And finally,
The growth of slums in the last 15 years has been unprecedented. In 1990, there were nearly 715 million slum dwellers in the world. By 2000, the slum population had increased to 912 million and to approximately 998 million today. UN-HABITAT estimates that if current trends continue, it will reach 1.4 billion by 2020.
Over Populated - Are We There Yet?
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