World's slums grow despite rapid economy growth: U.N.

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

World's slums grow despite rapid economy growth: U.N.
17 mins ago

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Almost a quarter of a billion people moved out of slum conditions in the past decade, driven by rapid economic growth in emerging giants India and China, but the number of people living in them continues to rise, the United Nations housing agency said on Friday.

The number of people living in shantytowns increased by 55 million to 827.6 million as population growth and migration from the countryside outstripped the effect of upward mobility in cities, the U.N.'s biennial report on cities found.

"The situation has improved over 10 years, but alas over the same period, the net increase of the urban poor is 55 million," Anna Tibaijuka, the executive director of the U.N. Habitat program, said in Rio de Janeiro.

The Brazilian city will next week host the World Urban Forum, a five-day U.N. conference on the state of the world's cities, where more than half the global population now lives.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100319/wl_nm/us_un_cities

[damntexdem]

1. Well, largely BECAUSE of economic growth, rapid or otherwise.

Pushed out of traditional endeavors (especially farming) and sucked into cities.

[Warpy]

6. Where all the fruits of their labor are grabbed by a few rich men

Those men might be willing to work them to death, but they'll make damned sure they're not rewarded well enough for it to get out of the slums.

[provis99]

9. Do you have any proof of that?

No? I thought so.

[CountAllVotes]

2. too many people

the planet earth can only handle so many.

With species going extinct, arctic ice shelves collapsing and global warming I suspect there will be more of this sadly. :(

:dem:

[RKP5637]

3. Earth seems to be on autopilot with no feedback system employed, and this is

disastrous, long term.

[CountAllVotes]

5. yep

those were the words of my late father btw. He's been gone awhile now.

He also lived in then Peking, China at the end of WWII and he saw a lot of starving people and he always used to say that the problem with the world is that there are TOO MANY PEOPLE.

He never changed his mind.

Seems he was right.

[Newest Reality]

7. I am sure that is not a good

reason to justify the gross inequity concerning the distribution of wealth amongst the people already extant.

Of course, the gluttonous, bovine-like-, (my apology to pigs) lifestyle could probably never be equally distributed, nor should it, largely due to the deleterious effect it is bound to have on our environment.

I wouldn't hang this whole mess on the numbers of people on this planet primarily. There are ways to do things much better and with less impact without requiring genocide or neglect of the masses.

With the amount of overall wealth we have had, (and is rapidly being sucked-up and allowed to erode) a decent, non-ghetto existence for more people is not unrealistic, nor necessarily destructive to the planet, but that goes into a whole new story and way of life, doesn't it?

Sure, we should certainly be more concerned now about the amount of new people being added to our numbers; that should be considered a sound responsibility through education and reason in a way that sways the "be fruitful and multiply", (been there, done that) and thorny, biological and cultural reproductive imperative of our species. In that case, we are passing the brink and sink or swim is the essence of this, one of many, of our perfects storm of combined crises.

[DJ13]

4. $9 for the top 5%, $1 for the bottom 95%

Sure theres "growth", but its increasingly skewed to the top income brackets.

[Crowman1979]

8. It is a combination of economic inequality and religious/cultural pressures to have large families.

[CountAllVotes]

10. the planet can't take it

too damn many people. Period.