Cities Gobbling Up Huge Land Masses (by 2030, twice the land area of texas to be added)

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://tamutimes.tamu.edu/2011/09/15/cities-gobbling-up-huge-land-masses/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tamuNewsFull+%28TAMU+News+Articles%29

September 15, 2011

Cities Gobbling Up Huge Land Masses

In the next 20 years, more than 590,000 square miles of land globally — more than twice the size of Texas — will be gobbled up by cities, a trend that shows no signs of stopping and one that could pose threats on several levels, says a Texas A&M University geographer who is part of a national team studying the problem.

Burak Güneralp, a research assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Texas A&M, says urban areas are growing faster than urban populations and by 2030, urbanized land worldwide will grow by 590,000 square miles — more than twice the size of Texas, or about the size of Mongolia. He is part of a team that includes three other researchers from Yale, Stanford and Arizona State and their work is published in the journal http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi/10.1371/journal.pone.0023777">PloS ONE.

“This massive urbanization of land is happening worldwide, but India, China and Africa have experienced the highest rates of urban land expansion,” Güneralp explains. “Our study covered the 30 years from 1970 to 2000, and we found that urban growth is occurring at the highest rates in developing countries. However, it is the North America that experienced the largest increase in total urban land.”

The United Nations predicts that by 2030 there will be an additional 1.47 billion people living in urban areas. Güneralp says, urban population growth is a significant driver of urban land change, especially in developing regions such in India and Africa. However, economic growth is also important, particularly in China.

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(Video at link)

[phantom power]

1. Better urban than suburban or exurban

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. Well, no, not necessarily

http://www.unhabitat.org/content.asp?cid=9599&catid=7&typeid=46&subMenuId=0&AllContent=1

Hot Cities: battle-ground for Climate Change

World’s cities responsible for up to 70 per cent of harmful greenhouse gases while occupying just 2 per cent of its land

Urban centres have become the real battle-ground in the fight against climate change and cities will neglect their role in responding to this crisis at their peril. Not just their own peril but that of the world. This is the tough and urgent message of UN-HABITAT’s new Cities and Climate Change: global report on Human settlements 2011.

According to the report, the world’s cities are responsible for up to 70 per cent of harmful greenhouse gases while occupying just 2 per cent of its land. What goes on in cities, and how they manage their impact on the environment, lies at the core of the problem. It is the combination of urbanization’s fast pace and the demand for development that poses the major threat.

“Cities are responsible for the majority of our harmful greenhouse gases. But they are also places where the greatest efficiencies can be made. This makes it imperative that we understand the form and content of urbanization so that we can reduce our footprint,” said Joan Clos Executive Director of UN-HABITAT. “Understanding the contribution of cities to climate change will help us intervene at the local level. With better urban planning and greater citizen participation we can make our hot cities cool again.”

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[XemaSab]

5. Does their definition of the cities include suburbs?

Driving a half hour to work every day is a planet-killer; taking the bus for a half hour notsomuch.

[cprise]

6. Yes

I repeatedly run into this kind of descriptive vacuity when reading about "the urban environment". If its paved then it's "urban", while "suburban" is considered to be a non-technical term.

It's really a pre-1920s way of viewing the world (urban, rural, wilderness) that has damaged the way we address many issues. For decades, when environmentalists attacked the excesses of civilization the imagery they used to show mass consumption and pollution was almost always a densely populated city (sometimes while describing very suburban maladies but without labeling them as such). There is also a great deal of liberal and hippie and pop culture lore that (while not specifically eco-minded) is anti-urban. Most of American pop culture to this point has been anti-urban. On websites like grist.org you can see columnists and readers getting to grips with these problems.

Two things that helped keep Europe relatively sane over the past few decades is that 1) they didn't take postmodernism too seriously in their universities, and 2) they didn't internalize anti-urban views which may explain why their version of environmentalism works better.

[GliderGuider]

2. That's 3% of the earth's agricultural land - gone.

Enough land to feed 200 million or more people. Lost to paving.

Que sera, sera.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. Don't worry - after the pandemic, caused by population compression

world wide, they'll go the way of Detroit, and once again be returned to farmland, forest and the wild.

The population crash IS coming. These population levels are only sustainable in an oil economy, and that is coming to an end. The end of cheap energy means poverty, and poverty + dense population = pandemics.