Demographic Change and the City

Abstract

The global demographic transition is one of the key features of the twenty-first century and one which is critical for the global shape and pace of urban development and change. Since the publication in the 1960s of Ehrlich’s Population Bomb (1968), the focus in debate has been upon the consequences of rapid population growth and the need to moderate fertility rates to ensure that the population does not exceed the carrying capacity of the planet and that Malthus’ dismal prophecy does not become a reality. Thus, population policy has principally been about birth control and the reduction in growth rates, particularly in the developing parts of the world, for example, the development of the one-child family in China. Within the population mix, however, there are other significant changes. The regional distribution of population across the globe is changing, countries are ageing at varying rates, and the rural-urban balances are still moving in the direction of the cities. Thus, even if, overall, the population may be going to peak at some stage during the present millennium, there will be profound distributional and profile changes which will impact upon the social structure, economic capacity and socio-political relations between nation-states and ethnic groupings arising out of the relative changes in the size and shape of the various populations within the cities around the world.