Meadow to mega city

MEADOW TO MEGACITY: MEETING FUTURE NEEDS IN AN URBAN ENVIRONMENT
Abstract: There has been considerable interest in determining whether urbanisation is enhancing or degrading the earth’s environmental capacity when separated from economic growth and population growth. The environmental sustainability of cities in the developing world is contrasted against cities in the developed world. Results show that sustainability is improved by urbanisation when economic and population growth is constant.
Keywords: Urbanisation; environmental sustainability.
Introduction

The twentieth century has seen extraordinary increases in the number of people inhabiting urban areas. In 1900, approximately 160 million people, or 10% of the world's population was urbanised. A century later urban-dwellers constituted 47% of the world population or 2,850 million people (United Nations 2001).

The influential Limits to growth (Meadows et al. 1972) demonstrated that a growing population, growing co...