The world is steadily becoming more urban, as people move to cities and towns in search of employment, educational opportunities and higher standards of living. Some are driven away from land that, for whatever reason, can no longer support them. By the year 2005, urban areas are expected to be home to more than half of the world’s people.
Already 74 per cent of Latin American and Caribbean populations live in urban areas, as do 73 per cent of people in Europe, and more than 75 per cent of people in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. In both Africa and Asia, urban dwellers represent about a third of the total populations. However, there are significant variations between individual countries. In Africa, for example, more than 50 per cent of the populations of Algeria, South Africa and Tunisia reside in urban areas.
In addition, there is a continuing trend towards ever-larger urban agglomerations. By the turn of the century, 261 cities in developing countries will have populations over 1 million, compared with 213 in the mid-1990s. In 1994, there were14 so-called "mega-cities," defined as cities with at least 10 million inhabitants. Their number is expected to double by 2015.
Urbanization usually accompanies social and economic development, but rapid urban growth on today’s scale strains the capacity of local and national governments to provide even the most basic of services such as water, electricity and sewerage. Squatter settlements and over-crowded slums are home to tens of millions, like the favelas that cling to the hillsides of Rio de Janeiro and the tombs used as homes by tens of thousands in Cairo’s "City of the Dead". In some developing countries, notably in Africa, this growth reflects rural crisis rather than urban-based development.