Rapid Urbanization Essay

Recently, the human population has increased drastically! With a total increase of 3% from the early 1900s/late 1800s, the threat of urbanization has been getting closer and closer. Since 2006, there has been a higher population living in Urban areas rather than rural, and this comes with many consequences such as deforestation, and more. So I ask, what are the effects of Rapid Urbanization to our Environment, Economy, and our health? In short; Urbanization is a population shift from rural to urban areas. During this process, large towns, and cities are formed which begin to become larger to allow a higher population to live in it. But wouldn’t this increase carrying capacity? No, it would not; this is because (While yes PGR are getting lower) the damage to the environment is massive thus limiting the requirements needed for the carrying capacity we currently have which is very much well shown in many countries with below the needed amount of resources.

With this, in the countries that this occurs in they will be much more financially stable as they have many job opportunities for their citizens. While the advantages of living in urban areas are very much clear; they are stable access to electricity, water, shelter, and telecommunications. But providing those needs are very costly to both the economy and our environment. Our environment is harmed drastically with the coming of this rapid urbanization. There is an estimated 18 million acres of forestland that is lost every year due to rapid changes in our environment caused by Urbanization. Not only are we causing large amounts of deforestation, but also the consumption in these metropolitan cities are very high, and in some cases too high for the population to continue growing which is an example of china’s one (now two) child