Step 1

More than two-thirds of the world's population is expected to reside in cities by 2050, up from roughly 54% currently.

While the many advantages of well-organized and efficient cities are generally acknowledged, we must also acknowledge that rapid, often unplanned urbanization poses serious social hazards, as well as threats to key infrastructure, potential water shortages, and the spread of disease.

These dangers will only grow as the country makes the historic transition from rural to urban.

Because of the larger concentration of people, physical assets, infrastructure, and economic activity at the city level, the risks that materialize there have a significantly higher potential to disrupt society than they have in the past.

In and of itself, urbanization is not a terrible thing. It provides significant economic, cultural, and societal benefits.

Cities that are well-managed are both efficient and effective, allowing for environmental protection.

As a result, a city model has the potential to make economic activity more environmentally friendly. Furthermore, because exchanging ideas creates new ideas, proximity and diversity of individuals can drive creativity and employment.

Rapidly expanding population density, on the other hand, can cause serious challenges, particularly if planning efforts are insufficient to deal with the flood of new residents.

In extreme cases, the outcome could be disastrous.

According to estimates, slums account for 40% of global urban expansion, worsening socioeconomic inequities and generating unclean conditions that enable disease spread.

Infrastructure, health, climate change, and social instabilities are four areas that confront particularly challenging difficulties in the face of rapid and unplanned urbanization, according to the Global Risks 2015 Report.

Step 2

Infrastructure

Most developed economies' infrastructure investments are insufficient to sustain infrastructure quality (WEF and OECD data): Infrastructure for transportation (roads, railroad, airports, ports)
The infrastructure of a city is critical to its citizens' quality of life, social inclusion, and economic prospects.
It also evaluates the city's resiliency to a variety of global threats, including environmental, social, and health-related threats, as well as economic threats like unemployment.
Many of the issues faced by rapidly urbanising cities in poorer countries are related to infrastructure availability and quality, whereas underinvestment poses similar issues in most industrialised economies.
Health
Throughout the twentieth century, city people' health improved as a result of improved access to education and healthcare, improved living conditions, and targeted public-health programmers.

Emergency medical care may be acquired within hours in industrialized economies, and modern facilities for longer-term therapies are widely available.

When urbanization is quick and unplanned, though, a problem arises.

Climate Change

Rapid, insufficient, and poorly managed urban expansion can expose urban inhabitants to the effects of climate change.

The increased frequency of extreme weather is driving migration from rural to urban regions; nevertheless, cities tend to be located near the sea or natural waterways, which puts them at greater danger of floods.

Fifteen of the world's twenty megacities — cities with populations of more than 10 million people – are located in coastal areas that are vulnerable to sea-level rise and storm surges.

Both municipal governments and the private sector should prioritize making cities more robust to extreme weather disasters.

Social Instability

Cities' ability to generate affluence already has a significant impact on global growth: cities house little over half of the world's population, but they generate more than 80% of global GDP.

In the end, new migrants in cities are likely to provide more economic value than those in rural areas.

This, in turn, has the potential to increase personal wealth and the desire to protect personal assets and income, providing the insurance business with yet another function.

Even when cities succeed, however, the process of integrating migrants into metropolitan economies is not always easy.

While moving to a city provides people with more options to better their living conditions, the high cost of living is a drawback.

Why might the problem of rapid urbanization be a more significant population policy issue than curtailing population growth rates over the next two decades for most developing countries? Explain your answer.

Public Answer