China's Population Challenge: Designing Sustainable Cities For The Future

China surpassed this milestone in a fraction of the time it took Western Europe to shift from rural to urban societies. Nor is it alone. A similar exodus is taking place across Africa and Asia, prompting the United Nations Population Fund to estimate that almost 5 billion people worldwide will live in cities and towns by 2030, up from around 3.5 billion in 2010.
This transformative shift in human society offers both big challenges and great promise for sustainable development.
On the one hand, emerging cities must avoid the poverty, over-crowding, pollution, and congestion that have plagued many 20th century cities. Beijing’s air pollution problems, now so severe as to be regularly closing down the airport, provide a stark illustration of the downside of breakneck urbanization.

Fonte: Forbes, 15/02/2012

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