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CIAO DATE: 03/02
From the Editors
No matter where they are, cities are centers of art, culture, business, and government. Their vibrant energy makes them pulse points of nations. At the same time, cities are increasingly a nexus for environmental challenges.
"The State of World Population 1999," issued by the United Nations Population Fund, documents the trends of increasing urbanization. One-third of the world's population lived in urban areas in 1960. By 1999, that percentage had increased to 47 percent. The report predicts 61 percent of the world's population will be city dwellers by 2030. The State of World Population 1999 offers this prediction about urbanization:
. . . the ecological and sociological "footprint" of cities has spread over ever-wider areas, creating an urban-rural continuum of communities that share some aspects of each lifestyle. Fewer and fewer places on the planet are unaffected by the dynamics of cities.
Discussions among city planners and urbanists about the best ways to make cities work better for everybody are likely to become more heated in the next century as urban conglomerations of 10 million and more people become common and the associated problems grow exponentially. A major part of those problems will be environmental: designing effective land use; meeting the challenge of effective and environmentally friendly transportation; preserving open space; providing healthy air and water. We invite readers to consider some of the innovative and effective strategies currently emerging, in the United States and internationally, to avoid or mitigate the damage caused by this ever more important "ecological footprint."