20 Amazing Things About Cities

1. Until 2025, over 60 % of the world’s population of 8 billion will live in metropolises and cities. Over 90 urban centers will have populations of over 5 million of inhabitants (in 1950 just 5 such cities existed). In 1980, 22 cities had over 5 million inhabitants, 36 over 3 million, and 230 over one million. Two thirds of them are located in developing countries. In 1800, just London approached to 1 million. In 1850, London had 2 million of inhabitants, and Paris 1 million. In 1900, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, St. Petersburg, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Tokyo and Calcutta had 1 million inhabitants as well. In 1500, Paris was 8 square km, today it is 480 square km.

2. Some cities can stretch merging into others, like West Midlands in England or northeastern American metropolises: Boston-New York-Philadelphia-Baltimore-Washington DC, stretching on an urban belt of 1,000 km (600 mi) and has 40 million inhabitants. Similarly, Tokyo stretches trough Nagoya to Osaka. Such urban surfaces are called megalopolises.

3. In 1800, just 2.5 % of the world’s population was urban; the number went to 9.2 % in 1920 and over 40 % in 1980. In 2000, over 50 % of the humans lived in cities. Over 90 % of the British live in the cities. In 1920, 51.2 % of the US population lived in cities. Over 70 % of the population of Latin America is urban.

4. The most numerous rural populations are found in Africa, Latin America and Asia, but they also have the most rapidly growing cities.

5. In Mexico City, the population density is of 7,000 inhabitants per square km (the overall density in Mexico is 41).

6. In Denmark, 250 persons can form a city. In US, the number is of 2,500 and in Greece 10,000. UN established the number to 20,000.

7. The first large cities appeared in Summer (southern Iraq) in 3,500 BC, followed by Egyptian cities in 3,000 BC and those from the valley of Indus in 2,500 BC. The first Chinese cities appeared around 1,600 BC and the Chinese used to build the cities from east to west, symbolizing the creation of the Universe. Only few antic cities, like Babylon, Beijing, Byzantium and Rome, had over 1 million inhabitants. They were centers of empires.

8. Cities appeared when humans produced more food than they could consume. This allowed some members of the community to have other activities, being craftsmen, traders, soldiers, priests or others, that offered a lot of services. Cities were cradles of civilization, and their richness could be seen in monumental buildings. Urban areas appeared in rich agricultural areas, easy to defend hill tops, on trade routes, or as ports in estuaries, rivers or protected bays; around regions rich in natural resources or with pleasant, healthy climate, like the Golden Coast of southern US.

9. Why rural exodus? Because cities come with more, varied, better paid jobs and more services, shops and entertainment places. Education and health care are of a higher quality.

10. Rapid city growth is associated with overcrowding, house crisis, traffic blocking, and pollution. The newcomers must find cheap dwellings in slums. Slums appear in suburbs in developing countries (Latin America, Africa and Asia). Slums are made in developing countries by adobe huts, devoid of sewage and drinking water. This increases the risk of epidemics. When even the slums cannot be offered, people sleep in the streets, like in India or Latin America.

11. Large metropolises face high rates of criminality, juvenile delinquency, prostitution, drug addiction and homelessness, over 4 times higher than for smaller cities. Racial and religious tensions increase, especially when people congregate in ghettos.

12. In developed countries, "satellite" cities take over the surplus of population from the large cities. In countries like China and Russia, people can move into older cities only with special permits.

13. The "transport revolution" (the network of trains, buses, and trams) created metropolises. People could easily move and reach commercial or agreement areas. The next revolution was the boom of the car use. The mobility given by cars in the '40s allowed people to avoid the crowed city centers, moving to suburbs, a phenomenon called urban decline. It was more accentuated in US, Canada and Australia, and less in Europe.

14. This phenomenon increased when rich people and businesses left the city centers, abandoned for poor people, often belonging to minorities, to move into the abandoned properties. Collected taxes plummeted too. People started to prefer shopping in suburbs, leaving the narrow central streets.

15. In 1900, Los Angeles had 102,000 inhabitants. In 1991, it covered 1,204 square km and had 3.485 million inhabitants. The metropolitan area covered 10,653 square km and had 8.863 million inhabitants, including 80 integrated cities, the second in US after New York.

16. The Big LA, with adjacent areas, had 14.352 million inhabitants. LA does not have a center, and each suburb is as big as a city. The attempt to create a center with skyscrapers, museums and hotels has had limited success, as the area is just financial, with few connections with the daily life. LA is nothing more than a big highway. The LA area has 7.5 million drivers and 8 million cars. 85 % of the population goes to work by car, eat at restaurants with direct serving to car, see movies and even participate in services in the car. This way of life causes the existence of a yellowish fume, the result of sun light action on egress gases and industry smog that causes eye allergies. Traffic blockages are common, with all the 1,050 km (650 mi) of highway in the city.

17. In 1942, Tokyo had 6.9 million inhabitants. In 1990, the metropolitan area had 11 million inhabitants, with densities, in some places, of 60,000 inhabitants per square km. The metropolitan area Tokyo-Yokohama had in 1985 a population of 19 million inhabitants. Meanwhile, this has been overcome by Mexico City. Land price in Tokyo is the highest in the world: 33 times more than in London, and 89 times higher than in New York. Most buildings are small and wooden, and the surface inhabited by a family of four is of 65 square meters. This caused the dissipation of extended families.

18. The high price of the land areas led to the extension of building ground into the sea, using material left from the new skyscrapers and millions of tonnes of wastes.

19. About 13 million people use the metro in Tokyo daily, and some stations employ professional "pushers" whose role is to crowd the passengers into the agglomerated carriages.

20. Other metropolises are dwindling. London had a maximum of 8.6 million inhabitants; by 1991, on a surface of 1,579 square km it had 6.377 million inhabitants. One characteristic of this city is that, even if there are communities of Caribbean and Pakistani/Indians, there are no ghettos like Harlem in New York or Watts in LA.





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