May 23, 2007: The Day When the World Turned Majoritary Urban

Wednesday, May 23, 2007, is the day that marks the major demographic shift of the human population from rural to urban: for the first time in history there will be more city-dwellers than villagers.

This is the conclusion of a research made at North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia. The UN has already forecast that the world will be 51.3 % urban by 2010.

On Wednesday, a global urban population of 3,303,992,253 bypassed the 3,303,866,404 rural people.

The team warns that this demographic transition does not mean that the urban population is more important than the rural and that both types of population rely heavily on each other with cities processing rural goods for urban and rural consumers.

"But if either cities or rural areas had to sustain themselves without the other, few would bet on the cities. As long as cities exist, they will need rural resources - including the rural people and communities that help provide urban necessities. Clean air, water, food, fiber, forest products and minerals all have their sources in rural areas. Cities cannot stand alone; rural natural resources can. Cities must depend on rural resources." said co-author Dr. Ron Wimberley, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at NC State.

In US, this transition to a majority of urban population occurred early in the late 1910s and today, just 21 % of US is rural. The numbers are even much smaller for some West European countries.

Still, in US there are some majority rural states: Maine, Mississippi, Vermont, and West Virginia. But the researchers point that although rural natural and social resources are necessary for urban people, rural people experience poverty and low education attainment: see the rural South of US.

1.2 billion of the world's population live on less than a dollar daily and 75 % of world's poor people live in rural zones. Moreover, besides poverty, rural areas also receive the urban garbage, polluted air, contaminated water and solid and hazardous wastes produced in cities.