Population possibly, has had the greatest influence on how both society and the built environment have evolved. As our population grew, so expanded the built environment and so increased our impact on the natural environment.
In the late eighteen century, the population of the world was in the vicinity of 1 billion people. In the 1800s, London was one of a few cities with one million inhabitants. By 1930, the world’s population had doubled and by the year 2000 it had increased to about 6 billion people. This rapid population growth was accompanied with an equally dramatic rise in the percentage of the population who lived in cities, in 1900, barely 10% of the world’s population lived in cities, by 1950, this increased to almost one-third and
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From these, there are 21 megacities or cities with populations greater than 10 million inhabitants. These megacities are located in Asia (11), Latin America (4), Africa (2), Europe (2) and Northern America (2), and together these house 9.4 per cent of the world urban population, or 4.7 percent of the overall population.
There exists no precedence for the feeding, sheltering, transporting, treating waste products, providing clean drinking water or dealing with the pollution of so many people in so many megacities.
By 2025, the number of these megacities is estimated to increase to 29 and account for 10.3 per cent of the world urban population (with Asia gaining another five, Latin America two, and Africa one). And by this time, it is also estimated that 70 per cent of the world’s population of 10 billion inhabitants will be urban dwellers. And, with ever larger numbers of urban dwellers, we will need to rethink where we live, what we build, what we eat, what we drink, how we are educated and employed.
What are the limits to population growth?
There exist a mathematical relationship between population, environmental impact, and growth, described by the following formulae:
I = PAT where; I is Environmental
Entrapped under thickening layers of smog, the streets of 1800s England was the first time the world has seen such devastating effects of environmental pollution. Enveloping the city was the morbidly dark sky—ought it to be day or night had never been such an oblivion to the common passerby. The cause dates back to 18th century England; separated by a sea, England was able to avoid intervention in the conflicts plaguing continental Europe during this time. Revised quarantined measures to prevent the Black Death from further spreading along with the revolutionary agricultural innovations that emerged during the Agriculture Revolution, England was among the first countries to experience a major population increase. Such population increase consequently
A population increase
This attracted more people to move to cities. By 1900, thirty percent of the U.S population lived in citiess. However this urbanization came with many problems. For many of the people living in the cities, they had an extremely low quality of life. Another result that came with America’s industrialization and urbanization was capitalism.
The rise of cities in America’s cities grew in all direction after the Civil War. With the increase of cities and population it cause the cities to face several problem. For example, people who worked in huge cities had no choice but to live in overcrowded apartment. They also faced problem of sanitation, health and moralse. They had little
By 1900, that number grew to 1 in 3. By 1920, more people lived in the city than in the country. The impetus for this demographic shift is multifaceted, but the main driver was technological innovation which displaced small farmers and forced them to search for work in the city. One of the negative consequences of urbanization was increased pollution. Along with this came decreased sanitation.
Urban areas doubled, tripled, or quadrupled in size which led to overcrowding in cities. Sometimes a large population is a good thing, but in this case the population was too big and caused many health problems. Living conditions were dirty and unhealthy. Cities were unsanitary and diseases filled the streets. There were no sanitation codes in cities.
In document 8 there is a picture of an old tenement and you can clearly see that the house is crowded. And some families were living with more than just their immediate families. “As countries industrialized, they also urbanized. This was a result of people moving to cities in large numbers in order to gain factory jobs.” (document 6).
Johnson’s “The Ghost Map” gives a very detailed narrative of life in London during the mid-1850’s. We see a city full of growth on a massive scale. The population was growing exponentially, industrial technology allowed supply to keep up with demand, and Victorian ideas were bustling through the streets. However, the waste from this massive growth was piling up just as fast. London became the largest city in Europe all the while creating a breeding ground for disease.
Kingsley Davis, who is said to have pioneered the study of historical urban demography wrote his “The Urbanization of the Human population” in 1965. In his essay, he states that the history of the world is in fact the history of urbanization and then begins with description of how tiny European settlements grew slowly through the Middle Ages and the early modern period. According to him, urbanization occurred mainly because of rural-urban migration and not the other factors that people believe. He discusses how the production levels of this time period, due to the feudal system, used to favor an agrarian culture and then how the process of urbanization intensified during the 1900s, especially in Great Britain. He then clarifies the difference between urbanization, which he describes as the process of a society becoming more urban-focused, and the growth of cities i.e. the expansion of their boundaries.
Overcrowding has been an issue for decades; however, due to growing population sizes, its negative social consequences are progressively worsening. Overcrowding is most commonly seen in cities and other urban developments. Cities attract people for many different reasons. As Steven E. Barkan, a professor in Sociology at the University of Maine, explains, cities provide it all: entertainment, cultural attractions, and employment opportunities (Barkan, 2012). Similarly, living in a city allows for easy access to public transportation, businesses, and other necessities.
Population size may vary as individuals are born or immigrate and other may die or emigrate. One model of population growth is the exponential Population Growth; which is the accelerating increase that occurs when growth is unlimited. It predicts that the larger the population is, the faster it grows. This growth model is normally for short lived organisms due to the introduction of a new or underexploited environment. Next, there is the Logistic Population Growth.
Introduction Overpopulation is the excessive population of an area to the point of overcrowding and it is an undesirable condition in every country where the number of existing human population rises to an extent exceeding the carrying capacity of ecological setting. Overpopulation can be result from an increase in births, an increase in immigration, a decline in mortality rates and other factors that may cause overpopulated environment. Therefore, this can cause influence as lack of the available essential materials for survival like water, shelter, social amenities and other because of the numbers of people might be more than the materials for survival. In such condition, this regularly contributes to environmental deterioration, worsening
Although the exponential growth model is the basis of this model, population ecologists have developed this to model the reality of limited resources. This model illustrates how a population may increase exponentially until it reaches the carrying capacity (the number of individuals of a particular species than an environment can support) of its environment. The logistic growth model looks like this when it is illustrated
Sustainability: If you take a look around at what’s really happening in our world, there’s an inescapable pattern of ‘what’s going on is simply unsustainable’ and in other words, it can’t go on for much longer. Sustainability is to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. As cities began to grow with the population increase, the need for a sustainable development became more apparent as resources began to diminish in quantity and value. Left to it’s own devices, the Earth is a sustainable system.
According to www.conserve-energy-future.com, the first factor causing environmental degradation is overpopulation. Rinkesh, World’s Top Eco-Conscious Bloggers and website owner, stated that overpopulation leads to excessive consumption of goods and necessities which impacts natural resources. This is because more people demand more food, clothes, shelter and fuel. Because of this demand, their living space needs to be expanded in order to grow food and provide homes for people.