Word: urbanity
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...easily transportable foods. Farmers in the countryside respond to this demand by planting a narrower range of crops, which in turn increases the likelihood of major disruptions of the food supply by pests and droughts. Particularly in the developing world, cities act as destructive parasites on the surrounding countryside. Urban thirst for fuel wood and building materials leads to deforestation, which can destroy an area's watershed and thus cause flooding and soil erosion. In many cases, the impact of urban centers extends across the seas. Demand for plywood building materials in Japanese cities drives the decimation of Borneo...
...rebuilding the city soaked up hundreds of billions of dollars of Japanese capital. If global warming causes a sharp rise in sea levels during the next century, as many scientists predict, the coastal megacities may have to build giant dikes to prevent disastrous flooding, but only a few urban areas can afford such an undertaking...
...more evenly around the countryside. But people have flocked to cities for thousands of years, and the lure of the bright lights runs so deep that it cannot easily be overcome by government policies. With the world's population growing by nearly 100 million a year, the forces driving urban expansion are irresistible...
...there are signs that urban growth can be slowed. Four decades ago, Mexico City was a relatively attractive place, with only 4 million people and not much traffic along its spacious boulevards. Since then the population has quadrupled, and the congestion has become stifling. In recent years the city's immigration rate has declined while the flow of people to smaller Mexican cities has increased. This trend suggests that the combination of crowding, poor sanitation, noise and pollution can eventually become intolerable...
Experts began predicting the violent collapse of Third World megacities more than a decade ago. Urban planner Janice Perlman recalls the skepticism she encountered in the mid-1980s when she first proposed Mega-Cities, a project to promote the exchange of ideas and innovations among the world's biggest urban areas. She was told that her proposal was futile because such cities as Jakarta and Mexico City would be torn apart by disease and disorder within a few years...