For many people, especially in the UK, the dream is to live in the countryside — a nice house, pleasant surroundings, peace and quiet, friendly neighbours and low crime rates. However, for most of the world’s population, the chance of living in a rural area is increasingly remote — indeed, rural poverty means that for many the dream is to live in a city. As the global population continues to grow, urban life will be the reality for the majority of people, and many will live in huge cities of more than 10 million people — so-called ‘megacities’. This process is already taking place, as the figures in Box 1 show.
For some, this huge scale of urban growth is seen as positive. In particular, they see benefits from the relative ease of delivering basic services — healthcare, education, sanitation, etc. — compared to the problems of providing these to rural areas. They argue that such megacities will raise the living standards of millions of people, and create new ‘civic identities’.
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