How Should We Be Thinking About Urbanization? Are We?

A question for a Freakonomics Quorum "How Should We Be Thinking About Urbanization?" - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

Urbanization has been climbing steadily of late, with more than half of the world's population now living in cities. Given the economic, sociological, political, and environmental ramifications, how should we be thinking about this?

We gathered a quorum of smart thinkers on this subject — James Howard Kunstler, Edward Glaeser, Robert Bruegmann, Dolores Hayden, and Alan Berube — and posed to them the following questions:

• This year marked the first time in human history that more people lived in cities than in rural areas. What problems and opportunities does this present? What effects has it had on our local and global culture? Economy? Health?

For some additional insights TED Theme The Power of Cities filed under Pearls of Paradigm Processing Social and Economic Paradigms.

This should also be a Davos Question, though it does not appear to be high on the agenda for this year. For some questions on urbanization from past World Economic Forums we have Urban and Lower Income: Asia’s Future Consumer Class from 2007 and Urban Renewal: Holding the Keys to the Future? from 2006.