While living in the United States many of us have grown up seeing
economic progress throughout our lifetimes. However, what may seem logical is
that metropolitan cities have developed at a faster rate than elsewhere. Recent
data has shown that this trend holds for world economic growth. Research from McKinsey
Global Institute pointed out that over half of the world’s economic growth in the past two decades has been comprised of less than 1% of the world's landmass. Big
cities in China, India, the United States, and Europe have grown tremendously in
size and with that have continued to quickly develop over time. This has meant
that 27% of the global population has lived in regions that drove half of the
world’s global growth in 2019.
Through taking the Human Impacts on the Environment course
at OWU this year I have learned a little about how big cities have affected the
world’s landscape. I think that throughout the next few decades it will be
interesting to see how the trend of growing cities behaves, and what solutions
will be made toward making that growth sustainable.
A second worry that comes with economic growth stemming from
cities is that the quality of living will improve disproportionately, and serious
poverty concerns will continue in certain areas of the world. With only a
quarter of the world experiencing half of the world's total economic growth.
https://www.ft.com/content/24dbcc0f-7974-48d7-9824-ab86b58a3a29
Although half of all global growth comes from cities, I have to wonder if that growth would even be possible without the rural areas. Food obviously covers an integral portion of the global economy. So I wonder if more cities would be beneficial or if they'd actually be detrimental as removing these rural areas with farms could be harmful
ReplyDeleteIt does seem very logical that the economic would be coming from larger cities where population is concentrated and where everything is readily available. This is interesting that it less than 1% of the world's land mass, but 50% of the economic growth. Everything like crops or even technology all goes to these larger cities to be sold which would make sense why these places are the economic drivers of the world.
ReplyDeleteEven though half of the economy comes from these hotspots, would this not be a great way to incentives growing small cities into bigger ones? also what is classified as a big city- because depending on the metric it could just be that rural areas do not contribute and cities are doing normal economic activities
ReplyDeleteThank you for introducing this issue. It is very important. I learned that most growth occurs in cities, which may lead to adverse economic outcomes.
ReplyDelete