Do people have enough living space?

The megacities continue to grow, even in Antarctica, to meet the human living space but threaten the primeval forests on Earth.

In the future, do people have enough living space?

People print footprints everywhere, including the desert.(Photo: Thinkstock).

According to UN estimates in July, the world population will increase from the figure of 7.3 billion to 8.4 billion in 2030; 9.7 billion in 2050 and by 2100 this number will reach 11.2 billion.

The streets are crowded with people in Delhi, India.(Photo: Randy Olson).

This raises the question: Do we occupy all the remaining living space?

To answer these questions, find out where people will live in the future and what life will be like then.

Experts predict that the number of people living in cities tends to increase. When agriculture works more effectively, many people quit their work in this hard and shrinking field to switch to manufacturing or urban services. The process of urbanization has been going on in recent decades. In 1930, only 30% of the world's population lived in cities, up to 55% so far. By 2050, about two-thirds of the population will be concentrated in urban areas.

London submarines transport 1.2 billion people every year.(Photo: Alamy).

"Almost all of the increase in people from now until the end of the century will be concentrated in cities," said Joel Cohen, Head of the Laboratory of populations at Rockefeller University and Columbia University, USA. , the author of "How many people can contain Earth" , said.

"From now until 2100, the world's population will increase to one million every 5-6 days."

About half of the population will live in small cities ranging in size from half a million to 3 million people. The rest will live in megacities of at least 10 million people in emerging or emerging economies such as China, India and Nigeria. In the future, both cities and regions will expand geographically and increase population density.

Busy and busy street in Tokyo, Japan.(Photo: Thinkstock).

"People can live at a higher population density , " said John Wilmoth, director of the United Nations population agency. However, it depends on management effectiveness.

Manhattan - the most densely populated area in New York, has good facilities in terms of facilities, education, culture, employment opportunities, and health care services, but Nigeria's Nigeria, Dhaka and Mumbai have many problems. hard.

Cohen said that in these cities "people buy water from peddlers at high prices, garbage everywhere is not treated". Many governments and organizations are unable to manage basic amenities such as fresh water, sanitation and waste disposal. More worrisome, places that lack effective management plans are places with a strong population growth like Africa.

New York has a high population density, but effective management.(Photo: Flickr).

In developed countries, basic living standards cannot sustain the same growth rate in recent years. According to John Bongaarts, vice president of Population Council, a New York-based non-profit research organization, poverty reduction will be more difficult in the future due to three reasons: First, countries wealth is aging, so growth and innovation will slow. Second, resources are running out. Third, inequality is gradually becoming a big problem.

Bright cities on the Earth viewed from space.(Photo: European Energy Agency).

These problems can be reduced if there are appropriate plans, but besides some progressive countries and cities, the rest have no signs of optimal schemes.

Although the future population will focus on urban areas, rural and remote areas also witness an increase in residence.

"With the combination of climate change and technology, it is impossible not to think that Antarctica will be turned into a place to live, although it is hard to imagine that this place will become crowded" , Adrian Raftery, professor Probability and sociology at Washington University, said.

In the future there will be many bigger cities.(Photo: Klaus Herrmann).

However, none of these things mean that they will run out of places. About half of the world's land is only 2% of the population, while only 3% of the total land area is enough for more than half of humanity. But population growth means relatively primitive places to visit, due to increasing demand for resources to support urban life.

"In my opinion, there is no need to worry that rain forests will be replaced by urban areas," said Karen Seto, professor of geography and urbanization at Yale University. "The bigger threat is the indirect effects of urbanization on those landscapes."

Urban needs forest to have wood to build houses, do furniture, to have agricultural land, to have space to store tons of domestic waste and many other things. In the end, the population will fall, Wilmoth said, but in the near future, we are facing a narrowing of the Earth.