Posts Tagged ‘world’

Urbanization, Export Crops Drive Deforestation

In Reversal, Land Is Cleared for Global Trade and Big Cities, Says Study
The drivers of tropical deforestation have shifted in the early 21st century to hinge on growth of cities and the globalized agricultural trade, a new large-scale study concludes.

The observations starkly reverse assumptions by some scientists that fast-growing urbanization and the efficiencies of global trade might eventually slow or reverse tropical deforestation. The study, which covers most of the world’s tropical land area, appears in this week’s early edition of the journal Nature Geoscience. Read the rest of this entry »

Urban vs. Rural Living

People inhabit different parts of the world and lead different types of lives. Their lifestyles change across the various regions on Earth and so do their mentalities. The resources available in their regions, the plant and animal life that is native to their area have a direct impact of their way of living. People all over the world have been divided into two distinct groups by this marked line of difference between an urban and a rural life. Those inhabiting urban areas lead an urban life while inhabitants of rural parts of the world experience a rural living. What is the difference between a rural and an urban living? What are the pros and cons of the two different ways of life? Let us see.

Urban LivingUrban areas are equipped with all the modern amenities. The modern-day facilities like the Internet, telephone, Read the rest of this entry »

Trending Towards Urban Living

A growing migration out of the suburbs is leading to higher demand for urban properties

High fuel prices and walkability are key factors in many downtown buyers’ decision.

The quintessential American dream used to include a suburban house with big yard, but homebuyers are increasingly dreaming of a walkable urban lifestyle along with their dog and two kids.
Flight from urban areas began after World War II, when thousands of returning soldiers and their young families needed inexpensive housing. In Leviitown, an early Long Island, N.Y., suburb, developers built more than 17,000 virtually identical Cape Cods. The development served as a model for later ‘burbs, and the middle class migration out of the city continued until a peak in the 1980s. Read the rest of this entry »

Perspective Health and Urban Living

Christopher Dye
The majority of people now live in urban areas and will do so for the foreseeable future. As a force in the demographic and health transition, urbanization is associated with falling birth and death rates and with the shift in burden of illness from acute childhood infections to chronic, noncommunicable diseases of adults. Urban inhabitants enjoy better health on average than their rural counterparts, but the benefits are usually greater for the rich than for the poor, thus magnifying the differences between them. Subject to better evidence, I suggest that the main obstacles to improving urban health are not technical or even financial, but rather are related to governance and the organization of civil society.
World Health Organization, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland.