The Rain on the Roof: A Geography of the Urban Environment

Abstract

In 1970 the United Nations suggested that by the year 2000 more than 50 per cent of the world’s population would be urban and two-thirds of that urban population would be in the developing countries. Huge, complex, diverse cities, bigger than any now known, will become the environment in which most people will live. Mexico City may have over 30 million people by the year 2000, Tokyo 24 million, Sao Paulo 23 million and Shanghai 22 million. The people of these cities will live in an environment created by human endeavour, often made unpleasant by the side effects of human activity, frequently full of risks derived from crowding, inadequate housing and poor sanitation and yet by no means immune from the extremes of natural processes, as the earthquake damage to Mexico City of 19 September 1985 so tragically emphasised.