Though a long-term resident of this planet, I have yet to find The City of Grace. For others interested, this book offers an initial roadmap. Let us get underway.
As an environmental audit, the first chapter reviews the most fundamental driver on earth, population growth, citing projections for the twenty-first century. Ebullient demography should foster continued globalization in production and trade, spurring more countries to join the neoliberal open market. It continues a movement known as economic development which, since the Industrial Revolution, has been seen to provide gains in living standards and quality of life. Yet, consequential environmental problems are pressing, with writers suggesting that we would need four planet earths to sustain even existing inhabitants at the level of todayâs advanced nations. All these elements, in addition to energy, climate and economic stressors (Homer-Dixon 2006, 11), constitute the systemic context into which The City of Grace must fit.
World Population Dynamics
Aggregate Analysis
Recent world population has demonstrated remarkable growth. In 1750, commencing the Industrial Revolution, it included an estimated 790 million people, first surpassing one billion in 1803. This milestone was overtaken by a second billion (i.e. a doubling) over the next 124 years (1927) and the third a mere 33 years thereafter (Roser and Ortiz-Ospina 2018). Since 1960, that count again doubled such that, by mid-2019, the aggregate was estimated at 7.714 billion people, around 6 percent of all who have ever lived on earth (Worldodometer).
Components Analysis
According to the latest United Nations (2019) population report, the greatest continental concentrations occur in Asia (4.60 billion), Africa (1.31 billion) and Europe (0.75 billion) (Table 1.1). China (1.42 billion), India (1.39 billion) and the United States (0.33 billion) are presently the most populous countries, followed by another 11, each exceeding 100 million. These 14 take in advanced and developing lands, yet only 4 (the United States, Russia, Brazil and Japan) exhibit net inward migration. Two (Russia and Japan) post negative demographic growth, whereas, among the other 12, rates range up to +2.60 percent per annum (in Nigeria). That country mirrors its continent (Africa), which posts a 2.49 percent annual rate, far exceeding Asia (0.87 percent) and Europe (0.06 percent) (all data from Worldometers 2019).
Table 1.1
Population of the world and regions for selected years in the twenty-first century (millions)
Region | 2019 | 2030 | 2050 | 2100 |
World | 7713 | 8548 | 9735 | 10,874 |
Africa | 1308 | 1688 | 2489 | 4280 |
Asia | 4601 | 4974 | 5290 | 4719 |
Europe | 747 | 741 | 710 | 630 |
Latin America and the Caribbean | 648 | 706 | 762 | 679 |
Northern America | 366 | 391 | 428 | 490 |
Oceania | 42 | 48 | 57 | 75 |
Apart from migration, population alters through births and deaths. The conventional, but also complacency-inducing, demographic transition model tracks the movement of countries from underdeveloped to advanced status (Daly and Cobb 1989, 243). The former, often with abundant fertility, exhibit high birth and death rates, while developed nations have transited to low death and birth rates, achieving demographic stability unless emigration or immigration interpose. In 1960, the world total fertility rate was 4.89 children per woman but, from 2016, it steadied at 2.51. Commensurately, global annual population grew by 1.82 percent in 1960, peaked in 1970 at 2.07 percent, and retreated to 1.09 percent in 2019 (Worldometers 2019).
Population Projection
Some years ago, the noted economist, Walter Rostow (1998, 26), asked âhow close has the human race come to a more or less stationary global population?â He continued, âthe demographersâ answer is that after 2025 the rate of population increase will slow down rapidly and stabilize at about 10 billion. The demographers may be right, but history generally produced irregular outcomes.â Correspondingly, Henry Teune (1988, 29) calls demography âan imprecise field of study.â
In 1972, in its Volume 2, Number 1, The Ecologist contemplated, under various assumptions, a global population of 15.5 billion by 2070 (Lee 1989, 147). Fortunately, we can downsize this estimate. World population currently increases by 227,400 people a day, the size of a small city. The United Nations (2019, 19) predicts that it will reach 8.55 billion by 2030, 9.77 billion by 2050 and 10.74 billion by 2100 (a count which Alexander and Gleeson (2019, 192) see as âutterly catastrophic from both a social and environmental perspectiveâ). While at 0.1 percent per annum (Roser and Ortiz-Ospina 2018), the growth rate in 2100 will fall short of that currently experienced, another three billion people will populate the earth, 39 percent more than at present. Table 1.1 shows the dramatic redistribution of aggregate population forecast by centuryâs end. Whereas in 2019, peopling of Asia was 3.52 times that of Africa, by 2100 it will be only 10 percent larger. Alternatively, in 2019, Africaâs share of world population was 17.1 compared with Asiaâs 59.4 percent, shifting respectively to 39.3 and 43.4 percent by 2100. Europe in the same timespan will have dropped from 9.6 to 5.7 percent, this relative fall signifying an absolute loss of 117 million persons.
Gabor Zovanyi (2013, 10) disputes ideas that another billion or two would not make much difference, pointing out that âit would take only 11.5 days for a million individuals transported on a conveyor belt to pass by a fixed point at a rate of one each per second, whereas it would take 31.5 years for a billion to pass by at the same rate.â In sum, not only will the world have to accommodate many more people, but current geographical relativities will be radically altered. The quest for urban grace will likely be more relevant than it now appears.
Globalization
Lechner (2005, 331) regards globalization as âthe worldwide diffusion of practices, expansion of relations across continents, organization of social life on a global scale, and the growth of a shared global consciousness.â It has transdisciplinary1 status, spanning politics, governance, business, technology, sport, crime, terrorism, poverty, inequality, development and more. The estimable Peter Dicken, in seven editions of Global Shift, writes about structural changes in the make-up and geography of the world economy, which, by means of supply chains and logistics, including those of command rĂ©gimes, increasingly integrate production, distribution and allocation (Hamilton 2003, 119). Globalization changes spatial relationships, usually centralizing economic and political control. Some argue that the process is new and will produce a borderless world, maybe with a single government. A traditional school suggests that the world economy has formerly been far more integrated than at present (el-Ojeili and Hayden 2006, 14â28), despite todayâs multinational and transnational corporations.2
Robertson (2001, 465) proposes a concept of âglocalization,â which unites the global and the local, and creates unique outcomes around the world. It fosters heterogeneity to offset the encompassing homogeneity often assumed through multinational brands, customs, technologies and hegemonic practices. Some positive aspects of homogenization appear within modernization as, for example, in advances in transport and sanitation systems. Less prospectively, it impacts as placelessness found in urban function and form as cities embrace global efficiency. Abetted by forces that âflattened the worldâ (Friedman 2005), such tendencies can produce feelings of individual and community dislocation, dehumanization and anomie in a âgeography of nowhereâ (Kunstler 1993). They translate today as sharp and decisive political reactions by those protesting the status quo (Goodhar...