BRITAIN : Big Growth in Cities Projected for 2006

More than half the world’s projected 6.6 billion people in the year 2006 will be living in urban areas, underlining the prospect of crowded, violent and unhealthy cities, the United Nations Population Fund said in a report released in London. The biggest increase in urban population will be in developing countries, where the pressure on resources will be greatest, it added. “This urban future is inevitable and it should not be feared,” the report said. “It carries many risks--such as the possibility of the collapse of basic services, intolerable environmental degradation and escalation of social conflict--but the very nature of large cities, as concentrations of human creativity . . . opens up new avenues for human development.”