The Human Zoo

Morgan Maher
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Human population in urban areas is increasing by astonishing degrees, especially in Africa and Asia. In Lagos, Nigeria for example, the population in 1950 was 300,000. Currently an estimated eight million people now live in the city with that number expected to rise to 18 million by 2010. Cities are growing rapidly since the majority of their populations are young people in their reproductive prime. A steady migration of rural dwellers looking for work also contributes to their numbers.

A UN forecast estimates half of all humanity will be living in cities by the end of 2008. This translates to over 3.3 billion people living on 3% of the Earth's land surface. This could lead to a host of challenges as the number of people living in sprawling slums without clean water or proper sanitation could surge in the coming decades.

Photo by Ian Ransley, used via Creative Commons liscences.

 

 

Comments

Holy Hypermind!

Submitted by JED on Wed, 03/26/2008 - 17:32.
Morgan, what's leapt to mind, is density of connectedness, as McKenna used the expression. Eighteen million people in Lagos, where little infrastructure is in place to support this, suggests some astonishing creativity be employed, or this will be a damn short experiment. What's new and exciting, without precedent, is, most of these people will have cellphones, many net-linked. If there were ever a petri dish for emergent swarm behavior, wouldn't this be one? Mark Pesci's blogs on hyperconnectivity offer interesting insights into possible consequences of huge, networked populations. I'm recalling his essay titled "Mob Rules" on markpesci.com. He refers to developments in India as cellphones became accessible to many. A corrolary line may be the application of Paolo Soleri's "Arcology" concepts for city design. I shudder to think how Lagos would be, without application of some new ideas.

The Human Network

Submitted by Morgan Maher on Thu, 03/27/2008 - 12:15.

Hi Jeffery,

Interesting. I've been reading Mark for some time and think his writing on swarms, mobs, hyperconnectivity, hyperdistrubution, media etc are very important.

There is certainly an opportunity to connect many, many people - but the question is: why are these people connected and what are they talking about?

There are many challenges, but you're right - if people get connected, the opportunity is there to rise above and solve problems.

ps. Pesce has changed the name of his blog/forthcoming book from "Hyperpeople" to "The Human Network"

What is the alternative?

Submitted by Flakey on Fri, 03/28/2008 - 00:30.
One might ask, what is the alternative to everyone packed into cities. It might ultimately be better to have everyone living in dense cities than to spread everyone across the countryside, with the environmental degradation that entails. Look at what's happened in North America, with sprawling, unsustainable suburbs. With luck this development model can be avoided elsewhere.