The 2030 Spike

CHAPTER 15

HABITAT: THE DILEMMAOF THE CITIES

High housing costs, transport bottlenecks, air pollution, noise, urban crime, difficult and stressful child raising, abrasive contacts with neighbours who are close – all these and more are only too familiar to the Western city dweller. Add to this the fact that in most of the world's biggest cities, which are in the developing countries, more than half the inhabitants live in an untidy skirt of unspeakable slums, and the picture gets no better.¹ In Kolkata, in India, one-third of the population literally live, eat and sleep on the streets.² Other cities with populations of over 10 million that have similar problems are Sao Paulo, Djakarta, Manila, Shanghai and Karachi.

These consequences have arisen ...