Chapter 1: Introduction

Abstract

People are drawn to living together in communities and, although cities began to appear 10,000 years ago, it is only in the last 3,000 years that they have become relatively numerous and inhabited by a large numbers of people (Macionis and Parrillo, 2009). Towards the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century more than half of the world’s population is living in urban areas – this is predicted to rise to 60 percent by 2030 (Figure 1, UN, 2006). In some parts of the world, where cities have been established for a long time, e.g., in Western Europe, the percentage of the population living in urban areas is even higher at >70% (Population Reference Bureau, 2007). Why then, for a species that shows a preference for natural sceneries (Ulrich, 1981), are we so keen to live in artificially built environments? The answer is that cities offer us security and the chance of a better standard and quality of life, though the latter fact may be hard to believe in many of the deprived, crime-ridden innercity slums of the world.