Globalization : The Crucial Phase

Abstract

Throughout human history, the rate of world population growth overall has been outpaced by the rate of urban population growth. Right now, more the half the world's population lives in cities, and that proportion will only increase in the next fifty years. Rapid urban growth accelerates the exchange of ideas, the expansion of social networks, and the diversity of human interactions that accompany globalization. The present century is therefore the crucial phase, when the world's increasing interconnectedness may give rise to innovation and collaboration or intensify conflict and environmental disaster.