City migration as a development problem? It’s the ultimate urban myth
Alastair Donald | 17 February 2012 (The Guardian)
Rather than portraying rapid urbanisation in terms of overconsumption, we should be celebrating it.
In January, China marked a historic milestone in its development: for the first time ever, city dwellers outnumbered the rural population. According to the Chinese statistics bureau, 691 million people now live in cities, amounting to more than 51% of the population. Yet this fact merited just a single sentence in a Chinese government press release. Meanwhile, in the western media, to the extent that this genuinely historic event was covered, it sometimes seemed less a matter for celebration than trepidation.
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