Popcorn: lies, damn lies, and statistics

The United Nations concluded its second Conference on Human Settlements, Habitat II, on June 14 in Istanbul.

As at all the recent U.N. conferences, delegations from predominantly first world nations attempted to foist a pro-abortion, homosexual rights and environmental agenda onto nations of the developing world.

The Conference’s plan of action, the “Istanbul Declaration,” was built upon the notion that the world’s cities were racing out of control, devastating everyone and everything in their way. The media accepted this thesis and spread it widely.

According to the New York Times, the consequences of this human onslaught will be “staggering in almost every field…[with the] environment go[ing] first.”1 The Times quoted the warning of Lester Brown’s Worldwatch Institute that the “land available for staple grain crops is shrinking as urbanization and industrialization…encroach on rural areas…” Other “urban experts” were cited as to the increasing poverty and looming food shortages expected in the cities.

But, as is often the case, the doomsayers were filled with more gloom than with truth.

Despite the concerns about pollution in Third World cities, by any standard they are a substantial improvement over conditions in the countryside. One might be warned not to drink the water in Cairo or Mexico City, but at least it doesn’t contain the virulent disease and pathogens infesting the streams and lakes that constitute some rural water supplies.

Many cities are also doing better than reported in their food supplies. In fact, a flourishing urban agricultural economy has developed in many of the world’s cities in recent years.2 Earlier this year the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) issued a report — Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities — which assessed the role of city farming throughout the world. Studies of individual countries showed a marked upswing in urban farming and the impact on food supplies was “substantial.”

China now provides city dwellers with almost all their vegetables from farms located within city limits. The yields have proven to be several times as high as those achieved in rural areas and a fresher product can be brought to market far more quickly. In Mexico City, potatoes are grown in stacked tires; in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, rooftop compost beds sprout fresh vegetables. The wave of the future is for cities to be less, not more, dependent on rural food supplies.

The notion that many cities are growing out of control is also a myth.

American cities in the mid-19th century grew faster than any city is growing now, and the cities of the Pacific rim, especially Tokyo and Seoul, are today growing faster still. By any standard, the health, wealth and education of these city dwellers far surpasses that of their rural counterparts. Rising urban populations have always been associated with rapid economic growth. This is as true today as it was in the days of ancient Rome and Athens.

Nonetheless, for many cities of the world, including some of the poorest ones, population growth has not only slowed but has even stopped, with many cities now actually experiencing population declines. In recent years, more people have moved out of Mexico City and Sao Paulo than in.

As a result, the U.N. sharply cut its population projections for these two cities (among others) — in the case of Mexico City by some 10 million; for Sao Paulo by 4.5 million. (See “Mexico City shrinks.” Popcorn. PRI Review, Nov.-Dec. 1993).

This situation has become so common that a new term has been created to describe the phenomenon: counter-urbanization. This process is characterized by the decreasing size and density of the inhabited area.3 First witnessed in the United States, counter-urbanization became the dominant force shaping U.S. settlement patterns during the 1970s and 1980s.

Cities experiencing population losses over the past two decades include London, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Kyoto, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis.

“Teeming cities of the Third World, which are of such concern to the U.N., also will undoubtedly experience similar demographic changes early in the next century as part of an entirely natural process of deurbanization. Indeed, if the international population controllers get their way, the populations of those cities will almost certainly decline, but in that case economic, market and natural forces will have little or nothing to do with the situation.

An indication of what is in store for the world’s citizens was bluntly stated in Istanbul by Dr. Nafis Sadik, the president of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) and chairman of the Cairo population conference. At a 4 June breakfast meeting with other U.N. officials at the Nippon Hotel, Dr. Sadik adamantly insisted that “population control was the only government concern in the area of human settlements.” Any other concerns to improve the human environment, she added, should be dealt with privately.4

Although the alleged rationale underlying Habitat II is to provide better housing and shelter for mankind, and to improve the world’s living conditions, there will be precious little of any such aid from the U.N. Unfortunately, nobody is going to get any condos, just condoms.