City Living
Monday, June 30, 2025
City Living
Cities are where most of us live in the world now.
I was surprised when I heard that statistic recently. I knew urbanization was an ongoing phenomenon as late as the 1990s globally, but I didn’t appreciate that it has continued everywhere—even in the most developed. Humans are increasing in number and taking up less of the land.
From 1960 to 2023, worldwide rural population has gone from approximately two billion to 3.5 billion, whereas urban population has gone from roughly one billion to 4.6 billion.
Has the U.S. fared any differently? We started out in 1960 with a rural population of 54.21 million, cresting at 61.66 million—back in 1990! Rural population has declined since then to 55.94 million in 2023, only slightly higher than 1960. Urban population in 1960s America was 126.46 million and rose inexorably to 278.98 million by 2023.
These numbers are from the World Bank and U.N. Population Division, reprinted in handy charts by Our World in Data, based on national statistics where these are deemed reliable, and adjusted to reflect differences in how different countries distinguish between urban and non-urban settings. For instance in the United States, a settlement rates statistically as “urban” by official federal definition if it contains 2,500 or more residents. Australia counts as urban any settlement with at least 10,000 residents. For the Peoples Republic of China it’s 100,000 or more—the statistical high end. For Germany all you need is 150 or more people to rate as urban—the global low end.
What’s true for the world is true for the world’s countries, by and large. (Small island nations in places like the Caribbean are the exception.) The richer a country is, the more urban it is. Rural life is dying everywhere, and rural life is less prosperous. Even countries already experiencing negative population growth have cities that are growing, while rural settlements dwindle. The largest factor is agricultural productivity. Farming is now so mechanized globally that it requires very little hard, physical human labor. There’s not much industry with a future to make country life appealing to young adults at the start of their careers.
The rest of the discussion at Our World in Data contains more details, including an explanation of the discrepancies in statistics and the sorts of judgments about the data that set countries apart. The discussion on drawing distinctions between rural-town-urban categories rather than a simple rural-urban dichotomy was insightful, for instance.
Regarding our politics, the current American president seems to be the most popular in the most rural parts of the country. As America continues to urbanize, and as rural America continues to stagnate and decline in relative terms, is the Trump administration the last Hurrah! of a dying people? Is all the kicking and screaming just a loud, gasping rural death rattle? Policies that appeal to citified people will eventually become blanket national policies—even if they are incompatible with rural life.
"Policies that appeal to citified people will eventually become blanket national policies—even if they are incompatible with rural life."
I think smaller government, less interventionist, more libertarian policies should appeal to everyone. Nobody likes government drones telling them what they can't do all the time. The problem is that a lot of people like government drones telling other people what they can't do (say, think) all the time.
Progress was made on Sheldon's college enrollment today. He now has to wait one business day for the next step. F got approval to register. Now he needs an appointment with an adviser. I didn't follow up with Fang today, but I can catch him tomorrow.
They can register for this fall and next Spring all at once, which will be nice. It's kind of late for the fall semester, which starts mid-August, so options may be limited, but at least they can start on something.
Sheldon has a few credits, maybe four classes, from back before Covid.