Thomas Malthus

Imagining the future of our cities. Do you imagine glittering skyscrapers, bullet trains whizzing past green parklands, flying taxis and limitless clean energy? I'm afraid you will be dissatisfied. Swaths of the world's cities are more likely to be abandoned, with small numbers of people clinging to decaying houses on empty, weed-strewn streets, like modern-day Detroit. According to a recent Lancet medical journal article, just six countries could be experiencing children at'replacement rates,' implying that there are enough births to keep their populations stable, not growth.

You will very quickly dismiss the belief that the planet is in some bizarre transition if you cover every extreme event and then drop the word 'climate change.' And when it emphatically isn't, it isn't. According to a Pentagon study that came to light in 2004, large portions of the Netherlands would be uninhabitable by floods by 2007 and that by 2020 Britain will have a 'Siberian climate.'

According to UN demographic experts, the world's population is expected to rise in the next two decades, rising to 8.5 billion by 2030 and 9.7 billion by 2050. It is expected that by the 2080s, it would have hit 10.4 billion, where it will remain until the end of the century. So many people! However, if you've ever been stuck for hours on the highway, or have fought for space on a packed commuter train, or have flown home after a break abroad and been surprised how packed everything is, then none of this will come as a surprise, I suspect. Our own population is expected to be around 67 million today. But it isn't really long since it was just half the way long. For example, you would have to subtract one in every two people to imagine Britain in the Victorian heydays.