| Resumen: |
The geographical distribution of the population has undergone major changes in the past fifty years, and will continue to experience significant transformations during the coming decades. While the developed world became mostly urban around 1950, developing regions, including Africa and Asia, which are still mostly rural today, will have more people living in urban areas than in rural areas by 2030. Urbanization has brought a number of advantages to the national economies and opportunities for improving people’s well-being, for poverty reduction and for the promotion of sustainable development, but it also brings serious challenges in many countries. Information and analysis are essential to understand these challenges and to assist policy-makers define, formulate and evaluate policies and programmes that address them.
The Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations organized an Expert Group Meeting on Population Distribution, Urbanization, Internal Migration and Development, which took place from 21 to 23 January of 2008 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The meeting brought together experts from different regions of the world to present and discuss recent research on trends and challenges of urban growth, internal migration, and population distribution, the linkages and disparities between urban and rural development, the challenges of climate change for the spatial distribution of the population, social aspects of urbanization, including its impacts on health, and aspects of urban planning and urban governance.
This publication includes selected papers presented at that meeting as well as two contributions prepared after the meeting. It brings to the fore some important new findings that can serve as the basis for well-informed policy recommendations, not only with respect to population distribution but also, more in general, with respect to social and economic development. Thanks are due to the experts who have contributed to this publication and to other participants to the Meeting who enlightened the discussions. Special thanks go also to the staff of the Population Division who helped organize the Meeting and in particular to Donna Culpepper, who assisted in editing and formatting this publication.
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