The world will reach a turning point next year when for the first time most of its population will be living in towns and cities, a U.N. agency said on Wednesday, warning the change must be managed carefully.
Unless urban planners make provision for this inevitability, particularly in the developing world, towns and cities risk being swamped, Thoraya Obaid, head of the U.N. population fund (UNFPA) said.
"Urban growth is happening. It is inevitable," Obaid told Reuters as the organization's State of the World Population 2007 report was published.
"But unless you manage it, it will manage you and could become a hotbed of political unrest and armed conflict."
The United Nations has sounded the warning several times before, most notably in U.N. Habitat's 2003 report on the growth of slums which are home to a third of the world's urban population.
