George Martine (former president of the Brazilian Association for Population Studies ABEP) was the lead author of the UN Population Fund's (UNFPA) report State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth.
In this seminar, Martine discussed seven common misconceptions about urbanization (ht Eduardo Marandola).
- Urbanization is inherently bad
- Most urban growth occurs in mega cities
- Urban growth comes mainly from migration to cities
- Rural-Urban migration can and should be stopped
- The poor are a marginal minority in cities
- Cities occupy a huge amount of land area
- As a whole, urbanization inevitably harms the environment
