Sociology

Resources: Ch. 15 of Society

Compose a 200- to 300-word response that follows APA format to the following. Cite 2 or more reference sources from the Library or other relevant online websites:

Explain urban growth trends in the world’s poorest countries. What causes urbanization in poor countries?

Choose a major city in a poor, developing country and research how urbanization has occurred in this city. Try search terms such as “history of urbanization in (name of city).”

Discuss the statistical data and the implications of the urbanization of your chosen city.

Population, Urbanization,
and Environment15

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• Why should we worry
about the rapid rate of
global population
increase?

• What makes city and
rural living different?

the Core Concepts
in Sociology video “Population
Growth and Decline” on
mysoclab.com

• How is the state of
the natural
environment a social
issue?

Watch

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All across the Great Plains, towns are hanging on by a thread. This
chapter investigates population patterns, explaining why people mov

from place to place, why some cities get so large, and why small towns
sometimes die. It will also look at the effects on the physical environ-
ment of population change and our way of life.

Demography: The Study
of Population
When humans first began to cultivate plants some 12,000 years ago,
Earth’s entire Homo sapiens population was about 5 million, or about
the number of people living in Colorado today. Very slow growth
pushed the total in 1 C.E. to perhaps 300 million, or about the popu-
lation of the United States today.

Starting around 1750, world population began to spike upward.
We are currently adding nearly 83 million people to the planet each
year; the world now holds 6.8 billion people.

The causes and consequences of this drama are the focus of
demography, the study of human population. Demography (from the
Greek, meaning “description of people”) is a cousin of sociology that
analyzes the size and composition of a population and studies how
and why people move from place to place. Demographers not only
collect statistics but also raise important questions about the effects
of population growth and suggest how it might be controlled. The
following sections present basic demographic concepts.

Fertility
The study of human population begins with how many people are
born. Fertility is the incidence of childbearing in a country’s population.
During a woman’s childbearing years, from the onset of menstruation
(typically in the early teens) to menopause (usually in the late for-
ties), she is capable of bearing more than twenty children. But
fecundity, or maximum possible childbearing, is sharply reduced by
cultural norms, finances, and personal choice.

Demographers describe fertility using the crude birth rate, the
number of live births in a given year for every 1,000 people in a popu-
lation. To calculate a crude birth rate, divide the number of live births
in a year by the total population and multiply the result by 1,000. In
the United States in 2008, there were 4.25 million live births in a pop-
ulation of 304 million, yielding a crude birth rate of 14.0 (Hamil-
ton, Martin, & Ventura, 2010).

January 18, Coshocton County, Ohio. Having just
finished off the mountains of meat and potatoes that
make up a typical Amish meal, our group of college stu-
dents has gathered in the living room of Jacob and Ann

Raber, members of this rural Amish community. Anna, a
mother of four, is telling us about Amish life. “Most of the
women I know have five or six children,” she says with a smile,
“but certainly not everybody—some have eleven or twelve!”

446

CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

Chapter Overview This chapter explores three related dimensions of social change: population
dynamics, urbanization, and increasing threats to the natural environment.

Looking for a new place to live after you finish college? Crosby, North

Dakota, would really like you to call it home. The town’s officials will do more than welcome

you—they will give you a free piece of land on which to build a house. As a bonus, they will

throw in a free membership in the local country club.

The old cattle town of Ellsworth, Kansas, also wants you. The town leaders will match

Crosby’s offer of free land and go one better, giving you $1,000 cash toward your down pay-

ment on a new home.

Perhaps the best deal of all is found in Plainville, another small Kansas town. In addition

to free land, you can forget about property taxes for the next ten years!

Why are these towns so eager to attract new residents? The answer is that they are all in

the Great Plains, the region of the United States extending from North Dakota all the way

down to Texas that has lost much of its population in recent decades. The governments of Crosby (current popula-

tion 1,100), Ellsworth (2,500), and Plainville (2,000) are offering these incentives because they are worried that

unless there is a turnaround, their towns may disappear like hundreds of other nearby communities already have

(Greene, 2005).

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A country’s birth rate is described as “crude” because it is based
on the entire population, not just women in their childbearing years.
In addition, this measure ignores differences among various cate-
gories of the population: Fertility among the Amish, for example, is
quite high, and fertility among Asian Americans is low. But the meas-
ure is easy to calculate and allows rough comparisons of the fertility
of one country or region to others. Part (a) of Figure 15–1 shows
that compared to the rest of the world, the crude birth rate of North
Americans is low.

Mortality
Population size also reflects mortality, the incidence of death in a coun-
try’s population. To measure mortality, demographers use the crude
death rate, the number of deaths in a given year for every 1,000 people in
a population. This time, we take the number of deaths in a year, divide
by the total population, and multiply the result by 1,000. In 2008, there
were 2.45 million deaths in the U.S. population of 304 million, yield-
ing a crude death rate of 8.1 (Tejada-Vera & Sutton, 2009). Part (a) of
Figure 15–1 shows that in global context, this rate is about average.

A third useful demographic measure is the infant mortality rate,
the number of deaths among infants under one year of age for each
1,000 live births in a given year. To compute infant mortality, divide

the number of deaths of children under one year of age by the num-
ber of live births during the same year and multiply the result by
1,000. In 2008, there were 27,600 infant deaths and 4.25 million live
births in the United States. Dividing the first number by the second
and multiplying the result by 1,000 yields an infant mortality rate of
6.49. Part (b) of Figure 15–1 indicates that by world standards, North
American infant mortality is very low.

But remember the differences among various categories of peo-
ple. For example, African Americans, with three times the burden of
poverty compared to whites, have an infant mortality rate of 12.9,
more than twice the rate for non-Hispanic whites of 5.7.

Low infant mortality greatly raises life expectancy, the average life
span of a country’s population. U.S. males born in 2007 can expect to
live 75.4 years, and females can look forward to 80.4 years. As part (c

)

of Figure 15–1 shows, life expectancy for North Americans is twenty-
three years greater than that typical of low-income countries of Africa.

Migration
Population size is also affected by migration, the movement of people
into and out of a specified territory. Movement into a territory, or
immigration, is measured as an in-migration rate, calculated as the
number of people entering an area for every 1,000 people in the

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 447

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FIGURE 15–1 (a) Crude Birth Rates and Crude Death Rates, (b) Infant Mortality Rates,
and (c) Life Expectancy around the World, 2009

By world standards, North America has a low birth rate, an average death rate, a very low infant
mortality rate, and high life expectancy.
1 United States and Canada.
2 Australia, New Zealand, and South Pacific Islands.

Source: Population Reference Bureau (2009).

Global Snapshot

demography the study of human population

fertility the incidence of childbearing in a country’s population

crude birth rate the number of live births in a given year for every
1,000 people in a population

mortality the incidence of death in a country’s population

crude death rate the number of deaths in a given year for every
1,000 people in a population

infant mortality rate the number of deaths among infants under
one year of age for each 1,000 live births in a given year

life expectancy the average life span of a country’s population

migration the movement of people into and out of a specified territory

sex ratio (p. 448) the number of males for every 100 females in a nation’s
population

age-sex pyramid (p. 448) a graphic representation of the age and sex of a
population

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Society: The Basics, Eleventh Edition, by John J. Macionis. Published by Prentice Hall. Copyright © 2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.

population. Movement out of a territory, or emigration, is measured
in terms of an out-migration rate, the number leaving for every 1,000
people. Both types of migration usually happen at the same time; the
difference is the net migration rate.

All nations experience some degree of internal migration, that is,
movement within their borders from one region to another. National
Map 15–1 shows where the U.S. population is moving and the places
being left behind (as suggested by the chapter opening, notice the heavy
losses in the Plains States in the middle of the country).

Migration is sometimes voluntary, as when people leave a small
town to move to a larger city. In such cases, “push-pull” factors are
usually at work: A lack of jobs “pushes” people to move, and more
opportunity elsewhere “pulls” people to someplace new. Migration
can also be involuntary, such as the forced transport of 10 million
Africans to the Western Hemisphere as slaves or when Hurricane
Katrina caused tens of thousands of people to flee New Orleans.

Population Growth
Fertility, mortality, and migration all affect the size of a society’s pop-
ulation. In general, rich nations (such as the United States) grow
almost as much from immigration as from natural increase; poorer
nations (such as Pakistan) grow almost entirely from natural increase.

To calculate a population’s natural growth rate, demographers
subtract the crude death rate from the crude birth rate. The natural
growth rate of the U.S. population in 2008 was 5.9 per 1,000 (the
crude birth rate of 14.0 minus the crude death rate of 8.1), or about
0.6 percent annual growth.

Global Map 15–1 shows that population growth in the United
States and other high-income nations is well below the world average

of 1.2 percent. Earth’s low-growth continents are Europe (currently
posting no growth) and North America (increasing by 0.6 percent).
Near the global average are Oceania (1.1 percent), Asia (1.2 percent),
and Latin America (1.4 percent). The highest-growth region of the
world is Africa (2.4 percent).

A handy rule for estimating population growth is to divide a soci-
ety’s population growth into the number 70; this yields the doubling
time in years. Thus an annual growth rate of 2 percent (found in parts
of Latin America) doubles a population in thirty-five years, and a
3 percent growth rate (found in some countries in Africa) drops the
doubling time to just twenty-three years. The rapid population growth
of the poorest countries is deeply troubling because these countries
can barely support the populations they have now.

Population Composition
Demographers also study the makeup of a society’s population at a
given point in time. One variable is the sex ratio, the number of males
for every 100 females in a nation’s population. In 2008, the sex ratio in
the United States was 97, or 97 males for every 100 females. Sex ratios
are ordinarily below 100 because, on average, women outlive men.
Because Plainville, Kansas, has an aging population, its sex ratio is 89,
or 89 males for every 100 females. In India, however, the sex ratio is
108 because parents value sons more than daughters and may either
abort a female fetus or, after birth, give more care to a male infant, rais-
ing the odds that a female child will die.

A more complex measure is the age-sex pyramid, a graphic repre-
sentation of the age and sex of a population. Figure 15–2 on page 450
presents the age-sex pyramids for the United States and Mexico. Higher
death rates as people age give these figures a rough pyramid shape. In the

448 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

ARIZONA

NEVADA

CALIFORNIA

OREGON

WASHINGTON

IDAHO

MONTANA
NORTH

DAKOTA MINNESOTA

SOUTH

DAKOTA

NEBRASKA

WYOMING

COLORADO

NEW
MEXICO

TEXAS
LOUISIANA

ARKANSAS
OKLAHOMA

KANSAS MISSOURI

IOWA

WISCONSIN

MICHIGAN

ILLINOIS

INDIANA OHIO

KENTUCKY

TENNESSEE

MISSISSIPPI
ALABAMA

GEORGIA

SOUTH
CAROLINA

NORTH
CAROLINA

VIRGINIA
D.C.

WEST
VIRGINIA

DELAWARE

NEW JERSEY

MARYLAND

PENNSYLVANIA

NEW
YORK

CONNECTICUT
RHODE ISLAND

MASSACHUSETTS

MAINE
VERMONT

NEW HAMPSHIRE

FLORIDA

UTAH

0 250 500 Kilometers

250 500 Miles

Annual Rate
of Population
Change, 2000-2009

Gain 20% to 29.9%
Gain up to 19.9%
Loss up to 4.9%
Loss 5% to 9.9%
Loss more than 9.9%

Gain 30% or more

HAWAII

Cheryl Richardson, age 36, has
just moved to Las Vegas to
work in the expanding tourism
industry, which has boosted the
region’s population.

Tom and Ellen Posten, in their sixties,
live in Wichita County, Kansas; like
many other families in the area, their
children have all moved out of the
county in search of better jobs.

Seeing Ourselves
NATIONAL MAP 15–1
Population Change across the United States

This map shows that since 2000, population has been moving
from the heartland of the United States toward the coasts. What
do you think is causing this internal migration? What categories
of people do you think remain in counties that are losing
population?

Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2009).

population density in your
local community and in counties across
the United States on mysoclab.com

Explore

Explore on mysoclab.com

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U.S. pyramid, the bulge near the middle reflects the high birth rates
during the “baby boom” from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. The
contraction for people in their twenties and thirties reflects the sub-
sequent “baby bust.” The birth rate of 14.0 in 2008 is still well below
its high of 25.3 in 1957.

Comparing the U.S. and Mexican age-sex pyramids shows dif-
ferent demographic trends. The pyramid for Mexico, like that of
other lower-income nations, is wide at the bottom (reflecting higher
birth rates) and narrows quickly by what we would call middle age
(due to higher mortality). In short, Mexico is a much younger society,

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 449

MAC.

CZECH
REP. SLOV.

SLOVENIA
CROATIA

BOSNIA-HERZ.

ERITREA

A N T A R C T I C A

TUVALU

WESTERN
SAMOA

FIJI

TONGA
NEW CALEDONIA

NEW
ZEALAND

AUSTRALIA

SOLOMON
ISLANDSPAPUA

NEW GUINEA

VANUATU

KIRIBATI

MARSHALL
ISLANDSFEDERATED STATES

OF MICRONESIA

NAURU

JAPAN

N. KOREA
S. KOREA

KAZAKHSTAN

MONGOLIA
UZBEKISTAN

KYRGYZSTAN

OMAN

PA
KI

ST
A

GH
AN

IS
TA

N PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC
OF CHINA

NEPAL BHUTAN

TAJIKISTAN

IRAN

MALAYSIA

BRUNEI

I N D O N E S

I A

EAST TIMOR

SINGAPORE

CAMBODIA
SRI
LANKA

VIETNAM

PHILIPPINES

TAIWAN, REPUBLIC OF CHINA

INDIA

BANGLADESH
LAOS

THAILAND

M
YA

N
M

A
R

MAURITIUS

MADAGASCAR

SOUTH

AFRICA LESOTHO

SWAZILAND

NAMIBIA

BOTSWANA

MOZAMBIQUE

ZIMBABWE

ZAMBIA MALAWI

MALDIVES

SEYCHELLES

COMOROS

TANZANIA

SÃO TOMÉ
& PRINCIPE

RWANDA

BURUNDI

KENYA

ANGOLA

GABON

CONGO

EQUATORIAL
GUINEA

UGANDA
CAMEROON

SOMALIA

CENT.
AFR.
REP.

ETHIOPIA

DJIBOUTI

SUDAN
CHAD YEM

KUWAIT

N
IG

ER
IA

NIGER

BENIN

IVORY
COAST

TOGO

MAURITANIA

SENEGAL

GAMBIA

GUINEA-BISSAU
GUINEA

SIERRA LEONE

LIBERIA G
H

A
N

M
A

L I

BURKINA
FASO

CAPE VERDE

SAUDI
ARABIA

EGYPT

LIBYA

U.A.E.

ALGERIA
WESTERN

SAHARA

M
O

RO
CC

ESTONIA
LATVIA
LITHUANIA

ALB.

FINLAND
SWEDEN

ST. VINCENT

M
E

X
I C

BAHAMAS

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO

ANTIGUA & BARBUDA

DOMINICA
GUADELOUPE

MARTINIQUE
ST. LUCIA

ST. KITTS & NEVIS

BARBADOS
GRENADA

GUYANA

FRENCH GUIANA
SURINAME

B
O

LIV
IA

PA
R

A
G

U
AY

A
R

G
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N
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I N
A

C
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M
B

I A

B R A Z I L

P
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R
U

URUGUAY

CHILE

ECUADOR

HAITIJAMAICA

NICARAGUA

CUBA

DOMINICAN
REPUBLIC

GUATEMALA

EL SALVADOR

BELIZE
HONDURAS

COSTA RICA

PANAMA
VENEZUELA

PUERTO RICO

U.S.

UNITED STATES
OF

AMERICA

C A N A D A

ICELAND

GREENLAND
NORWAY

DENMARK

GREAT
BRITAIN

IRELAND

MALTA

JORDAN

IRAQ

BAHRAIN
QATAR

ISRAEL
LEBANON

SYRIA

TURKEY
TURKMENISTAN

AZERBAIJAN

ARMENIA

GEORGIA

UKRAINE
MOLDOVA

BELARUS

GREECE

POLAND

ROM.
HUNG.

CYPRUS
TUNISIA

PORTUGAL

GERM.NETH.
BEL.

LUX.
SWITZ.

ITALYFRANCE

AUS.

SP
AI

HONG KONG
MACAO

RUSSIAN FEDERATION

DEM.
REP.

OF THE
CONGO

60
40
20
0
20
40
60

1801601401201008060402002060 4080100120140160

40
20
0
20
40
60

Annual Population Growth

3.0% and higher

2.0% to 2.9%

1.0% to 1.9%

Below 1.0%

BUL.

SERBIA

Amat Al-Sharafi, age 35, has four
children and lives in Yemen, a country
where the birth rate is high and
population is rapidly increasing.

Amélie Bouchard, age 34, lives in
Canada, a nation with a low birth rate
and slowly increasing population.

MONT.
KOSOVO

Window on the World
GLOBAL MAP 15–1 Population Growth in Global Perspective

The richest countries of the world—including the United States, Canada, and the nations of Europe—have growth rates below 1 percent. The nations of
Latin America and Asia typically have growth rates around 1.5 percent, a rate that doubles a population in forty-seven years. Africa has an overall growth
rate of 2.4 percent (despite only small increases in countries with a high rate of AIDS), which cuts the doubling time to twenty-nine years. In global
perspective, we see that a society’s standard of living is closely related to its rate of population growth: Population is rising fastest in the world regions that
can least afford to support more people.

Source: Population Reference Bureau (2009).
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with a median age of twenty-six, compared to thirty-seven in the
United States. With a larger share of women still in their child-
bearing years, therefore, Mexico’s crude birth rate (19) is half again
the size of our own (14.0), and its annual rate of population growth
(1.1 percent) is almost twice the U.S. rate (0.6 percent).

History and Theory
of Population Growth
In the past, people wanted large families because human labor was
the key to productivity. In addition, until rubber condoms were
invented in the mid-1800s, preventing pregnancy was uncertain at
best. But high death rates from infectious diseases put a constant
brake on population growth.

A major demographic shift began about 1750 as the world’s pop-
ulation turned upward, reaching the 1 billion mark by 1800. This
milestone (which took all of human history to reach) was matched
barely a century later in 1930, when a second billion people were
added to the planet. In other words, not only was population increas-
ing, but the rate of growth was accelerating. Global population
reached 3 billion by 1962 (just thirty-two years later) and 4 billion by

1974 (only twelve years later). The rate of world population increase
has slowed recently, but the planet passed the 5 billion mark in 1987
and the 6 billion mark in 1999 and now stands at 6.8 billion. In no
previous century did the world’s population even double. In the
twentieth century, it quadrupled.

Currently, the world is gaining almost 83 million people each
year; 98 percent of this increase is in poor countries. Experts predict
that Earth’s population will be more than 9 billion in 2050 (United
Nations Population Division, 2010). Given the world’s troubles feed-
ing its present population, such an increase is a matter of urgent
concern.

Malthusian Theory
The sudden population growth 250 years ago sparked the develop-
ment of demography. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), an Eng-
lish economist and clergyman, warned that rapid population increase
would lead to social chaos. Malthus (1926, orig. 1798) calculated that
population would increase in what mathematicians call a geometric
progression, illustrated by the series of numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and so
on. At such a rate, Malthus concluded, world population would soon
soar out of control.

450 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

FemaleMale

A
g

Share of Total Population

0%5%15% 15%5%10% 10%

80 and older

70–79

60–69

50–59

40–49

30–39

20–29

0–9

Share of Total Population

MexicoUnited States

0%5%15% 15%5%10% 10%
80 and older
70–79
60–69
50–59
40–49
30–39
20–29

10–19

0–9
10–19

The population pyramid for high-income
nations has a more “boxy” shape due
to relatively low birth and death rates.

Lower-income nations have a more
pronounced pyramid shape due to
relatively high birth and death rates.

FIGURE 15–2 Age-Sex Population Pyramids for the United States and Mexico, 2010
By looking at the shape of a country’s population pyramid, you can tell its level of economic
development and predict future levels of population increase.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2010).

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Food production would also increase, Malthus explained, but
only in an arithmetic progression (as in the series 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and so
on) because even with new agricultural technology, farmland is lim-
ited. Thus Malthus presented a troubling vision of the future: people
reproducing beyond what the planet could feed, leading ultimately
to widespread starvation and war over what resources were left.

Malthus recognized that artificial birth control or abstaining
from sex might change his prediction. But he considered one morally
wrong and the other impractical. Famine and war therefore stalked
humanity in Malthus’s mind, and he was justly known as “the dismal
parson.”

CRITICAL REVIEW Fortunately, Malthus’s prediction
was flawed. First, by 1850, the European birth rate began to drop,
partly because with industrialization, children were becoming an
economic liability rather than an asset and partly because peo-
ple began using artificial birth control. Second, Malthus underes-
timated human ingenuity: Modern irrigation techniques, fertilizers,
and pesticides have increased farm production far more than he
could have imagined.

Some people criticized Malthus for ignoring the role of social
inequality in world abundance and famine. For example, Karl
Marx (1967, orig. 1867) objected to his view of suffering as a
“law of nature” rather than the curse of capitalism. More recently,
“critical demographers” have claimed that saying poverty is
caused by a high birth rate in low-income countries amounts to
blaming the victims. On the contrary, they see global inequality
as the real issue (Horton, 1999; Kuumba, 1999).

Still, Malthus offers an important lesson. Habitable land,
clean water, and fresh air are limited resources, and increased
economic productivity has taken a heavy toll on the natural envi-
ronment. In addition, medical advances have lowered death
rates, pushing up world population. In principle, of course, no
level of population growth can go on forever. People everywhere
must become aware of the dangers of population increase.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING What did Malthus predict
about human population increase? About food production? What
was his overall conclusion?

Demographic Transition Theory
A more complex analysis of population change is demographic tran-
sition theory, a thesis that links population patterns to a society’s level
of technological development. Figure 15–3 on page 452 shows the
demographic consequences at four levels of technological develop-
ment. Preindustrial, agrarian societies (Stage 1) have high birth rates
because of the economic value of children and the absence of birth
control. Death rates are also high due to low living standards and

limited medical technology. Outbreaks of disease cancel out births,
so population rises and falls with only a modest overall increase. This
was the case for thousands of years in Europe before the Industrial
Revolution.

Stage 2, the onset of industrialization, brings a demographic tran-
sition as death rates fall due to greater food supplies and scientific
medicine. But birth rates remain high, resulting in rapid population
growth. It was during Europe’s Stage 2 that Malthus formulated his
ideas, which accounts for his pessimistic view of the future. The
world’s poorest countries today are in this high-growth stage.

In Stage 3, a mature industrial economy, the birth rate drops,
curbing population growth once again. Fertility falls because most

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 451

This street scene in Kolkata (Calcutta), India, conveys the vision of the
future found in the work of Thomas Robert Malthus, who feared that
population increase would overwhelm the world’s resources. Can you
explain why Malthus had such a serious concern about population?
How is demographic transition theory a more hopeful analysis?

Using the age-sex pyramid for the United States shown in Figure
15–2, why do you think many people are concerned that there
will not be enough workers to pay for the retirement of the baby
boom generation? How does the pyramid shape change as more
and more baby boomers enter retirement?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

demographic transition theory a thesis that links population
patterns to a society’s level of technological development

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children survive to adulthood, so fewer are needed, and because high
living standards make raising children expensive. In short, affluence
transforms children from economic assets into economic liabilities.
Smaller families, made possible by effective birth control, are also
favored by women working outside the home. As birth rates follow
death rates downward, population growth slows further.

Stage 4 corresponds to a postindustrial economy in which the
demographic transition is complete. The birth rate keeps falling,
partly because dual-income couples gradually become the norm and
partly because the cost of raising and schooling children continues
to increase. This trend, coupled with steady death rates, means that
population grows only very slowly or even decreases. This is the case
today in Japan, Europe, and the United States.

CRITICAL REVIEW Demographic transition theory sug-
gests that the key to population control lies in technology. Instead
of the runaway population increase feared by Malthus, this the-
ory sees technology slowing growth and spreading material
plenty.

Demographic transition theory is linked to modernization the-
ory, one approach to global development discussed in Chapter 9
(“Global Stratification”). Modernization theorists are optimistic
that poor countries will solve their population problems as they
industrialize. But critics, notably dependency theorists, strongly
disagree. Unless there is a redistribution of global resources, they
maintain, our planet will become increasingly divided into afflu-
ent “haves,” enjoying low population growth, and poor “have-
nots,” struggling in vain to feed more and more people.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING Explain the four stages of
demographic transition theory.

Global Population Today:
A Brief Survey
What can we say about population in today’s world? Drawing
on the discussion so far, we can identify important patterns
and reach several conclusions.

The Low-Growth North

When the Industrial Revolution began in the Northern Hemi-
sphere, population growth in Western Europe and North
America was a high 3 percent annually. But in the centuries
since, the growth rate has steadily declined, and in 1970, it fell
below 1 percent. As our postindustrial society settles into Stage
4, the U.S. birth rate is at about the replacement level of 2.1
children per woman, a point demographers call zero popula-
tion growth, the rate of reproduction that maintains popula-

tion at a steady level. More than seventy nations, almost all of them
rich, are at or below the point of zero population growth.

Among the factors that serve to hold down population in these
postindustrial societies are the high proportion of men and women
in the labor force, the rising costs of raising children, trends toward
later marriage and singlehood, and the widespread use of contra-
ceptives and abortion.

In high-income nations, then, population increase is not the
pressing problem that it is in poor countries. On the contrary, many
governments in high-income countries are concerned about a
future problem of underpopulation because declining population
size may be difficult to reverse and also because the swelling ranks
of the elderly will have fewer and fewer young people to look to for
support (Kent & Mather, 2002; United Nations Population Divi-
sion, 2009).

The High-Growth South

Population is a critical problem in poor nations of the Southern Hemi-
sphere. No nation in the world lacks industrial technology entirely;
demographic transition theory’s Stage 1 applies only to remote rural
areas of low-income nations. But much of Latin America, Africa, and
Asia is at Stage 2, with mixed agrarian and industrial economies.
Advanced medical technology, supplied by rich societies, has sharply
reduced death rates, but birth rates remain high. This is why poor soci-
eties now account for two-thirds of Earth’s people and 98 percent of
global population increase.

In poor countries around the world, birth rates have fallen from
an average of about six children per woman in 1950 to three or four
today. But fertility this high will only intensify global poverty. That is
why leaders in the battle against global poverty point to the impor-
tance of reducing fertility rates in low-income nations. Notice, too, that

Read on mysoclab.com

452 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

Birth Rate
Death Rate

Natural
Increase

Level of
Technology

Population
Growth

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4

Preindustrial Early Industrial MatureIndustrial Postindustrial

Very Slow Rapid Slowing Very Slow

The United States is in this
historical stage, with both a low
birth rate and a low death rate.

FIGURE 15–3 Demographic Transition Theory
Demographic transition theory links population change to a society’s
level of technological development.

“Sixteen Impacts of Population Growth” by
Lester R. Brown, Gary Gardner, and Brian Halweil on
mysoclab.com

Read

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a key element in controlling world population growth is
improving the status of women. Why? Because of this sim-
ple truth: Give women more life choices, and they will have
fewer children. History has shown that women who are
free to decide when and where to marry, bear children as
a matter of choice, and have access to education and to
good jobs will limit their own fertility (Axinn & Barber,
2001; Roudi-Fahimi & Kent, 2007).

The Demographic Divide

High- and low-income nations display very different pop-
ulation dynamics, a gap that is sometimes called the
demographic divide. In Italy, a high-income, very low
growth nation, women average just over one child in their
lifetimes. Such a low birth rate means that the number of
annual births is actually less than the number of deaths.
This means that at the moment, Italy is actually losing
population. Looking ahead to 2050 and even assuming
some gains from immigration, Italy’s population is pro-
jected to be about the same as it is today. The share of
elderly people in Italy—now 20 percent—will only
increase as time goes on.

Look at how different the patterns are in a low-
income nation such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo in
Central Africa. There women still have an average of six to seven
children, so even with a high mortality rate, this nation’s popula-
tion will triple by 2050. The share of elderly people is extremely
low—about 3 percent—and half the country’s people are below the
age of fifteen. With such a high growth rate, it is no surprise that
the problem of poverty is bad and getting worse: About three-
fourths of the people are undernourished (Population Reference
Bureau, 2009).

In sum, a demographic divide now separates rich countries with
low birth rates and aging populations from poor countries with high
birth rates and very young populations. Just as humanity has devised
ways to reduce deaths around the world, so it must now bring down
population growth, especially in poor countries where projections
suggest a future as bleak as that imagined by Thomas Malthus cen-
turies ago.

China stands out as a nation that that has taken a strong stand
on reducing the rate of population increase. That country’s one-child
policy, enacted back in the 1970s, has reduced China’s potential pop-
ulation by about 250 million. Yet as the Thinking About Diversity
box on page 454 explains, this policy has been controversial.

In much of the world today, mortality is falling. To limit popu-
lation increase, the world—especially poor nations—must control
births as successfully as it is fending off deaths.

Urbanization:
The Growth of Cities

October 8, Hong Kong. The cable train grinds to
the top of Victoria Peak, where we behold one of the
world’s most spectacular vistas: the city of Hong Kong
at night. A million bright, colorful lights ring the harbor

as ships, ferries, and traditional Chinese junks churn by. Few
cities match Hong Kong for sheer energy: This small city is as
economically productive as the state of Wisconsin or the nation
of Finland. We could sit here for hours entranced by the spec-
tacle of Hong Kong.

Throughout most of human history, the sights and sounds of
great cities such as Hong Kong, New York, and Paris were simply
unimaginable. Our distant ancestors lived in small, nomadic groups,
moving from place to place as they depleted vegetation or hunted
migratory game. The small settlements that marked the emergence
of civilization in the Middle East some 12,000 years ago held only
a small fraction of Earth’s people. Today, the largest three or four
cities of the world hold as many people as the entire planet did back
then.

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 453

Fertility in the United States has fallen during the past century and is now quite low. But
some categories of the U.S. population have much higher fertility rates. One example is
the Amish, a religious society living in rural areas of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other
states. It is common for Amish couples to have five, six, or more children. Why do you
think the Amish favor large families?

Typically, immigrants are younger than most people in their
new country. What is the likely effect of high immigration on a
country’s ability to support more and more older people?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

zero population growth the rate of reproduction that maintains
population at a steady level

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454 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

THINKING ABOUT
DIVERSITY: RACE,
CLASS, & GENDER

What’s Happened to the Girls?
China’s One-Child Policy

The parents had argued for hours. But the man
was determined and the woman was exhausted.
The father wrestled the sleeping baby girl from
the mother’s arms. The decision was now made;
the girl had to go. The father put several extra lay-
ers of clothing on his daughter and lay the new-
born girl in a cardboard box lined with blankets.
Next to her, he placed a small bottle of milk. He
walked off into the dark night toward the distant
village, leaving behind the sobbing of his beloved
wife—the baby’s mother—who cried out,
“Please, I beg you, bring back my baby!”

Yet in her heart, she too knew that this must
be done. Half an hour later, the father arrived in
the village and found his way to the local school.
For the last time, he kissed his daughter good-
bye. He set her makeshift crib on the steps of
the school’s front entrance, knowing that when
dawn broke in an hour or so, she would be
found and cared for. With tears in his eyes, he
said a quick prayer to his ancestors to keep the
baby safe from harm. Then he turned and again
disappeared into the night, knowing that he
would never see or hear from her again.

This story may be heartbreaking, but it is one
that has occurred tens of thousands of times in
China. What would prompt parents to give up a
child? Why would a father abandon his daughter
in a public place? The answer lies in China’s
population control policy and the nation’s
cultural traditions.

Back in the 1970s, the high Chinese
birth rate was fueling an extremely rapid
population increase. Government leaders
could see that the country’s economic
development depended on controlling
population growth. As a result, they
passed a law stating that a family can
have only one child. Families who follow
the one-child policy can expect rewards
such as a better job, a higher salary, and
maybe even a larger apartment. On the
other hand, parents who violate the law
by having a second child face a stiff fine,
and their second child may not be eligible
for educational and health care benefits.

The government actively promotes the one-
child message in the mass media, in popular
songs, and in the schools. But education is not
the government’s only tactic—enforcement offi-
cials can be found in most neighborhoods and
workplaces. Most Chinese willingly comply with
the policy, praising it as good for the country.
Those who do not must face the consequences.

Modern China is determined to control pop-
ulation increase. But China is also a country
steeped in a tradition of male dominance. If gov-
ernment rules permit only one child, most fami-
lies would prefer a boy. Why? Parents see boys
as a better investment because sons will carry
on the family name and must care for their aging
parents. On the other hand, girls will end up car-
ing for their husbands’ parents, leading most
Chinese to see raising daughters as a waste of
precious resources. The Chinese government
has expanded women’s rights and opportuni-
ties, but patriarchal traditions are deeply rooted
in the country’s history, and as is true every-
where, attitudes change slowly.

Around the world, the one-child policy has
attracted both praise and condemnation. On the
positive side, analysts agree that it has suc-
ceeded in its goal of reducing the rate of popula-
tion increase. This trend, in turn, has helped raise
living standards and lifted China to the ranks of

middle-income nations. Many one-child families
are happy with the added income from women
who now work outside the home, and parents
now have more to spend on a child’s schooling.

But the one-child policy also has a dark
side, shown in the story that began this box.
Since the law was passed, as many as 1 million
girls have “disappeared.” In some cases, par-
ents who learn that the woman is carrying a
female fetus may choose abortion so they can
“try again.” In other cases, family members
decide to kill a female infant soon after birth. In
still other cases, girls survive but are never
recorded in the birth statistics so that they grow
up as “noncitizens” who can never go to school
or receive treatment at a local health clinic.
Finally, some parents, like those described ear-
lier, give up or abandon their daughter in the
hope that the child may find a home elsewhere.

China’s one-child policy has certainly held
population increase in check. But it has had a dra-
matic toll on the female population of China. In one
recent year, the nation’s birth records showed
almost 1 million fewer girls than boys. The Chinese
population is now about 250 million lower than it
would have been without the one-child policy, but
it is also steadily becoming more and more male.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

1. Point to the reasons China’s one-child
policy has attracted praise and also
blame. On balance, do you think this is
a good policy? Can you think of a bet-
ter way to control population? Explain.

2. What about cases where parents
think they can afford additional chil-
dren? Should family size be a cou-
ple’s decision? Or does government
have a responsibility to look out for
the entire country’s well-being?

3. Do you now understand why almost
all of the babies U.S. parents adopt
from China are girls?

Sources: Hesketh & Lu (2005), Baochang et al. (2007),
and Yardley (2008).

China’s one-child policy is advertised on billboards
throughout the country.

With global population increasing, would you support expanding
the one-child policy to other countries? Why or why not?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

As China’s economy continues to grow, what would
demographic transition theory predict about that nation’s
birth rate?

Making the Grade

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Urbanization is the concentration of population into cities.
Urbanization both redistributes population within a society and
transforms many patterns of social life. We will trace these changes
in terms of three urban revolutions: the emergence of cities begin-
ning 10,000 years ago, the development of industrial cities after 1750,
and the explosive growth of cities in poor countries today.

The Evolution of Cities
Cities are a relatively new development in human history. Only about
12,000 years ago did our ancestors begin founding permanent settle-
ments, which paved the way for the first urban revolution.

The First Cities

Hunting and gathering forced people to move all the time; however,
once our ancestors discovered how to domesticate animals and cul-
tivate crops, they were able to stay in one place. Raising their own
food also created a material surplus, which freed some people from
food production and allowed them to build shelters, make tools, weave
cloth, and take part in religious rituals. The emergence of cities led to
both specialization and higher living standards.

The first city that we know of was Jericho, which lies to the north
of the Dead Sea in what is now the West Bank. When first settled
10,000 years ago, it was home to only 600 people. But as the cen-
turies passed, cities grew to tens of thousands of people and became
the centers of vast empires. By 3000 B.C.E., Egyptian cities flourished,
as did cities in China about 2000 B.C.E. and in Central and South
America about 1500 B.C.E. In North America, however, only a few
Native American societies formed settlements; widespread urban-
ization did not take place until the arrival of European settlers in the
seventeenth century.

Preindustrial European Cities

European cities date back some 5,000 years to the Greeks and, later,
the Romans, both of whom formed great empires and founded cities
across Europe, including Vienna, Paris, and London. With the fall of
the Roman Empire, the so-called Dark Ages began as people with-
drew within defensive walled settlements and warlords battled for
territory. Only in the eleventh century did Europe become more
peaceful; trade flourished once again, allowing cities to grow.

Medieval cities were quite different from those familiar to us
today. Beneath towering cathedrals, the narrow, winding streets of
London, Brussels, and Florence teemed with merchants, artisans,
priests, peddlers, jugglers, nobles, and servants. Occupational groups
such as bakers, carpenters, and metalworkers clustered in distinct
sections or “quarters.” Ethnicity also defined communities as people
sought to keep out those who differed from themselves. The term
“ghetto” (from the Italian word borghetto, meaning “outside the city

walls”) was first used to describe the neighborhood into which the
Jews of Venice were segregated.

Industrial European Cities

As the Middle Ages came to a close, steadily increasing commerce
enriched a new urban middle class called the bourgeoisie (French,
meaning “townspeople”). Earning more and more money, the bour-
geoisie soon rivaled the hereditary nobility.

By about 1750, the Industrial Revolution triggered a second
urban revolution, first in Europe and then in North America. The
tremendous productive power of factories caused cities to grow big-
ger than ever before. London, the largest European city, reached
550,000 people by 1700 and exploded to 6.5 million by 1900 (A. F.
Weber, 1963, orig. 1899; Chandler & Fox, 1974).

Cities not only grew but changed shape as well. Older winding
streets gave way to broad, straight boulevards to handle the increas-
ing flow of commercial traffic. Steam and electric trolleys soon criss-
crossed the expanding cities. Because land was now a commodity to
be bought and sold, developers divided cities into regular-sized lots
(Mumford, 1961). The center of the city was no longer the cathedral
but a bustling central business district filled with banks, retail stores,
and tall office buildings.

With a new focus on business, cities became ever more crowded
and impersonal. Crime rates rose. Especially at the outset, a few
industrialists lived in grand style, but most men, women, and chil-
dren barely survived by working in factories.

Organized efforts by workers eventually brought improvements
to the workplace, better housing, and the right to vote. Public serv-
ices such as water, sewer systems, and electricity further improved
urban living. Today, some urbanites still live in poverty, but a rising
standard of living has partly fulfilled the city’s historical promise of
a better life.

The Growth of U.S. Cities
As noted, most of the Native Americans who inhabited North Amer-
ica for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans were migra-
tory people who formed few permanent settlements. The spread of
villages and towns came after European colonization.

Colonial Settlement, 1565–1800

In 1565, the Spanish built a settlement at Saint Augustine, Florida,
and in 1607, the English founded Jamestown, Virginia. However, the
first lasting settlement came in 1624 when the Dutch established New
Amsterdam, later renamed New York.

New York and Boston (founded by the English in 1630) started
out as tiny villages in a vast wilderness. They resembled medieval
towns in Europe, with narrow, winding streets that still curve through

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 455

urbanization the concentration of population into cities

As the sections describing preindustrial and industrial cities
explain, the size and shape of a city provides clues to a soci-
ety’s technology and culture.

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lower Manhattan and downtown Boston. When the first census was
completed in 1790, as Table 15–1 shows, just 5 percent of the nation’s
people lived in cities.

Urban Expansion, 1800–1860

Early in the nineteenth century, towns sprang up along the trans-
portation routes that opened the American West. By 1860, Buffalo,
Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago were all changing the face of the Mid-
west, and about one-fifth of the U.S. population lived in cities.

Urban expansion was greatest in the northern states; New York
City, for example, had ten times the population of Charleston, South
Carolina. The evolution of the United States into the industrial-urban
North and the agrarian-rural South was one major cause of the Civil
War (Schlesinger, 1969).

The Metropolitan Era, 1860–1950

The Civil War (1861–1865) gave an enormous boost to urbanization
as factories strained to produce weapons. Especially in the North,
waves of people deserted the countryside for cities in hopes of find-
ing better jobs. Joining them were tens of millions of immigrants,
most from Europe, forming a culturally diverse urban mix.

In 1900, New York’s population soared past the 4 million mark,
and Chicago, a city that had scarcely 100,000 people in 1860, was
closing in on 2 million. Such growth marked the beginning of the
metropolis (Greek for “mother city”), a large city that dominates an
urban area socially and economically. Metropolises became the eco-
nomic centers of the United States. By 1920, urban areas were home
to a majority of the U.S. population.

Industrial technology pushed city populations higher and
higher. In the 1880s, the tallest buildings, supported by steel girders
and equipped with mechanical elevators, were ten stories high. In
1930, New York’s Empire State Building was hailed as an urban won-
der, soaring 102 stories into the clouds.

Urban Decentralization, 1950–Present

The industrial metropolis reached its peak about 1950. Since then,
something of a turnaround, called urban decentralization, has
occurred as people have left downtown areas for outlying suburbs,
urban areas beyond the political boundaries of a city. The old industrial
cities of the Northeast and Midwest stopped growing, and some lost
considerable population in the decades after 1950. The urban land-
scape of densely packed central cities evolved into sprawling subur-
ban regions.

Suburbs and Urban Decline
Imitating European nobility, some of the rich in the United States split
their time between town houses in the city and country homes beyond
the city limits. But not until after World War II did ordinary people find
a suburban home within their reach. Thanks to more and more cars
in circulation, new four-lane highways, government-backed mort-
gages, and inexpensive tract homes, suburbs grew rapidly. By 1999,
most of the U.S. population lived in suburbs, where they frequented
nearby shopping malls rather than the older downtown shopping dis-
tricts (Pederson, Smith, & Adler, 1999; Macionis & Parrillo, 2010).

As many older cities of the Snowbelt—the Northeast and
Midwest—lost higher-income taxpayers to the suburbs, they strug-
gled to pay for expensive social programs for the poor who remained.
Many cities fell into financial crisis, and inner-city decay became
severe. Especially to white suburbanites, the inner cities became syn-
onymous with slum housing, crime, drugs, unemployment, the poor,
and minorities (Stahura, 1986; Galster, 1991).

The decline of central cities has also led to a decline in the impor-
tance of public space (Goldberger, 2002). Historically, city life was
played out on the streets. The French word for a sophisticated person
is boulevardier, which literally means “street person.” However, this
term has a negative meaning in the United States today. The activity
that once took place on public streets and in public squares now takes
place in shopping malls, the lobbies of cineplex theaters, and gated res-
idential communities—all privately owned spaces. Further reducing
the vitality of today’s urban places is the spread of television, the Inter-
net, and other media that people use without leaving home.

Sunbelt Cities and Urban Sprawl
As the older Snowbelt cities fell into decline, Sunbelt cities in the
South and West grew rapidly. The soaring populations of cities such

456 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

Table 15–1 Urban Population of the United States, 1790–2040

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau (2009) and United Nations Population Division (2009).

Year Population (in millions) Urban Portion

1790 3.9 5.1%
1800 5.3 6.1
1820 9.6 7.3
1840 17.1 10.5
1860 31.4 19.7
1880 50.2 28.1
1900 76.0 39.7
1920 105.7 51.3
1940 131.7 56.5
1960 179.3 69.9
1980 226.5 73.7
2000 281.4 79.0
2020* 290.7 84.9
2040* 342.6 88.8

*Projection.

Looking at the table below, imagine how the lives of
people who lived a century ago differed from what we
experience today. What are some differences?

Seeing Sociology
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suburbs urban areas beyond the political boundaries of a city

megalopolis a vast urban region containing a number of cities and their
surrounding suburbs

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as Los Angeles and Houston reflected a population shift to
the Sunbelt, where 60 percent of people in the United States
now live. In addition, most of today’s immigrants enter the
country in the Sunbelt region. In 1950, nine of the ten largest
U.S. cities were in the Snowbelt; in 2008, seven of the top
ten were in the Sunbelt (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010).

Unlike their colder counterparts, these cities came of
age after urban decentralization began. So while Snowbelt
cities have long been enclosed by a ring of politically inde-
pendent suburbs, Sunbelt cities have pushed their bound-
aries outward to include suburban communities. Chicago
covers 227 square miles; Houston is more than twice that
size, and the greater Houston metropolitan region covers
almost 9,000 square miles—an area the size of the state of
New Hampshire.

The great sprawl of Sunbelt cities has its drawbacks.
Many people in cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix, and
Los Angeles claim that unplanned growth results in traffic-
clogged roads leading to unattractive developments and
schools that cannot keep up with the inflow of children.
Not surprisingly, voters in many communities across the
United States have passed ballot initiatives seeking to limit
urban sprawl (Lacayo, 1999; Romero & Liserio, 2002; W.
Sullivan, 2007).

Megalopolis: The Regional City
Another result of urban decentralization is urban regions, or regional
cities. The U.S. Census Bureau (2010) recognizes 374 metropolitan
statistical areas (MSAs). Each includes at least one city with 50,000
or more people. The bureau also recognizes 581 micropolitan statis-
tical areas, urban areas with at least one city of 10,000 to 50,000 peo-
ple. Core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) include both metropolitan
and micropolitan statistical areas.

The biggest CBSAs contain millions of people and extend into
several states. In 2008, the biggest CBSA was New York and its adja-
cent urban areas in Long Island, western Connecticut, northern New
Jersey, and eastern Pennsylvania, with a total population of more
than 22 million. Next in size is the CBSA in southern California that
includes Los Angeles, Riverside, and Long Beach, with a population
of almost 18 million.

As regional cities grow, they begin to overlap. In the early 1960s,
the French geographer Jean Gottmann (1961) coined the term
megalopolis to designate a vast urban region containing a number of
cities and their surrounding suburbs. Along the East Coast, a 400-mile
megalopolis stretches all the way from New England to Virginia.
Other supercities cover the eastern coast of Florida and stretch from
Cleveland west to Chicago.

Edge Cities
Urban decentralization has also created edge cities, business centers
some distance from the old downtowns. Edge cities—a mix of corpo-
rate office buildings, shopping malls, hotels, and entertainment
complexes—differ from suburbs, which contain mostly homes. The
population of suburbs peaks at night, but the population of edge cities
peaks during the workday.

As part of expanding urban regions, most edge cities have no
clear physical boundaries. Some do have names, including Las
Colinas (near the Dallas–Fort Worth airport), Tyson’s Corner (in
Virginia, near Washington, D.C.), and King of Prussia (northwest of
Philadelphia). Other edge cities are known only by the major high-
ways that flow through them, including Route 1, which runs through
Princeton, New Jersey, and Route 128 near Boston (Garreau, 1991;
Macionis & Parrillo, 2010).

The Rural Rebound
Over the course of U.S. history, as shown by the data in Table 15–1,
the urban population of the nation has increased steadily. Immigra-
tion has played a part in this increase because most newcomers set-
tle in cities. There has also been considerable migration from rural
areas to urban places, typically by people seeking greater social, edu-
cational, and economic opportunity.

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 457

In recent decades, many U.S. cities in the Sunbelt have spread outward in a process
called urban sprawl. Los Angeles, for example, now covers about 500 square miles,
and even with a vast system of freeways, people moving around the city often find
themselves stuck in slow-moving traffic. What are other disadvantages of urban sprawl?

Is there a class difference in people’s use of the streets as a
place to meet and greet others? For example, do you think
working-class people are more likely to use the streets in this
way than middle-class suburbanites?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

The megalopolis, edge cities, and the “rural rebound” are all
aspects of population decentralization as cities spread
outward after 1950.

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However, in the 1990s, three-fourths of the rural counties across
the United States gained population, a trend analysts have called the
“rural rebound.” Most of this gain resulted from migration of peo-
ple from urban areas. This trend has not affected all rural places: As
the opening to this chapter explains, many small towns in rural areas
(especially in the Plains States) are struggling to stay alive. But even
in these areas, the losses have slowed in recent years (K. M. Johnson,
1999; D. Johnson, 2001).

The greatest gains have come to rural communities that offer
scenic and recreational attractions, such as lakes, mountains, and ski
areas. People are drawn not only to the natural beauty of rural com-
munities but also to their slower pace: less traffic, a lower crime rate,

and cleaner air. A number of companies have relocated to rural coun-
ties as well, which has increased economic opportunity for the rural
population (K. M. Johnson, 1999; Johnson & Fuguitt, 2000).

Urbanism as a Way of Life

Early sociologists in Europe and the United States focused their atten-
tion on the rise of cities. We briefly examine their accounts of urban-
ism as a way of life.

Ferdinand Tönnies:
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
In the nineteenth century, the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies
(1855–1937) studied how life in the new industrial metropolis dif-
fered from life in rural villages. From this contrast, he developed two
concepts that have become a lasting part of sociology’s terminology.

Tönnies (1963, orig. 1887) used the German word Gemeinschaft
(“community”) to refer to a type of social organization in which peo-
ple are closely tied by kinship and tradition. The Gemeinschaft of the
rural village, Tönnies explained, joins people in what amounts to a
single primary group.

By and large, argued Tönnies, Gemeinschaft is absent in the mod-
ern city. On the contrary, urbanization creates Gesellschaft (“associa-
tion”), a type of social organization in which people come together only on
the basis of individual self-interest. In the Gesellschaft way of life, indi-
viduals are motivated by their own needs rather than by a desire to help
improve the well-being of everyone. By and large, city dwellers have
little sense of community or common identity and look to other peo-
ple mainly when they need something. Tönnies saw in urbanization
the weakening of close, long-lasting social relations in favor of the brief
and impersonal ties or secondary relationships typical of business.

Emile Durkheim: Mechanical
and Organic Solidarity
The French sociologist Emile Durkheim agreed with much of Tönnies’s
thinking about cities. However, Durkheim countered that urbanites
do not lack social bonds; they simply organize social life differently
than rural people do.

Durkheim described traditional, rural life as mechanical solidarity,
social bonds based on common sentiments and shared moral values.
With its emphasis on tradition, Durkheim’s concept of mechanical
solidarity bears a strong similarity to Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft. Urban-
ization erodes mechanical solidarity, Durkheim explained, but it also
generates a new type of bonding, which he called organic solidarity,
social bonds based on specialization and interdependence. This
concept, which parallels Tönnies’s Gesellschaft, reveals an important

458 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

The rural rebound has been most pronounced in towns that offer
spectacular natural beauty. There are times when people living in the
scenic town of Park City, Utah, cannot even find a parking space.

Gemeinschaft a type of social organization in which people are closely tied
by kinship and tradition

Gesellschaft a type of social organization in which people come together
only on the basis of individual self-interest

How might Tönnies explain social patterns such as our high
rate of divorce, widespread fear of crime, and incidents of
“road rage” on the highways?

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difference between the two thinkers. Both felt that the growth of
industrial cities weakened tradition, but Durkheim optimistically
pointed to a new kind of solidarity. Where societies had been built
on likeness, Durkheim now saw social life based on difference.

For Durkheim, urban society offers more individual choice,
moral tolerance, and personal privacy than people find in rural vil-
lages. In sum, Durkheim thought that something is lost in the process
of urbanization, but much is gained.

Georg Simmel: The Blasé Urbanite
The German sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918) offered a micro-
level analysis of cities, studying how urban life shapes individual expe-
rience. According to Simmel, individuals see the city as a crush of
people, objects, and events. To prevent being overwhelmed by all this
stimulation, urbanites develop a blasé attitude, tuning out much of
what goes on around them. Such detachment does not mean that city
dwellers lack compassion for others; they simply keep their distance
as a survival strategy so that they can focus their time and energy on
the people and things that really matter to them.

The Chicago School:
Robert Park and Louis Wirth
Sociologists in the United States soon joined the study of rapidly
growing cities. Robert Park (1864–1944), a leader of the first U.S.

sociology program at the University of Chicago, sought to add a street-
level perspective by getting out and studying real cities. As he said of
himself, “I suspect that I have actually covered more ground, tramp-
ing about in cities in different parts of the world, than any other liv-
ing man” (1950:viii). Walking the streets, Park found the city to be
an organized mosaic of distinctive ethnic communities, commercial
centers, and industrial districts. Over time, he observed, these “natu-
ral areas” develop and change in relation to one another. To Park, the
city was a living organism—a human kaleidoscope.

Another major figure in the Chicago School of urban sociology
was Louis Wirth (1897–1952). Wirth (1938) is best known for blend-
ing the ideas of Tönnies, Durkheim, Simmel, and Park into a com-
prehensive theory of urban life.

Wirth began by defining the city as a setting with a large, dense, and
socially diverse population. These traits result in an impersonal, super-
ficial, and transitory way of life for city dwellers. Living among mil-
lions of others, urbanites come into contact with many more people
than residents of rural areas. Thus when city people take notice of oth-
ers at all, they usually know them not in terms of who they are but what
they do—as, for instance, the bus driver, the pharmacist, or the grocery
store clerk. These specialized urban relationships are sometimes pleas-
ant for all concerned, but we should remember that self-interest rather
than friendship is the main reason behind the interaction.

The impersonal nature of urban relationships, together with the
great social diversity found in cities today, makes city dwellers more

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 459

Peasant Dance (left, c. 1565), by Pieter Breughel the Elder, conveys the essential unity of rural life forged by generations
of kinship and neighborhood. By contrast, Lily Furedi’s Subway (right) communicates the impersonality common to
urban areas. Taken together, these paintings capture Tönnies’s distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.

Pieter Breughel the Elder (c. 1525/30–1569), Peasant Dance, c. 1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna/Superstock. Lily Furedi, American. Subway.
Oil on canvas, 99 x 123 cm. National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C./Smithsonian Institute.

How would Simmel explain cases of people turning away
from others in need on the grounds that they simply “don’t
want to get involved”?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

Tönnies’s concept of Gemeinschaft corresponds to Durkheim’s
mechanical solidarity; Gesellschaft corresponds to organic
solidarity.

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tolerant than rural villagers. Rural communities often jealously
enforce their narrow traditions, but the heterogeneous population of
a city rarely shares any single code of moral conduct (T. C. Wilson,
1985, 1995).

CRITICAL REVIEW In both Europe and the United
States, early sociologists presented a mixed view of urban living.
Rapid urbanization troubled Tönnies and Wirth, who saw per-
sonal ties and traditional morality lost in the anonymous rush of
the city. Durkheim and Park emphasized urbanism’s positive
face, pointing to more personal freedom and greater personal
choice.

One problem with all of these views is that they paint urban-
ism in broad strokes that overlook the effects of class, race, and
gender. There are many kinds of urbanites—rich and poor, black
and white, Anglo and Latino, women and men—all leading dis-
tinctive lives (Gans, 1968). As the Thinking About Diversity box
explains, the share of racial and ethnic minorities in the largest
U.S. cities increased sharply during the 1990s. We see social
diversity most clearly in cities, where various categories of

people are large enough to form visible communities (Macionis
& Parrillo, 2007).

CHECK YOUR LEARNING Of these urban sociolo-
gists—Tönnies, Durkheim, Park, and Wirth—which were more
positive about urban life? Which were more negative? In each
case, explain why.

Urban Ecology
Sociologists (especially members of the Chicago School) developed
urban ecology, the study of the link between the physical and social
dimensions of cities. For example, why are cities located where they
are? The first cities emerged in fertile regions where the ecology
favored raising crops. Preindustrial people, concerned with defense,
built their cities on mountains (ancient Athens was perched on an
outcropping of rock) or surrounded by water (Paris and Mexico City
were built on islands). With the Industrial Revolution, economic con-
siderations placed all major U.S. cities near rivers and natural har-
bors that facilitated trade.

460 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

THINKING ABOUT
DIVERSITY: RACE,
CLASS, & GENDER

Minorities Now a Majority
in the Largest U.S. Cities

According to the 2000 census, minorities—
Hispanics, African Americans, and Asians—were
now a majority of the population in 48 of the 100
largest U.S. cities, up from 30 in 1990, and the
number has surely increased since then.

What accounts for the change? One reason
is that large cities have been losing their non-
Hispanic white populations. For example, by
2000, Santa Ana, California, had lost 38 percent
of the white population it had in 1990; the drop
was 40 percent in Birmingham, Alabama, and a
whopping 53 percent in Detroit, Michigan. The
white share of the population of all 100 of the
largest cities fell from 52.1 percent in 1990 to
43.8 percent in 2000, as the figure shows.

But perhaps the biggest reason for the
minority-majority trend is the increase in immigra-
tion. Immigration, coupled with higher birth rates
among new immigrants, resulted in a 43 percent
gain in the Hispanic population (almost 4 million
people) of the largest 100 cities between 1990
and 2000. The Asian population also surged by

40 percent (more than 1.1 million people). The
African American population was steady over the
course of the 1990s.

Political officials and other policymakers
examine these figures closely. Clearly, the future
vitality of the largest U.S. cities depends on meet-
ing the needs and taking advantage of the contri-
butions of their swelling minority populations.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

1. Why are the minority populations of large
U.S. cities increasing?

2. What positive changes and challenges does
a minority-majority bring to a city?

3. Before Hurricane Katrina, African Americans
represented 60 percent of the population of
New Orleans; afterward, the share was
about 40 percent. What difference might this
change make in the city’s immediate future?

Sources: Schmitt (2001) and U.S. Census Bureau (2009).

Asian
6.6%Hispanic

22.5%

Non-Hispanic
African American

24.1%

Non-Hispanic
White
43.8%

Other
3.0%

Population Profile for the 100 Largest
U.S. Cities, 2000
Racial and ethnic minorities make up a
majority of the population of this country’s
100 largest cities.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2001).

urban ecology the study of the link between the physical and
social dimensions of cities

Urban ecology was a significant part of urban sociology until
about 1970; after that, it declined in importance as urban
political economy gained the attention of sociologists.

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Urban ecologists also study the physical design of cities. In
1925, Ernest W. Burgess, a student and colleague of Robert
Park’s, described land use in Chicago in terms of concentric
zones. City centers, Burgess observed, are business districts bor-
dered by a ring of factories, followed by residential rings with
housing that becomes more expensive the farther it is from the
noise and pollution of the city’s center.

Homer Hoyt (1939) refined Burgess’s observations, not-
ing that distinctive districts sometimes form wedge-shaped sec-
tors. For example, one fashionable area may develop next to
another, or an industrial district may extend outward from a
city’s center along a train or trolley line.

Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman (1945) added yet
another insight: As cities decentralize, they lose their single-
center form in favor of a multicentered model. As cities grow,
residential areas, industrial parks, and shopping districts typ-
ically push away from one another. Few people want to live
close to industrial areas, for example, so the city becomes a
mosaic of distinct districts.

Social area analysis investigates what people in particular
neighborhoods have in common. Three factors seem to explain
most of the variation in neighborhood types: family patterns,
social class, and race and ethnicity (Shevky & Bell, 1955; R. J.
Johnston, 1976). Families with children look for areas with
large apartments or single-family homes and good schools.
The rich seek high-prestige neighborhoods, often in the central city
near cultural attractions. People with a common race or ethnic her-
itage cluster in distinctive communities.

Brian Berry and Philip Rees (1969) tied together many of these
insights. They explained that distinct family types tend to settle in
the concentric zones described by Burgess. Specifically, households
with few children tend to cluster toward the city’s center, and those
with more children live farther away. Social class differences are pri-
marily responsible for the sector-shaped districts described by Hoyt;
the rich occupy one “side of the tracks” and the poor the other. And
racial and ethnic neighborhoods are found at various places through-
out the city, consistent with Harris and Ullman’s multicentered model.

Urban Political Economy
In the late 1960s, many large U.S. cities were rocked by major riots. As
public awareness of racial and economic inequality increased, some
analysts turned away from the ecological approach to a social-conflict
understanding of city life. The urban political-economy model applies
Karl Marx’s analysis of conflict in the workplace to conflict in the city
(Lindstrom, 1995). Go to mysoclab.com

Political economists reject the ecological approach’s view of the
city as a natural organism with particular districts and neighborhoods

developing according to an internal logic. Instead, they see city life as
defined by people with power: corporate leaders and political offi-
cials. Capitalism, which transforms the city into real estate traded for
profit and concentrates wealth in the hands of the few, is the key to
understanding city life. From this point of view, the decline in indus-
trial Snowbelt cities after 1950 was the result of deliberate decisions by
the corporate elite to move their production facilities to the Sunbelt
(where labor is cheaper and less likely to be unionized) or move them
out of the country entirely to low-income nations (Molotch, 1976;
Castells, 1977, 1983; Lefebvre, 1991; Jones & Wilson, 1999).

CRITICAL REVIEW The fact that many U.S. cities are in
crisis, with widespread poverty, high crime, and barely function-
ing schools, seems to favor the political-economy view over the
urban ecology approach. But one criticism applies to both: They
focus on U.S. cities during a limited period of history. Much of
what we know about industrial cities does not apply to preindus-
trial towns in our own past or the rapidly growing cities in many
poor nations today. It is unlikely that any single model of cities can
account for the full range of urban diversity.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING In your own words, explain
what the urban ecology theories and the urban political-economy
theory teach us about cities.

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 461

The industrial revolution created great cities across the United States. In recent
decades, however, the movement of industry abroad has brought decline to Detroit
and other older cities in the “rustbelt.” From this abandoned warehouse, we see
the headquarters of General Motors, which, in 2009, declared bankruptcy. What do
you see as the future of such cities?

Go to the Multimedia Library at mysoclab.com
to view the Core Concepts in Sociology video
“Challenges Facing Cities”

The decline of industrial production is evident in the decline of
industrial cities, such as Detroit.

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Urbanization in Poor Nations

November 16, Cairo, Egypt. People call the vast
Muslim cemetery in Old Cairo the “City of the Dead.”
In truth, it is very much alive: Tens of thousands of squat-
ters have moved into the mausoleums, making this place

an eerie mix of life and death. Children run across the stone
floors, clotheslines stretch between the monuments, and an
occasional television antenna protrudes from a tomb roof. With
Cairo gaining 1,000 people a day, families live where they can.

Twice in its history, the world has experienced a revolutionary
expansion of cities. The first urban revolution began about 8000
B.C.E. with the first urban settlements and continued until perma-
nent settlements were in place on several continents. About 1750,
the second urban revolution took off; it lasted for two centuries as the
Industrial Revolution spurred rapid growth of cities in Europe and
North America.

A third urban revolution is now under way. Today, 75 percent of
people in high-income countries are already city dwellers. But
extraordinary urban growth is occurring in low-income nations. In
1950, about 25 percent of the people in poor countries lived in cities.
In 2008, the world became mostly urban for the first time in history,
with more than half of humanity living in cities (Population Refer-
ence Bureau, 2009).

Not only are more people urban, but cities are also getting big-
ger. In 1950, only seven cities in the world had populations over 5
million, and only two of these were in low-income countries. By 2007,
forty-nine cities had passed this mark, and two-thirds of them were
in less developed nations (Brockerhoff, 2000; United Nations, 2008).

This third urban revolution is the result of many poor nations
entering the high-growth Stage 2 of demographic transition theory.
Falling death rates have fueled population increases in Latin Amer-
ica, Asia, and especially Africa. For urban areas, the rate of increase
is twice as high because in addition to natural increase, millions of
people leave the countryside each year in search of jobs, health care,
education, and conveniences such as running water and electricity.
As cities grow, so do suburbs.

Cities do offer more opportunities than rural areas, but they
provide no quick fix for the problems of escalating population and
grinding poverty. Many cities in less developed nations—including
Mexico City, Egypt’s Cairo, India’s Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), and
Manila in the Philippines—are simply unable to meet the basic needs
of much of their population. All these cities are surrounded by
wretched shantytowns, settlements of makeshift homes built from
discarded materials. As noted in Chapter 9 (“Global Stratification”),
even city dumps are home to thousands of poor people, who pick

through the waste hoping to find enough to eat or sell to make it
through another day.

Environment and Society

The human species has prospered, rapidly expanding over the entire
planet. An increasing share of the global population now lives in large,
complex settlements that offer the promise of a better life than that
found in rural villages.

But these advances have come at a high price. Never before in
history have human beings placed such demands on the planet. This
disturbing development brings us to focus on the interplay of the
natural environment and society. Like demography, ecology is
another cousin of sociology, formally defined as the study of the inter-
action of living organisms and the natural environment. Ecology rests
on the research of natural scientists as well as social scientists. We
shall focus on the aspects of ecology that involve familiar sociologi-
cal concepts and issues.

The natural environment is Earth’s surface and atmosphere,
including living organisms, air, water, soil, and other resources neces-
sary to sustain life. Like every other species, humans depend on the
natural environment to survive. Yet with our capacity for culture,
humans stand apart from other species; we alone take deliberate
action to remake the world according to our own interests and
desires, for better and for worse.

Why is the environment of interest to sociologists? Environmen-
tal problems, from pollution to global warming, do not arise from the
natural world operating on its own. Such problems result from the
choices and actions of human beings, making them social problems.

The Global Dimension
The study of the natural environment requires a global perspective.
The reason is simple: Regardless of political divisions between nations,
the planet is a single ecosystem, which encompasses the interaction of
all living organisms and their natural environment.

The Greek meaning of eco is “house,” reminding us that this
planet is our home and that all living things and their natural envi-
ronment are interrelated. A change in any part of the natural envi-
ronment sends ripples through the entire global ecosystem.

Consider, from an ecological point of view, our national love of
eating hamburgers. People in North America (and, increasingly,
around the world) have created a huge demand for beef, which has
greatly expanded ranching in Brazil, Costa Rica, and other Latin
American nations. To produce the lean meat sought by fast-food cor-
porations, cattle in Latin America feed on grass, which uses a great
deal of land. Latin American ranchers clear the land for grazing by
cutting down thousands of square miles of forests each year. These

462 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

Be sure you understand when and where the three urban
revolutions occurred.

Making the Grade

ecology the study of the interaction of living organisms and the natural environment

natural environment Earth’s surface and atmosphere, including living organisms, air,
water, soil, and other resources necessary to sustain life

ecosystem a system composed of the interaction of all living organisms and their
natural environment

environmental deficit profound long-term harm to the natural environment caused
by humanity’s focus on short-term material affluence

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tropical forests are vital to maintaining Earth’s atmosphere. Defor-
estation ends up threatening everyone, including the people back in
the United States enjoying their hamburgers (N. Myers, 1984a).

Technology and the Environmental
Deficit
Sociologists point to a simple formula: I = PAT, where environmen-
tal impact (I) reflects a society’s population (P), its level of affluence
(A), and its level of technology (T). Members of simpler societies—
the hunters and gatherers described in Chapter 2 (“Culture”)—hardly
affect the environment because they are few in number, are poor, and
have only simple technology. Nature affects all aspects of their lives as
they follow the migration of game, watch the rhythm of the seasons,
and suffer from natural catastrophes, such as fires, floods, droughts,
and storms.

Societies at intermediate stages of sociocultural evolution have
a somewhat greater capacity to affect the environment. But the envi-
ronmental impact of horticulture (small-scale farming), pastoral-
ism (the herding of animals), and even agriculture (the use of
animal-drawn plows) is limited because people still rely on muscle
power for producing food and other goods.

Human control of the natural environment increased dramati-
cally with the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution.
Muscle power gave way to engines that burn fossil fuels: coal at first and
then oil. The use of such machinery affects the environment in two
ways: It consumes more natural resources and releases more pollu-
tants into the atmosphere. Even more important, humans armed with
industrial technology are able to bend nature to their will, tunneling
through mountains, damming rivers, irrigating deserts, and drilling
for oil in the arctic wilderness and on the ocean floor. This explains why
people in rich nations, who represent just 23 percent of humanity,
account for half of the world’s energy use (World Bank, 2009).

Not only do industrial societies use more energy, but they pro-
duce 100 times more goods than agrarian societies do. Higher living
standards are good in some ways, but they increase the problems of
solid waste (because people ultimately throw away most of what they
produce) and pollution (industrial production generates smoke and
other toxic substances).

From the start, people recognized the material benefits of indus-
trial technology. But only a century later did they begin to see its long-
term effects on the natural environment. Today, we realize that the
technological power to make our lives better can also put the lives of
future generations at risk, and there is a national debate about how to
address this issue. Seeing Sociology in the News on pages 464–65
describes one high school’s efforts to address environmental issues.

Evidence is mounting that we are running up an environmental
deficit, profound long-term harm to the natural environment caused by

humanity’s focus on short-term material affluence (Bormann, 1990).
The concept of environmental deficit is important for three reasons.
First, it reminds us that environmental concerns are sociological, reflect-
ing societies’ priorities about how people should live. Second, it sug-
gests that much environmental damage—to the air, land, and water—is
unintended. By focusing on the short-term benefits of, say, cutting
down forests, strip mining, or using throwaway packaging, we fail to
see the long-term environmental effects. Third, in some respects, the
environmental deficit is reversible. Inasmuch as societies have created
environmental problems, societies can undo many of them.

Culture: Growth and Limits
Whether we recognize environmental dangers and decide to do some-
thing about them is a cultural matter. Thus along with technology,
culture has powerful environmental consequences.

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 463

The most important insight sociology offers about our physical world is
that environmental problems do not simply “happen.” Rather, the state of
the natural environment reflects the ways in which social life is organized—
how people live and what they think is important. The greater the
technological power of a society, the greater that society’s ability to
threaten the natural environment.

I = PAT is an important environmental idea; be sure you
understand its meaning.

Making the Grade
Can you identify ways in which the mass media and our popular
culture (music, films, and television) encourage people to support
the logic of growth?

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The Logic of Growth

When you turn on the television news, you might hear a story like
this: “The government reported bad economic news today, with the
economy growing by only half a percent during the first quarter of the
year.” If you stop to think about it, our culture defines an economy that
isn’t growing as “stagnant” (which is bad) and an economy that is get-
ting smaller as a recession or a “depression” (which is very bad). What
is “good” is growth—the economy getting bigger and bigger. More
cars, bigger homes, more income, more spending—the idea of more
is at the heart of our cultural definition of living well (McKibben,
2007).

One of the reasons we define growth in positive terms is that
we value material comfort, believing that money and the things it
buys improve our lives. We also believe in the idea of progress,
thinking that the future will be better than the present. In addition,
we look to science to make our lives easier and more rewarding. In
simpler terms, “having things is good,”“life gets better,” and “peo-
ple are clever.” Taken together, such cultural values form the logic
of growth.

An optimistic view of the world, the logic of growth holds
that more powerful technology has improved our lives and that
new discoveries will continue to do so in the future. Throughout
the history of the United States and other high-income nations,
the logic of growth has been the driving force behind settling the

wilderness, building towns and roads, and pursuing material
affluence.

However, “progress” can lead to unexpected problems, includ-
ing strain on the environment. The logic of growth responds by argu-
ing that people (especially scientists and other technology experts)
will find a way out of any problem placed in our path. If, for exam-
ple, the world runs short of oil, scientists will come up with hydro-
gen, solar, or nuclear engines or some as yet unknown technology
to meet the world’s energy needs.

Environmentalists counter that the logic of growth is flawed
because it assumes that natural resources such as clean air, fresh
water, and fertile soil will always be plentiful. We can and will exhaust
these finite resources if we continue to pursue growth at any cost.
Echoing Malthus, environmentalists warn that if we call on the planet
to support increasing numbers of people, we will surely destroy the
environment—and ourselves—in the process.

The Limits to Growth

If we cannot invent our way out of the problems created by the logic
of growth, perhaps we need another way of thinking about the world.
Environmentalists therefore counter that growth must have limits.
Stated simply, the limits-to-growth thesis is that humanity must put in
place policies to control the growth of population, production, and
the use of resources in order to avoid environmental collapse.

464 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

Boyz Under the Hood
BY DAVID KUSHNER
December 18, 2008

Even among the roughest schools in the country,
West Philadelphia High School stands out. Situ-
ated among boarded-up abandoned buildings
and graffiti-covered crack houses, the school has
had dozens of arson fires. A Spanish teacher was
beaten bloody with a fire extinguisher. A music
instructor got a broken jaw after being slugged by
a pupil for trying to take away a cell phone. One
15-year-old girl was left for dead after having her
face slashed while waiting for her school bus. She
survived, but needed 114 stitches.

But in the automotive shop class in a garage
next door, a group of African American students
and their scrappy white teacher are making their
school famous for something else: building the
world’s greenest car. Kids in baggy jeans and side-
ways hats mill around a sleek purple car they
built that runs on biodiesel. Sparks fly from a
chainsaw as one boy cuts through an aluminum
plate, his long afro held back by the strap of his
scuffed goggles.

Behind a windowed wall, half a dozen girls are
busy at their iMacs. Samantha Wright . . . boots
up a solar charging station she designed using an
image of a rundown Philadelphia parking lot
from Google Earth, and augmented it with green
roofs and cars. “The photoactive panels convert
the sunlight into direct energy,” she explains,
pointing to a carport onscreen. “We’re changing
the world, man. I never expected to be doing
that.”

Like the other kids in the shop, Wright, the
daughter of a phone sex worker and absentee
dad, overcame incredible odds to find a haven
here at the Electric Vehicle X Club, an after-
school program that has been turning these cars
and kids around, and that’s not all. While Wash-
ington and Detroit hit the skids on delivering
alternative fuel cars for the masses, these inner-
city teens are churning out some of the most
badass and competitive eco-wheels on the planet
for as little as $15,000. As the blog Treehugger
puts it, they’re “sending a message to the major
U.S. auto manufacturers: if we can do it, why
can’t you?”

In addition to clocking their suburban oppo-
nents at state science fairs, the EVX Club has
crushed colleges and high-financed corporate
start-ups with back-to-back titles in the coveted
Northeast Sustainable Energy Association’s
Tour De Sol, a prestigious eco-car challenge.
They modified a Saturn to run on soybean fuel,
and transformed a Slovakian kit car into a
wildly sporty hybrid called the Hybrid X.
“Hybrids don’t have to be slow and ugly like a
Prius,” says 18-year-old EV member, Lawrence
Jones-Mahoney. “They can be efficient and
cool.”

Now the team is racing to prove their cars—
and themselves—to the world. They’re the dark
horse entrants in the Progressive Automotive X-
Prize: a worldwide contest to build a car, suitable
for mass production, that gets 100 miles per gal-
lon. The contest runs through summer 2010, and
the winner gets $10 million. . . .

Simon Hauger, the 38-year-old neighborhood
hero who runs the West Philly High auto school,
is working overtime with his students to win.
But the checkered flag is theirs. “The fact that

Seeing SOCIOLOGY in the

Rolling Stone

In The Limits to Growth, a controversial book that played a large
part in launching the environmental movement, Donella Meadows
and her colleagues (1972) used a computer model to calculate the
planet’s available resources, rates of population growth, amount of
land available for cultivation, levels of industrial and food produc-
tion, and amount of pollutants released into the atmosphere. The
model reflects changes that have occurred since 1900 and projects
forward to the end of the twenty-first century. The authors concede
that such long-range predictions are speculative, and some critics
think they are plain wrong (Simon, 1981).

But right or wrong, the conclusions of the study call for seri-
ous consideration. The authors claim that we are quickly consum-
ing Earth’s finite resources. Supplies of oil, natural gas, and other
energy sources are declining and will continue to drop, a little faster
or more slowly depending on the conservation policies of rich
nations and the speed with which other nations such as India and
China continue to industrialize. Within the next 100 years,
resources will run out, crippling industrial output and causing a
decline in food production.

This limits-to-growth theory shares Malthus’s pessimism about
the future. People who accept it doubt that current patterns of life are
sustainable for even another century. Perhaps we can all learn to live
with less. This may not be as hard as you might think: Research
shows, for example, that as material consumption has gone up in

recent decades, there has been no increase in levels of personal hap-
piness (D. G. Myers, 2000). In the end, environmentalists warn, either
make fundamental changes in how we live, placing less strain on the
natural environment, or widespread hunger and conflict will force
change on us.

Solid Waste: The Disposable Society
Across the United States, people generate a massive amount of solid
waste—about 1.4 billion pounds each and every day. Figure 15–4 on
page 466 shows the composition of a typical community’s trash.

As a rich nation of people who value convenience, the United
States has become a disposable society. We consume more products
than virtually any other nation, and many of these products have
throwaway packaging. For example, fast food is served in cardboard,
plastic, and Styrofoam containers that we throw away within minutes.
But countless other products, from film to fishhooks, are elaborately
packaged to make them more attractive to the customer and to dis-
courage tampering and theft.

Manufacturers market soft drinks, beer, and fruit juices in alu-
minum cans, glass jars, and plastic containers, which not only use
up finite resources but also create mountains of solid waste. Count-
less items are intentionally designed to be disposable: pens, razors,
flashlights, batteries, even cameras. Other goods, from lightbulbs to

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 465

we’ve come this far,” Hauger says, looking
around the room, “we’ve already won.” . . .

When a go-kart was donated to the school,
Hauger decided to start an after-school science
group that would work on building an electric
motor for the kart. He called it the Electric Vehi-
cle Club. One by one, kids trickled in after
school—gang members, drug dealers. One kid
had a 150 IQ, but a mom on crack and a dad
dying of AIDS. The kid was bouncing between
foster homes and stealing credit cards on the side.
But when Hauger slapped a wrench in the kid’s
hand, he was transformed. “When he would work
on a project, he would block out all the crap in his
life,” Hauger recalls, “and he became a mad scien-
tist. Working on this made all the math and sci-
ence hands on.” . . .

As word of Hauger’s club spread, kids got turned
on not only by getting under the hood, but by mak-
ing cars that can better the planet—and busting
labels along the way.“There’s a stereotype that urban
kids are just violent and don’t care about anything,”
says Wright, “but we know the environment is
important, and we can do something about it.”

For the EV club’s next project, they modified a
silver Jeep Wrangler to go electric. Clueless how
to proceed, they hit the Net—downloading
instructions from an obscure eco-geek magazine
called Mother Earth. With Hauger guiding them
and improvising plenty, they ripped out the gas
engine and stored 217 lead acid batteries in a cus-
tom aluminum casing. When they drove their
electric hot rod Jeep into the city’s science fair of
microscopes and Bunsen burners, jaws dropped.
“The judges didn’t know what to do with it,”
Hauger recalls. Then they gave West Philly High
the top prize. . . .

As the current 15 kids on the EVX team mill
around the garage, talk turns to the plans for the
Auto X prize. “As crazy as it sounds, I think we
have a shot at winning,” Hauger says. While the
competition is focusing on high-priced cars that
look like the Jetsons, the EVX team is taking a
decidedly more accessible—and they hope—
winning approach. . . .

. . . The EVX team’s legacy is already spreading
among those in the eco-car pursuit. “It’s inspiring
that a contest can inspire a group like that to

compete,” says Darryl Siry, spokesperson for
Tesla,“it says something about who they are. I rec-
ommend they not listen to people who tell them
this is how it’s done. Innovation comes from fig-
uring out solutions and answers to problems in
new ways.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

1. Do you think that many people think of envi-
ronmental issues as the concerns mainly of
more well-off people? Explain.

2. Would you make environmental study part of
the curriculum of every school in the country?
Why or why not?

3. What specific strategies or policies would you
suggest to encourage greater environmental
understanding on the part of this country’s
young people?

Yard Was
te 13%

Plastic
12%

Metal
8%

Food W
aste 13%

Paper 31%

Glass
5%

Othe
r 18%

automobiles, are designed to have a limited useful life, after which
they become unwanted junk. As Paul Connett (1991) points out,
even the words we use to describe what we throw away—waste, trash,
refuse, garbage, rubbish—show how little we value what we cannot
immediately use. But this was not always the case, as the Seeing Soci-
ology in Everyday Life box explains.

Living in a rich society, the average person in the United States
consumes hundreds of times more energy, plastics, lumber, and other
resources than someone living in a low-income nation such as
Bangladesh or Tanzania (and nearly twice as much as someone liv-
ing in many other high-income countries such as Japan or Sweden).
This high level of consumption means that we in the United States
not only use a disproportionate share of the planet’s natural resources
but also that we generate most of the world’s refuse.

We like to say that we throw things “away.” But more than half
of our solid waste never goes away. It ends up in landfills, which are,
literally, filling up. Material in landfills can also pollute groundwater
stored under Earth’s surface. Although in most places laws now reg-
ulate what can be discarded in a landfill, the Environmental Protec-
tion Agency has identified 1,269 dump sites across the United States
containing hazardous materials that are polluting water both above
and below the ground. In addition, what goes into landfills all too
often stays there, sometimes for centuries. Tens of millions of tires,
disposable diapers, and other items that we bury in landfills each
year do not decompose and will be an unwelcome legacy for future
generations.

Environmentalists argue that we should address the problem of
solid waste by doing what many of our grandparents did: turn
“waste” into a resource. One way to do this is through recycling,
reusing resources we would otherwise throw away. Recycling is an
accepted practice in Japan and many other nations, and it is becom-
ing more common in the United States, where we now reuse about
33 percent of waste materials. The share is increasing as more munic-
ipalities pass laws requiring reuse of certain materials such as glass
bottles and aluminum cans and as the business of recycling becomes
more profitable.

Water and Air
Oceans, lakes, and streams are the lifeblood of the global ecosystem.
Humans depend on water for drinking, bathing, cooling, cooking,
recreation, and a host of other activities.

According to what scientists call the hydrologic cycle, the planet
naturally recycles water and refreshes the land. The process begins as
heat from the sun causes Earth’s water, 97 percent of which is in the
oceans, to evaporate and form clouds. Because water evaporates at
lower temperatures than most pollutants, the water vapor that rises
from the seas is relatively pure, leaving various contaminants behind.
Water then falls to the Earth as rain, which drains into streams and
rivers and finally returns to the sea. Two major concerns about water,
then, are supply and pollution.

Water Supply

Less than one-tenth of 1 percent of Earth’s water is suitable for drink-
ing. It is not surprising, then, that for thousands of years, water rights
have figured prominently in laws around the world. Today, some
regions of the world, especially the tropics, enjoy plentiful fresh water,
using only a small share of the available supply. High demand, cou-
pled with modest reserves, makes water supply a matter of concern in
much of North America and Asia, where people look to rivers rather
than rainfall for their water. In China, deep aquifers are dropping rap-
idly. In the Middle East, water supply is reaching a critical level. Iran
is rationing water in its capital city. In Egypt, people can consume
just one-sixth as much water from the Nile River today as in 1900.
Across northern Africa and the Middle East, as many as 1 billion peo-
ple may lack the water they need for irrigation and drinking by 2025
(“China Faces Water Shortage,” 2001; International Development
Research Center, 2006).

Rising population and the development of more complex tech-
nology have greatly increased the world’s appetite for water. The
global consumption of water (now estimated at almost 4,000 cubic
kilometers, or 140 trillion cubic feet, per year) has doubled since
1950 and is rising steadily. As a result, even in parts of the world that
receive plenty of rainfall, people are using groundwater faster than

466 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

FIGURE 15–4 Composition of Community Trash
We throw away a wide range of material, with paper the single largest
part of our trash.
Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (2009).

Do you think that having more, in a materialistic sense, is the
path to personal happiness? Why or why not?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

Think about how specific ways we live put more or less strain
on the natural environment.

it can be replenished naturally. In the Tamil Nadu region of south-
ern India, for example, people are drawing so much groundwater
that the local water table has fallen 100 feet over the past several
decades. Mexico City—which has sprawled to some 1,400 square
miles—has pumped so much water from its underground aquifer
that the city has sunk 30 feet in the past century and continues to
drop about 2 inches per year. Farther north in the United States, the
Ogallala aquifer, which lies below seven states from South Dakota to
Texas, is now being pumped so rapidly that some experts fear it could
run dry in just a few decades.

In light of such developments, we must face the reality that water
is a valuable and finite resource. Greater conservation of water by indi-
viduals (the average person in the United States consumes 3 million
gallons in a lifetime) is part of the answer. However, households around
the world account for just 10 percent of water use. We need to reduce
water consumption by industry, which uses 20 percent of the global
total, and farming, which consumes 70 percent of the total for irrigation.

Perhaps new irrigation technology will reduce demand for water
in the future. But here again, we see how population increase, as well
as economic growth, strains our ecosystem (Postel, 1993; Population
Action International, 2000; United Nations World Water Assessment
Programme, 2009; U.S. Geological Survey, 2009).

Water Pollution

In large cities from Mexico City to Cairo to Shanghai, many people
have no choice but to drink contaminated water. Infectious diseases
such as typhoid, cholera, and dysentery, all caused by waterborne
microorganisms, spread rapidly through these populations. In addi-
tion to ensuring ample supplies of water, we must protect the quality
of water.

Water quality in the United States is generally good by global
standards. However, even here the problem of water pollution is
steadily growing. Across the United States, rivers and streams absorb
hundreds of millions of pounds of toxic waste each year. This pollution

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 467

SEEING SOCIOLOGY
IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Why Grandma Macionis Had No Trash

Grandma Macionis, we always used to say, never
threw away anything. She was born and raised
in Lithuania—the “old country”—where growing
up in a poor village shaped her in ways that never
changed, even after she came to the United States
as a young woman and settled in Philadelphia.

In her later years, when I knew her, I remem-
ber the family traveling together to her house to
celebrate her birthday. We never knew what to
get Grandma because although she didn’t
have all that much, she never seemed to need
anything. She lived a simple life and had sim-
ple clothes and showed little interest in “fancy
things.” She used everything until it wore out.
Her kitchen knives, for example, were worn
narrow from decades of sharpening. And she
hardly ever threw anything away—she recy-
cled all her garbage as compost for her veg-
etable garden.

After opening a birthday present, she
would carefully save the box, wrapping paper,
and ribbon, which meant as much to her as
whatever gift they surrounded. We all
expected her to save every bit of whatever she
was given, smiling to each other as we watched

her put everything away, knowing she would find
a way to use it all again and again.

As strange as Grandma sometimes seemed
to her grandchildren, she was a product of her
culture. A century ago, there was little “trash.” If
a pair of socks wore thin, people mended them,
probably more than once. When they were
beyond repair, they were used as rags for clean-

ing or sewn, along with other old clothing, into a
quilt. For her, everything had value, if not in one
way, then in another.

During the twentieth century, as women
joined men working outside of the home, income
went up and families began buying more and
more “time-saving” products. Before long, few
people cared about the home recycling that

Grandma practiced. Soon cities sent crews
from block to block to pick up truckloads of
discarded material. The era of “trash” had
begun.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

1. Just as Grandma Macionis was a product
of her culture, so are we. What cultural val-
ues make people today demand time-
saving products and “convenience”
packaging?

2. Do you recycle drink containers, paper, or
other materials? Why or why not?

3. In what ways does this box demonstrate
that the state of the natural environment
is a social issue?Grandma Macionis, in the 1970s, with the author.

Las Vegas is one of the fastest-growing U.S. cities—and it is
built in a desert. Do you think the future water needs of this
city’s people (and those of the entire Southwest) are ensured?
What will we do if the answer turns out to be no?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

Have you taken any steps to reduce your use of our limited
resources? What about efforts to reduce trash and energy use?

results not just from intentional dumping but also from the runoff
of agricultural fertilizers and lawn chemicals.

A special problem is acid rain—rain made acidic by air pollution—
which destroys plant and animal life. Acid rain (or snow) begins with
power plants burning fossil fuels (oil and coal) to generate electric-
ity; this burning process releases sulfuric and nitrous oxides into the
air. As the wind sweeps these gases into the atmosphere, they react
with the air to form sulfuric and nitric acids, which turns atmos-
pheric moisture acidic.

This is a clear case of one type of pollution causing another: Air
pollution (from smokestacks) ends up contaminating water (in lakes
and streams that collect acid rain). Acid rain is truly a global phe-
nomenon because the regions that suffer the harmful effects may be
thousands of miles from the source of the pollution. For instance,
British power plants have caused acid rain that has devastated forests
and fish in Norway and Sweden, 1,000 miles to the northeast. In the
United States, we see a similar pattern as midwestern smokestacks
have harmed the natural environment of upstate New York and New
England.

Air Pollution

Because we are surrounded by air, most people in the United States
are more aware of air pollution than contaminated water. One of the
unexpected consequences of industrial technology—especially the
factory and the motor vehicle—has been a decline in air quality. In
London, fifty years ago, factory smokestacks, automobiles, and coal
fires used to heat households all added up to what was probably the
worst urban air quality in the world. The fog that some residents jok-
ingly called “pea soup” was in reality a deadly mix of pollutants: In
1952, an especially thick haze that hung over London for five days
killed 4,000 people.

Air quality improved in the final decades of the twentieth cen-
tury. Rich nations passed laws that banned high-pollution heat-
ing, including the coal fires that choked London. In addition,
scientists devised ways to make factories and motor vehicles oper-
ate much more cleanly. The cleanest of today’s automobiles emit
only a small percentage of the pollutants released by the typical
car in 1960.

If people in high-income countries can breathe a bit more eas-
ily than they once did, those living in poor societies face problems of
air pollution that are becoming more serious. One reason is that peo-
ple in low-income countries still rely on wood, coal, peat, or other
“dirty” fuels to cook their food and heat their homes. In addition,
nations eager to encourage short-term industrial development may
pay little attention to the longer-term dangers of air pollution. As a
result, many cities in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Asia are
plagued by air pollution as bad as London’s pea soup back in the
1950s.

The Rain Forests
Rain forests are regions of dense forestation, most of which circle the globe
close to the equator. The largest tropical rain forests are in South Amer-
ica (notably Brazil), west-central Africa, and Southeast Asia. In all, the
world’s rain forests cover some 1.5 billion acres, or 4.5 percent of Earth’s
total land surface (United Nations Environment Programme, 2009).

Like other global resources, rain forests are falling victim to
the needs and appetites of the surging world population. As noted
earlier, to meet the demand for beef, ranchers in Latin America
clear forested areas to increase their supply of grazing land. We are
also losing rain forests to the hardwood trade. People in rich nations
pay high prices for mahogany and other woods because, as the envi-
ronmentalist Norman Myers (1984b:88) puts it, they have “a pen-
chant for parquet floors, fine furniture, fancy paneling, weekend
yachts, and high-grade coffins.” Under such economic pressure, the
world’s rain forests are now less than half their original size, and
they continue to shrink by at least 1 percent (58,000 square miles)
annually, which amounts to about one acre every second. Unless
we stop this loss, the rain forests will vanish before the end of this
century, and with them will go protection for Earth’s biodiversity
and climate.

Global Warming

Why are rain forests so important to our natural environment? One
reason is that they cleanse the atmosphere of carbon dioxide (CO2).
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the amount of car-
bon dioxide produced by humans (mostly from factories and auto-
mobiles) has risen sharply. Much of this CO2 is absorbed by the
oceans. But plants also take in carbon dioxide and in the process expel
oxygen. This is why the rain forests—our largest concentration of
plant life—are vital to maintaining the chemical balance of the atmos-
phere.

The problem is that production of carbon dioxide is rising while
the amount of plant life on Earth is shrinking. To make matters
worse, rain forests are being destroyed mostly by burning, which
releases even more CO2 into the atmosphere. Experts estimate that
the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is now 40 percent
higher than it was 150 years ago (Gore, 2006; United Nations Envi-
ronment Programme, 2009; National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, 2010).

High above Earth, carbon dioxide acts like the glass roof of a
greenhouse, letting heat from the sun pass through to the surface
while preventing much of it from radiating away from the planet.
The result of this greenhouse effect, say ecologists, is global
warming, a rise in Earth’s average temperature due to an increasing
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Over the past
century, the global temperature has risen about 1.3° Fahrenheit (to

468 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

Have you experienced changes in your own world resulting
from global warming or other issues discussed here?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

rain forests regions of dense forestation, most of which circle the globe close to
the equator

global warming a rise in Earth’s average temperature due to an increasing
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

environmental racism patterns of development that expose poor people,
especially minorities, to environmental hazards

an average of 58° F.). Scientists warn that it could rise by 5° to 10° F.
during this century. Already, the polar ice caps are melting, and
scientists predict that increasing temperatures could melt so
much ice that the sea level would rise to cover low-lying land
all around the world. Were this to happen, water would
cover all of Bangladesh, for example, and much of the
coastal United States, including Washington, D.C., right
up to the steps of the White House. On the other hand,
the U.S. Midwest, currently one of the most productive
agricultural regions in the world, probably would
become arid.

Some scientists point out that we cannot be sure
of the consequences of global warming. Others point to
the fact that global temperature changes have been tak-
ing place throughout history, perhaps having little or
nothing to do with rain forests. A few are optimistic,
suggesting that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere might speed up plant growth (because
plants thrive on this gas), and this increase might correct the imbal-
ance and nudge Earth’s temperature downward once again. But the
consensus of scientists is clear: Global warming is a serious prob-
lem that threatens the future for all of us (Kerr, 2005; Gore, 2006;
International Panel on Climate Change, 2007; National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, 2010). Go to mysoclab.com

Declining Biodiversity

Our planet is home to as many as 30 million species of animals, plants,
and microorganisms. As rain forests are cleared and humans extend
their control over nature, several dozen unique species of plants and
animals cease to exist each day.

But given the vast number of living species, why should we be
concerned about the loss of a few? Environmentalists give four rea-
sons. First, our planet’s biodiversity provides a varied source of
human food. Using agricultural high technology, scientists can cross
familiar crops with more exotic plant life, making food more boun-
tiful and more resistant to insects and disease. Thus biodiversity helps
feed our planet’s rapidly increasing population.

Second, Earth’s biodiversity is a vital genetic resource used by
medical and pharmaceutical researchers to provide hundreds of
new compounds each year that cure disease and improve our lives.
For example, children in the United States now have a good chance
of surviving leukemia, a disease that was almost a sure killer two
generations ago, because of a compound derived from a tropical
flower called the rosy periwinkle. The oral birth control pill, used by
tens of millions of women in this country, is another product of plant
research, this one involving the Mexican forest yam.

Third, with the loss of any species of life—whether it is the mag-
nificent California condor, the famed Chinese panda, the spotted

owl, or even a single species of ant—the beauty and complexity of
our natural environment are diminished. And there are clear warn-
ing signs: Three-fourths of the world’s 10,000 species of birds are
declining in number.

Finally, unlike pollution, the extinction of any species is irre-
versible and final. An important ethical question, then, is whether
people living today have the right to impoverish the world for those
who will live tomorrow (N. Myers, 1991; E. O. Wilson, 1991; Brown
et al., 1993).

Environmental Racism
Environmental problems threaten us all. But most environmental
issues harm some people more than others. Conflict theory has given
birth to the concept of environmental racism, patterns of develop-
ment that expose poor people, especially minorities, to environmental
hazards. Historically, factories that spew pollution have stood near
neighborhoods housing the poor and people of color. Why? In part,
the poor themselves were drawn to factories in search of work, and
their low incomes often meant they could afford housing only in
undesirable neighborhoods. Sometimes the only housing that fit their
budgets stood in the very shadow of the plants and mills where they
worked.

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 469

Water is vital to life, and it is also in short supply. The state of Gujarat,
in western India, has experienced a long drought. In the village of
Natwarghad, people crowd together, lowering pots into the local well,
taking what little water is left.

Do you worry much about global warming? Why or why not?
Do you think global warming could affect you personally? How?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

Go to the Multimedia Library at mysoclab.com
to listen to the NPR report “Sources of
Global Warming”

Nobody wants a factory or dump nearby, but the poor have lit-
tle power to resist. Through the years, the most serious environmen-
tal hazards have been located near Newark, New Jersey (not in
upscale Bergen County), in southside Chicago (not in wealthy Lake
Forest), or on Native American reservations in the West (not in
affluent suburbs of Denver or Phoenix) (Commission for Racial
Justice, 1994; Bohon & Humphrey, 2000).

Looking Ahead: Toward
a Sustainable Society
and World
The demographic analysis presented in this chapter points to some
disturbing trends. We see, first, that our planet’s population has
reached record levels because birth rates remain high in poor nations
and death rates have fallen just about everywhere. Reducing fertility
will remain a pressing issue throughout this century. Even with some
recent decline in the rate of population increase, the nightmare of
Thomas Malthus is still a real possibility, as the Controversy & Debate
box explains.

Further, population growth remains greatest in the poorest
countries of the world, which cannot support their present popula-

tions, much less their future ones. Supporting 83 million additional
people on our planet each year, 81 million of whom are in poor soci-
eties, will take a global commitment to provide not only food but
also housing, schools, and employment. The well-being of the entire
world may ultimately depend on resolving the economic and social
problems of poor, overpopulated countries and bridging the widen-
ing gulf between “have” and “have-not” nations.

Urbanization is continuing, especially in poor countries. Peo-
ple have always sought out cities in the hope of finding a better life.
But the sheer numbers of people who live in the emerging global
supercities, including Mexico City, São Paulo (Brazil), Kinshasa
(Democratic Republic of the Congo), Mumbai (India), and Manila
(Philippines), have created urban problems on a massive scale.

Throughout the world, humanity is facing a serious environ-
mental challenge. Part of this problem is population increase, which
is greatest in poor societies. But part of the problem is the high lev-
els of consumption in rich nations such as our own. By increasing the
planet’s environmental deficit, our present way of life is borrowing
against the well-being of our children and their children. Globally,
members of rich societies, who currently consume so much of Earth’s
resources, are mortgaging the future security of the poor countries
of the world.

The answer, in principle, is to create an ecologically sustainable
culture, a way of life that meets the needs of the present generation

without threatening the environmental legacy of future genera-
tions. Sustainable living depends on three strategies.

First, we need to bring population growth under con-
trol. The current population of 6.8 billion is already
straining the natural environment. Clearly, the higher
world population climbs, the more difficult environmen-
tal problems will become. Even if the recent slowing of
population growth continues, the world will have 9 bil-
lion people by 2050. Few analysts think that Earth can
support this many people; most argue that we must hold

the line at about 7 billion, and some argue that we must
decrease population in the coming decades (Smail, 2010).

A second strategy is to conserve finite resources. This
means meeting our needs with a responsible eye toward the

future by using resources efficiently, seeking alternative
sources of energy, and in some cases, learning to live with less.

A third strategy is to reduce waste. Whenever possible,
simply using less is the best solution. Learning to live with less

will not come easily, but keep in mind that as our society has con-
sumed more and more in recent decades, people have not become
any happier (D. G. Myers, 2000). Recycling programs, too, are part of
the answer, and recycling can make everyone part of the solution to
our environmental problems.

470 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

With its focus on inequality, environmental racism is linked to
the social-conflict approach.

Making the Grade
ecologically sustainable culture a way of life that meets the needs of the present
generation without threatening the environmental legacy of future generations

If human ingenuity created the threats to our environment we now face,
can humans also solve these problems? In recent years, a number of
designs for small, environmentally friendly cars show the promise of new
technology. But do such innovations go far enough? Will we have to make
more basic changes to our way of life to ensure human survival in the
centuries to come?

In the end, making all three of these strategies work depends on
a more basic change in the way we think about ourselves and our
world. Our egocentric outlook sets our own interests as standards
for how to live; a sustainable environment demands an ecocentric
outlook that helps us see that the present is tied to the future and
that everyone must work together. Most nations in the southern
half of the world are underdeveloped, unable to meet the basic needs
of their people. At the same time, most countries in the northern half
of the world are overdeveloped, using more resources than Earth can
sustain over time. The changes needed to create a sustainable ecosys-
tem will not come easily, and they will be costly. But the price of not

responding to the growing environmental deficit will certainly be
greater (Brown et al., 1993; Population Action International, 2000;
Gore, 2006).

Finally, consider that the great dinosaurs dominated this planet
for some 160 million years and then perished forever. Humanity is
far younger, having existed for a mere 250,000 years. Compared to the
rather dimwitted dinosaurs, our species has the gift of great intelli-
gence. But how will we use this ability? What are the chances that
humans will continue to flourish 160 million years—or even 160
years—from now? The answer depends on the choices made by just
one of the 30 million species living on Earth: human beings.

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 471

Apocalypse: Will People Overwhelm the Planet?

NUSHAWN: I’m telling you, there are too many peo-
ple already! Where is everyone going to live?

TABITHA: Have you ever been to Kansas? Or
Wyoming? There’s plenty of empty space out there.

MARCO: Maybe now. But I’m not so sure there’ll
be all that room for our children—or their
children. . . .

Are you worried about the world’s rapidly
increasing population? Think about this: By the
time you finish reading this box, more than
1,000 people will have been added to our
planet. By this time tomorrow, global population
will have risen by more than 200,000. Currently,
as the table shows, there are four births for
every two deaths on the planet, pushing the
world’s population upward by almost 83 million
people annually. Put another way, global popu-
lation growth amounts to adding another Germany
to the world each year.

It is no wonder that many demographers
and environmentalists are deeply concerned
about the future. Earth has an unprecedented
population: The 2.8 billion people we have
added since 1974 alone exceed the planet’s
total in 1900. Might Thomas Malthus—who pre-
dicted that overpopulation would push the
world into war and suffering—be right after all?
Lester Brown and other neo-Malthusians predict
a coming apocalypse if we do not change our
ways. Brown (1995) admits that Malthus failed
to imagine how much technology (especially fer-
tilizers and plant genetics) could boost the
planet’s agricultural output. But he maintains
that Earth’s rising population is rapidly outstrip-
ping its finite resources. Families in many poor
countries can find little firewood, members of
rich countries are depleting the oil reserves, and
everyone is draining our supply of clean water
and poisoning the planet with waste. Some ana-

lysts argue that we have already passed Earth’s
“carrying capacity” for population and that we
need to hold the line or even reduce global pop-
ulation to ensure our long-term survival.

But other analysts, the anti-Malthusians,
sharply disagree. Julian Simon (1995) points out
that two centuries after Malthus predicted
catastrophe, Earth supports almost six times as
many people who, on average, live longer,
healthier lives than ever before. With more
advanced technology, people have devised
ways to increase productivity and limit popula-
tion increase. As Simon sees it, this is cause for
celebration. Human ingenuity has consistently
proved the doomsayers wrong, and Simon is
betting that it will continue to do so.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

1. Where do you place your bet? Do you think
Earth can support 8 or 10 billion people?
Explain your reasoning.

2. Almost all current population growth is in
poor countries. What does this mean for the
future of rich nations? For the future of poor
ones?

3. What should people in rich countries do to
ensure the future of children everywhere?

Sources: Brown (1995), Simon (1995), Scanlon (2001), and
Smail (2007).

CONTROVERSY
& DEBATE

Global Population Increase, 2009

Births Deaths Net Increase

Per year 138,949,000 56,083,000 82,866,000
Per month 11,579,083 4,673,583 6,905,500
Per day 380,682 155,652 227,030
Per hour 15,862 6,402 9,460
Per minute 264 107 158
Per second 4.4 1.8 2.6

What share of the world’s people do you think are concerned
about global population increase?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life Make five predictions about the state of the world

population and also the state of the planet’s environment
fifty years from now. Are you optimistic or pessimistic?
Why?

472 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment472

472

Seeing Sociology in Everyday Life

472

Chapter 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

HINT If expansion is “good times,” then contraction is a “recession” or perhaps even
a “depression.” Such a worldview means that it is normal—or even desirable—to live in
a way that increases stress on the natural environment. Sustainability, an idea that is
especially important as world population increases, depends on learning to live with what
we have or maybe even learning to live with less. Although many people seem to think
so, it really doesn’t require a 6,000-pound SUV to move around urban areas. Actually, it
might not require a car at all. This new way of thinking requires that we do not define social
standing and personal success in terms of what we own and what we consume. Can
you imagine a society like that? What would it be like?

Why is the environment a social issue?
As this chapter explains, the state of the natural environment depends on how society is organized,
especially the importance a culture attaches to consumption and economic growth.

We learn to see economic expansion as natural and good. When the economy stays the same for a number
of months, we say we are experiencing “stagnation.” How do we define a period when the economy gets
smaller, as happened during the fall of 2008?

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 473473473473473

1. Here is an illustration of the problem of runaway growth
(Milbrath, 1989:10): “A pond has a single water lily growing
on it. The lily doubles in size each day. In thirty days, it cov-
ers the entire pond. On which day does it cover half the
pond?” When you realize the answer, discuss the implica-
tions of this example for population increase.

2. Draw a mental map of a city familiar to you with as much
detail of specific places, districts, roads, and transportation
facilities as you can. Compare your map to a real one or,

better yet, a map drawn by someone else. Try to account
for the differences.

3. As an interesting exercise, carry a trash bag around for a
single day, and collect everything you throw away. Most peo-
ple are surprised to find that the average person in the United
States discards close to 5 pounds of paper, metal, plastic,
and other materials daily (over a lifetime, that’s about 50 tons).

Applying SOCIOLOGY in Everyday Life

What would it take to convince members of our
society that smaller (rather than bigger) might
be better? Why do we seem to prefer not just
bigger cars but bigger homes and more and
more material possessions?

CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment
Making the Grade

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Demography: The Study of Population

… Demography analyzes the size and composition of a population and how and why people move from place to
place. Demographers collect data and study several factors that affect population (p. 446).

FERTILITY

• Fertility is the incidence of
childbearing in a country’s
population.

• Demographers describe
fertility using the crude birth
rate.

MORTALITY

• Mortality is the incidence of
death in a country’s population.

• Demographers measure
mortality using both the
crude death rate and the
infant mortality rate.

MIGRATION

• The net migration rate is
the difference between the
in-migration rate and the out-
migration rate.

pp. 446–47 p. 447

pp. 447–48

POPULATION GROWTH
In general, rich nations grow as much from
immigration as from natural increase; poorer nations
grow almost entirely from natural increase.

POPULATION COMPOSITION
Demographers use age-sex pyramids to show
graphically the composition of a population and to
project population trends.

p. 448 pp. 448–50

History and Theory of Population Growth

demographic transition theory (p. 451) a thesis
that links population patterns to a society’s level of
technological development

zero population growth (p. 452) the rate of
reproduction that maintains population at a steady
level

• Historically, world population grew slowly because high birth rates were offset by high death rates.

• About 1750, a demographic transition began as world population rose sharply, mostly due to falling death
rates.

• In the late 1700s, Thomas Robert Malthus warned that population growth would outpace food production,
resulting in social calamity.

• Demographic transition theory contends that technological advances gradually slow population increase.

• World population is expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050.

… Currently, the world is gaining 83 million people each year, with 98% of this increase taking place in poor
countries (p. 450).

pp. 450–53

Urbanization: The Growth of Cities

urbanization (p. 455) the concentration of population
into cities

metropolis (p. 456) a large city that socially and
economically dominates an urban area

suburbs (p. 456) urban areas beyond the political
boundaries of a city

megalopolis (p. 457) a vast urban region containing
a number of cities and their surrounding suburbs

The FIRST URBAN REVOLUTION began with the
appearance of cities about 10,000 years ago.

• By about 2,000 years ago, cities had emerged in
most regions of the world except North America
and Antarctica.

• Preindustrial cities have low buildings; narrow,
winding streets; and personal social ties.

A SECOND URBAN REVOLUTION began about
1750 as the Industrial Revolution propelled rapid

urban growth in Europe.

• The physical form of cities changed as planners
created wide, regular streets to allow for more trade.

• The emphasis on commerce, as well as the
increasing size of cities, made urban life more
impersonal.pp. 453–55

p. 455

IN THE UNITED STATES, urbanization has been going on for more than 400 years and continues today.

• Urbanization came to North America with European colonists.

• By 1850, hundreds of new cities had been founded from coast to coast.

• By 1920, a majority of the U.S. population lived in urban areas.

• Since 1950, the decentralization of cities has resulted in the growth of suburbs and edge cities and a rebound
in rural population.

• Nationally, Sunbelt cities—but not the older Snowbelt cities—are increasing in size and population.
pp. 455–58

demography (p. 446) the study of human population

fertility (p. 446) the incidence of childbearing in a
country’s population

crude birth rate (p. 446) the number of live births in
a given year for every 1,000 people in a population

mortality (p. 447) the incidence of death in a
country’s population

crude death rate (p. 447) the number of deaths in a
given year for every 1,000 people in a population

infant mortality rate (p. 447) the number of deaths
among infants under one year of age for each 1,000
live births in a given year

life expectancy (p. 447) the average life span of a
country’s population

migration (p. 447) the movement of people into and
out of a specified territory

sex ratio (p. 448) the number of males for every 100
females in a nation’s population

age-sex pyramid (p. 448) a graphic representation
of the age and sex of a population

474

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475

Urbanism as a Way of Life

Gemeinschaft (p. 458) a type of social organization
in which people are closely tied by kinship and
tradition

Gesellschaft (p. 458) a type of social organization in
which people come together only on the basis of
individual self-interest

urban ecology (p. 460) the study of the link between
the physical and social dimensions of cities

… Rapid urbanization during the nineteenth century led early sociologists to study the differences between rural
and urban life. These early sociologists included, in Europe, Tönnies, Durkheim, and Simmel, and in the United
States, Park and Wirth.

FERDINAND TÖNNIES built his analysis on the
concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.
• Gemeinschaft, typical of the rural village, joins

people in what amounts to a single primary
group.

• Gesellschaft, typical of the modern city, describes
individuals motivated by their own needs rather
than the well-being of the community.

EMILE DURKHEIM agreed with much of Tönnies’s
thinking but claimed that urbanites do not lack
social bonds; the basis of social soldarity simply
differs in the two settings.

• Mechanical solidarity involves social bonds
based on common sentiments and shared moral
values. This type of social solidarity is typical of
traditional, rural life.

• Organic solidarity arises from social bonds based
on specialization and interdependence. This type of
social solidarity is typical of modern, urban life.

p. 458

pp. 458–59

GEORG SIMMEL claimed that the overstimulation of
city life produced a blasé attitude in urbanites.

ROBERT PARK, at the University of Chicago, claimed
that cities permit greater social freedom.

p. 459

pp. 459–60

LOUIS WIRTH saw large, dense, heterogeneous
populations creating an impersonal and self-
interested, though tolerant, way of life.

Urbanization in Poor Nations

• The world’s first urban revolution took place about 8000 B.C.E. with the first urban settlements.

• The second urban revolution took place after 1750 in Europe and North America with the Industrial Revolution.

• A third urban revolution is now occurring in poor countries. Today, most of the world’s largest cities are found
in less developed nations.

p. 462

Environment and Society

ecology (p. 462) the study of the interaction of living
organisms and the natural environment

natural environment (p. 462) Earth’s surface and
atmosphere, including living organisms, air, water,
soil, and other resources necessary to sustain life

ecosystem (p. 462) the interaction of all living
organisms and their natural environment

environmental deficit (p. 463) profound long-term
harm to the natural environment caused by
humanity’s focus on short-term material affluence

rain forests (p. 468) regions of dense forestation,
most of which circle the globe close to the equator

global warming (p. 468) a rise in Earth’s average
temperature due to an increasing concentration of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

environmental racism (p. 469) patterns of
development that expose poor people, especially
minorities, to environmental hazards

ecologically sustainable culture (p. 470) a way of
life that meets the needs of the present generation
without threatening the environmental legacy of
future generations

The state of the ENVIRONMENT is a social issue
because it reflects how human beings organize
social life.

• Societies increase the environmental deficit by
focusing on short-term benefits and ignoring the
long-term consequences brought on by their way
of life.

• The more complex a society’s technology, the
greater its capacity to alter the natural
environment.

• The logic-of-growth thesis supports economic
development, claiming that people can solve
environmental problems as they arise.

• The limits-to-growth thesis states that
societies must curb development to prevent
eventual environmental collapse.

pp. 462–63

pp. 464–65

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES include

• Disposing of solid waste: More than half of what we throw away ends up in landfills, which are filling up and
which can pollute groundwater under Earth’s surface.

• Protecting the quality of water and air: The supply of clean water is already low in some parts of the world.
Industrial technology has caused a decline in air quality.

• Protecting the rain forests: Rain forests help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and are home to a
large share of this planet’s living species. Under pressure from development, the world’s rain forests are now
half their original size and are shrinking by about 1% annually.

• Global warming: Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are causing the average temperature of
the planet to rise, melting the ice caps and bringing other dramatic changes to the natural environment.

• Environmental racism: Conflict theory has drawn attention to the fact that the poor, especially minorities, suffer
most from environmental hazards.

pp. 465–70

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