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available housing, and quality of the environmental control. A detailed analysis of
some of them has been made by Grigoryev and Kondratyev (2004).
In Europe, in 1999, within the framework of conception
Towards sustainable
development at a local level: European indicators of sustainability
“
”
, ten indicators
have been proposed (Grigoryev and Kondratyev 2004):
satisfaction of citizens with the standard of living at a settlement;
contribution of the cities to the global climate change;
population mobility and passenger traf
c;
availability of public accommodations and services;
air quality at a settlement;
transportation of children to school and from school;
control according to principles of sustainable development;
noise pollution;
stable land use; and
output of products that favours the sustainable development.
The main apparent shortcoming of these indicators is their inadequacy and some
vagueness. Here concrete indicators are absent, such as:
quality of drinking water;
rate of mortality (including infant mortality);
per-capita gross production;
quantity of paupers and waifs; and
crime rate.
From the viewpoint of the urban population security during natural disasters, the
use of such indicators would make it possible to resolve many problems of averting
great human losses and reducing the economic damage. Of course, all of these
problems can be resolved by using a global model that describes maximum amount
of processes and sub-systems of the environment. Such a model has been proposed
in Kondratyev et al. (2004a). It can be realized only within the framework of the
agreement signed by 60 countries on uni
cation of national systems of observation
of the environment into a global system.
Major disparities in the level of urbanization exist among development groups.
Thus, whereas the proportion of urban population in the more developed regions
was already nearly 54 % in 1950, it will still take another decade for half of the
population of the less developed regions to live in urban areas (Fig.
5.16
).
The world urban population is expected to increase by 72 % by 2050, from 3.6
billion in 2011 to 6.3 billion in 2050. By mid-century the world urban population
will likely be the same size as the world
s total population was in 2002. Virtually all
of the expected growth in the world population will be concentrated in the urban
areas of the less developed regions, whose population is projected to increase from
2.7 billion in 2011 to 5.1 billion in 2050. Over the same period, the rural population
of the less developed regions is expected to decline from 3.1 billion to 2.9 billion.
In the more developed regions, the urban population is projected to increase
modestly, from 1 billion in 2011 to 1.1 billion in 2050 (UN 2012).
'
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