Rising cities login7/30/2023 Many, particularly in Africa and Asia, are experiencing hyper-urbanisation that is stretching existing infrastructure. This creates fragile environments where the imbalance between expectations and reality created by social inequality, pollution, crime and violence is causing the social contract to break down. There are more than 2100 cities worldwide with more than 250,000 residents. Three million more migrate every week, attracted by the employment, educational and social interaction opportunities cities offer. By 2050, when the global population is expected to be 9.9 billion, more than 70% of humanity is likely to live in cities. Today, 56% of the world’s 7.9 billion people live in cities. But, in a sense, you can trace a straight line to these metropolises because ever since, cities have been central to humankind’s most significant innovations, theories and greatest triumphs. It is a long way – both in distance and time – from the mudbricks of prosperous Uruk to the skyscrapers of London, the first modern city to have more than a million inhabitants, or Tokyo, which is now the largest with 37 million. Cuneiform writing developed and was used to record the Epic of Gilgamesh, a poem regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature. Traders and colonists exported this culture throughout the region, and the arts thrived. With its rivers, abundant wildlife and grains, the surrounding plains gave rise to a city-state with a complex stratified society and full-time bureaucracy and military. Located in southern Mesopotamia (Iraq) on the Euphrates River, Uruk was inhabited between 4500 and 500 BCE. Although historians and archaeologists still argue, Uruk is widely considered the oldest city.
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