After millennia of growth which was so slow that each generation hardly noticed it, the cities are suddenly racing off in every direction. The world population goes up by two percent a year, city population goes up by four percent a year, but in big cities the rate may be as much as five and six percent a year. (61) To give only one example of almost visible acceleration. Athens today grows by three dwellings and 100 square meters of road every hour. There is no reason to believe that this pace will slacken. (62) As technology gradually swallows up all forms of work, industrial and agricultural, the rural areas are going to shrink, just as they have shrunk in Britain, and the vast majority of their people will move into the city. In fact, in Britain now only about four or five percent of people live in rural areas and depend upon them; all through the developing world the vanguard of the rural exodus has reached the urban fringes already, and there they huddle in sh
After millennia of growth which was so slow that each generation hardly noticed it, the cities are suddenly racing off in every direction. The world population goes up by two percent a year, city population goes up by four percent a year, but in big cities the rate may be as much as five and six percent a year. (61) To give only one example of almost visible acceleration. Athens today grows by three dwellings and 100 square meters of road every hour. There is no reason to believe that this pace will slacken. (62) As technology gradually swallows up all forms of work, industrial and agricultural, the rural areas are going to shrink, just as they have shrunk in Britain, and the vast majority of their people will move into the city. In fact, in Britain now only about four or five percent of people live in rural areas and depend upon them; all through the developing world the vanguard of the rural exodus has reached the urban fringes already, and there they huddle in sh
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