![The State of the World Atlas [ff] - Dan Smith](/cover_659403.jpg "The State of the World Atlas [ff] - Dan Smith")
on draft designs. IlariaBianchi and Selena Mirams were a responsive focus group at a critical stage.
Åsa Frankenberg provided thoughtful reflections on the look and functioning
of the spreads, and was a source of strength throughout. Felix Smith-
Frankenberg reminded me of what life is about at moments when I thought
it only consisted of missed deadlines. I thank all of you unreservedly.
PHOTOGRAPHS
The publishers are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce their
photographs on the following pages: 18 © Mark Henley / Panos Pictures;
30 Mexico City: Milan Klusacek / iStockphoto; New York: Candida Lacey; London:
Ivan Mateev / iStockphoto; Paris: JB Russell / Panos Pictures; Lagos: George Osodi
/ Panos Pictures; Sao Paulo: AM29 / iStockphoto; 31 Istanbul: George Georgiou /
Panos Pictures; Karachi: Giacomo Pirozzi / Panos Pictures; Shanghai: Manfred Leiter;
Tokyo: Wikimedia Commons / Chris 73; Jakarta: Martin Adler / Panos Pictures;
Cairo: ictor/ iStockphoto; Mumbai: Candida Lacey; Tehran: Frank van den Bergh /
iStockphoto; 36 Ian Teh / Panos Pictures; 56 Iva Zimova / Panos Pictures; 74 Philippe
Lissac / Panos Pictures; 88 Teun Voeten / Panos Pictures; 104 Alvaro Leiva / Panos
Pictures; 120 Dieter Telemans / Panos Pictures.
Below: The world
map based on the
Mercator, Gall and
Peters projections.
17
PART ONE
WHO WE
ARE
This is the age of more, most, and never before. There are more people, living
in more countries, and more of us living in cities, than at any time in the past.
It is only 200 years ago – less than a blink of an eye in the timescale of the
planet, and not much more than a blink in the timescale of human beings
walking the planet – that the world’s human population passed the 1 billion
mark. Today there are just over 7 billion of us. At that time, some 3 per cent –
just 30 million people – lived in cities. Today, the corresponding figure is about
50 per cent, or some 3.5 billion people.
Current projections are that these figures and percentages will all increase.
World population is expected to grow, as will the proportion of us who live
in cities. The total expected population increase by 2030 – about another
2 billion people – is about the same as the expected rise in the urban
population, as increasing numbers are born in cities or move there.
Humanity has never before experienced demographic change on such a
huge scale. The movement from the countryside to the cities in the industrial
revolution two centuries ago has nothing on this. The migration from Europe
to the New World of the Americas from the mid-19th century to the early
20th numbered some 30 million. In the first ten years of this century, global
population grew by some 100 million a year and urban population even faster.
But the issue is not just population increase. There is the matter of resources.
According to one estimate, our seven-times-larger population compared to
1810 produces 50 times as much in economic output, and uses 60 times
as much water and 75 times as much energy. Seen in a longer timescale
going back to the beginning of recorded history some 5,000 years ago, that
astonishing increase in the production of wealth is as wholly unprecedented
and wildly abnormal as the increase in population itself.
The figures testify to the creativity unleashed through the industrial revolution.
They are the evidence against fears, widely expressed over the past two
centuries, that population increase must end in starvation and mass misery.
18
It is no new thought, however, to wonder how long this growth of output and
consumption can be sustained, to question what may happen as the emerging
economies of China, India, Brazil, and other countries, with increasing
economic growth in Africa and many parts of Asia, successfully produce and
consume ever-increasing amounts of everything, just as we have done in
Europe, North America, and Japan.
This growth in production both owes much to, and has fed, the extraordinary
growth in human knowledge over the past 200 years – as, indeed, does the
underlying population growth because of the improvements in public health
that have made it possible. Whether knowledge generates wisdom is, as
we all know, questionable. But if we are seeking to compare ourselves to
the past in the effort to understand who we are today, one thing is that we
are better educated. We know more and, despite the way it may seem, we
understand more.
Among other knowledge, we know more about each other than ever before.
There is more travel and more communication, leading to more encounters
and more information. As we encounter each other, we see our diversity – of
background, race, ethnicity, belief – and how we handle that diversity will
