ABSTRACT
The percentage of urban population, as well as the total population of the planet, will continue to grow in the future, and this will drive a further increase in urban areas worldwide. The intensity of this process will be differentiated, reaching a maximum in Africa and Asia, and the role of urban expansion, as a process of irreversible soil degradation, will be of crucial importance. Food production, in the absence of a second 'green revolution', could represent a critical issue in the future. Impacts of urban expansion will also be relevant for other ecosystem services. The impact of urban expansion on climate, local and global, is another relevant issue. In contraposition to globalisation, there is a growing community of people who consider regionalism an added value. The need, or the possibility, to move everything from everywhere to everywhere will hopefully decrease in the future, halting the absurd alteration to the global biogeochemical cycle that humankind is imposing on the Earth.
