ABSTRACT
It has become almost obligatory to begin introductions to books such as this one with statistics about the rates of urbanization we are experiencing in the world today. Everyone by now knows the bottom line: we have apparently – silently in the sense that we did not mark the exact point, but with a lot of noise about the impending moment of it – passed the 50 percent mark. From this moment forward our world is unequivocally an urbanized world. And given the rates at which this process is proceeding – there are various projections about where we will be at 2010, 2025 and 2050 – it in any event seems clear that by the turn of the next century there will be no argument about the fact that we live in a world which is fundamentally different to the world we have known over the history of mankind up till now. And all this has happened in the mere twinkling of an eye in the overall time span of human history.
