Urban Development and Environmental Interaction: Impacts of Urbanization on Environment

In the coming decades, the world?s rapid urbanization will be one of the greatest challenges to ensuring human welfare and a viable global environment. The increase in the urbanization level and the fact that a high proportion of the displaced population is not willing to return to their native villages and towns will directly affect the agriculture and forestry sectors. On the one hand, the increase in the urbanization level will mean an increase in the urban extension, which will be at the expense of the peri-urban forests and other wooded lands, and of some orchards and agricultural fields. Migration towards the cities and the abandonment of the villages and agricultural fields in rural areas, will lead to an extension of the forests and other wooded lands, through the natural reforestation of the abandoned lands. Generation and accumulation of domestic waste from fast growing human settlements is becoming a major environment and health problem in developing countries especially in plain areas where urbanization is increasing rapidly.