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“Planet of slums” by 2030, UN says

The combined forces of population growth and urbanisation are creating a planet of slums, where the urban population will have doubled by 2030, according to a United Nations report released on Wednesday.

The shanty towns that choke the cities of Asia and Africa are experiencing unstoppable growth, expanding by more than a million
people every week, according to the "State of the World Population 2007" report.

The UN’s findings echo recent predictions that 2008 will see a watershed in human history as the balance of the world’s population
tips from rural to urban.

The report maintains that, over the next 30 years, the population of African and Asian cities will double, adding 1.7 billion people —
more than the current populations of the United States and China combined. In this new world the majority of the urban poor will be
under age 25, unemployed and vulnerable to religious fundamentalism, both Christian and Islamic.

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