Urbanization, Population, Environment, and Security

1 one A Report of the Comparative Urban Studies Project As shown by the above data, the sheer rate of urban growth in the next century makes the well-being of cities a critical future challenge. [...] Although “urban security” has not yet been adopted as the preferred way to view urban problems, this rubric allows us to discuss the host of variables, each impacting the other, that affect the stability of cities and the well-being of the people who live in them. [...] Studies of urban areas throughout the globe have pointed to the lack of state capacity as a critical factor in the failure of many city administrations to meet the basic needs of their growing urban populations. [...] According to Chabat, urban based drug cartels have grown during the recent decades in Mexico because of several factors: a) the development of a mafia inside the Mexico City Police; b) the failure at the national level of the anti-drugs campaign of the 1970s; c) the chaotic development of Mexico City, that favored other forms of organized crime; and d) the economic crisis of 1982, 1987, 1995, that. [...] The undocumented movement of the Mexican-origin population to the United States and parallel movement of former colonial populations to high-income economies of Europe have created similar floating populations, each with its own stamp for the par- ticular migratory flow and condition of reception in the host society.