★ Little Sunshine's Wonderland ★

For several years now, we’ve heard the story about Earth’s becoming a more urban world. In 2008…

Carl Haub: The United Nations – who estimates these things and does a rather detailed job of it – will in fact say that over half of world population is now urban.

That’s Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau(辦公室、局) in Washington, D.C. He talked about what ‘urban’ means.

Carl Haub: I think people should not get the impression that half of world population is living in places like Rio de Janeiro(巴西-里約熱內盧州) and New York. That’s not at all true. A city of 5,000 or more in India whose labor force(人工勢力) is not wholly engaged(使用中的) in agriculture(農業、農藝) is considered urban. And if you’ve ever been to a town of 5,000 in India you would not really think of that as being terribly urban.

He said the definition of urban was first used to identify a nonagricultural population.

Carl Haub: When you think about the U.S. at the time of its founding (創立), we were essentially a nation of farmers. So we came to define the nonagricultural population and we used the word ‘urban.’ It’s a much smaller share of people that are in fact living in the Shanghais(上海) and the Bombays(孟買) and the New Yorks of this world. However, it’s not insignificant that people have moved into towns as opposed to living off the land. It’s still a sociological benchmark(基準、評效) for sure.

里約熱內盧地區除里約熱內盧州(RIO DE JANEIRO)外，尚包括大礦州(MINAS GERAIS)及聖靈州(ESPIRITO SANTO) ，里約熱內盧州總人口約 1,500 萬人(首府里約熱內盧RIO DE JANEIRO)、大礦州人口約 1,800 萬人(首府美景市BELO HORIZONTE)、聖靈州人口約300萬人(首府維多利亞VITORIA)。
里約熱內盧州首府里約熱內盧市為一多山，延海岸線發展之長形城市，港灣寬闊可容巨艦。 1808 年葡萄牙王室流亡巴西，據為首都，至 1960 年巴西聯邦共和國始遷都巴西利亞。里約熱內盧市現仍為南美第二大城、巴西之文化與觀光中心。