A growing proportion of the human population are living in cities or urban areas. Currently 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and this is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. Up from 34% in 1960, and it is expected that even in less developed countries, the majority of the global population will be urbanites by 2050.

How “we” classify cities is a tricky business, in other words, there are many ways to measure or define urban areas. All cities are different, which means that one measure to define what makes a city can be misleading. The United Nations has three criteria or definitions, for how you define a city – their city limits, the extent of the urban area, or their metropolitan regions.

Despite this difficulty, it is clear, globally a slow shift is occurring. People are moving from rural areas to urban areas.

I on the other hand recently moved to a rural area. About 18 months ago I upped sticks, sold my house and bucked a global trend. Just like that.

I was living in the heart of a city, a five minute train journey to the centre.

Now I live a mile from the nearest shop, and there are no street lights. At night you can hear owls, and the unsettling barking of the local deer. No, they really do bark, when i first heard one I thought it was a labrador in distress.

I won’t lie, it’s been a big change. Although I am originally from this rural area. Leaving to go up north to go to University in 2000.

I got a taste for the city and the north, and stayed for 17 years. It became home, i settled into the lifestyle, had a job and a great urban family and it was a luxury to pop out to the shops or to go to a gallery/gig/cinema/entertainment. I loved it.

But it was time to I moved back to where I grew up, after finding a job that was perfect (and getting it) I packed up my life and moved to the country.

It sounds idyllic, and most of the time it actually is. When I get home from work, a car journey which takes me about the same as my walk home in the city, I often feel a curious wave of calm wash over me.

It helps that I live in a beautiful part of the world, in a place with loads of space and wildlife. Perhaps I am painting a rose-tinted picture. Perhaps I should mention that our house is so cold that I had to go to sleep with a hat a gloves on the other night.

The wave of calm comes from the green, brown and quiet of our garden.

A slight sense of panic sets in when I step into the house, which isn’t quite falling down, but we are slowly ripping all the concrete coated walls, and damp floors out, these will then be sympathetically renovated. Currently it’s dusty and very cold.  

Enough about my woes. It turns out that although the global figures suggest a slow migration from rural to urban, beneath the statistics are some intriguing quirks. Here is just one of those.

It turns out that maybe my recent choices aren’t so odd. Perhaps I’m not so strange.

In some places in Europe and Asia the urban population is actually decreasing. In these areas a couple of factors, primarily a stagnated population growth, or in some areas a decrease is contributing to this quirk against the global trend. But why is this happening?

A Guardian headline caught my eye, and perhaps explains some of this anomaly. 

London’s property prices leads to exodus of early 30s.

In this article the mention of oppressive property prices, and the lack of skilled jobs points to the trend that more people in their early 30s are leaving the city.  I quote the Guardian, “While London’s overall population has grown by 1.6 million since 2001, the number of people in their early 30s leaving the capital has doubled since 2009”.

I do not blame them. I see the appeal. But what hides behind these statistics? Where are they moving to? Are they commuting into London, or are they finding skilled work in other cities in the UK. I doubt many of these people have moved to rural areas, perhaps a handful.

As I write this I sit in a cafe in central London, it seemed fitting to finish this article whilst I am here. Living in the country and visiting the city can be a bit of a culture shock. It’s hectic here, and I have quickly adjusted to the slower pace of life in my new surrounds. I guess I never really lost that, even with many years away. I enjoy it for a while, but I am always glad to find myself back in the countryside.

Living in countryside means being resourceful, and planning more carefully. Both of these are pervasive through daily life. You don’t often pop to the shop, and I always carry cash. Most places do take cards, but there are more opportunities for this not to work. Terrible mobile signal, and wifi which is ridiculously slow or broken can mean that card payments aren’t always the first choice.

Talking of terrible mobile signal. It’s both glorious and frustrating that I cannot send a text message for 80% of the day, or that without WiFi I am cut off from my former life, that urban family that I miss so dearly. Most of the time it’s great. No need to worry about checking messages, and we still make plans like in the old days.

People here tend to plan ahead more for some reason, and I find that both comforting and a bit frustrating. I think it’s caused by us living further apart, and by most of my close friends having families.

Popping out for a drink on a whim is possible, but I’ll probably be drinking alone.

Word Count:994

References from the Internet

• https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/jun/27/londons-property-prices-leads-to-exodus-of-early-30s
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities
• http://www.who.int/gho/urban_health/situation_trends/urban_population_growth_text/en/