1. Discuss the causes and effects of population growth, population decline, and immigration.
    
2. Describe the growing urbanization of the world’s population and the effects of deindustrialization on U.S. cities.
    
3. Discuss sociological theories of the environment and major environmental problems and responses.

Summary

While overall fertility rates are dropping globally, the world’s population continues to increase, although at a declining rate. Population decline can weaken nations in various ways, but it can also have benefits. Demographers focus on three main processes: fertility, or people’s reproductive behavior; mortality, or death and death rates within a population; and migration, the movements of people and the impact of these movements on both sending and receiving societies. Urbanization is the process by which an increasing percentage of a society’s population comes to be located in relatively densely populated urban areas. Cities are large, permanent settlements that are cosmopolitan in that they are open to a variety of external, including global, influences. Despite some problems, they play a positive role in the development of societies around the world. The most important of the world’s cities are global cities. Megacities have populations greater than 10 million. Suburbs are communities adjacent to but outside the political boundaries of central cities. Edge cities are on or near major highways, house large corporate offices, and have important commercial and consumption centers such as shopping malls. Looking for cheaper land and housing, people have pushed even farther out into areas between the suburbs and rural areas, known as exurbia. Major American cities have seen significant declines as they have lost the industries they once relied on. Gentrification has lured some white, middle-class residents back to cities’ urban centers. Increasing environmental problems have led sociologists to examine the environment more closely. Structural/functional theorists examine the ability of large-scale structures to deal with these problems. Conflict/critical theorists focus on capitalism and the impact on the environment of corporate expansion and the increasing use of natural resources. Inter/actionists focus more on the ways in which we come to define various environmental issues as problems. Most environmental problems are global in nature and scope. Global environmental problems include the destruction of natural habitats, adverse effects on marine life, the decline of freshwater, and global warming and its many negative effects. The relationship between globalization and sustainability has a number of dimensions, including economic, technological, and political, as well as media awareness. While geoengineering provides some hope that technological advances might be able to deal with some of the problems associated with global warming, any such solutions will be costly and are still a long way off.