As our world becomes more urbanized, Earth itself might actually be better off.

That’s according to George Martine, lead author of the 2007 State of World Population report published by the U.N.

Martine told Earth & Sky that it’s natural to think of urban areas as bad for the environment. But would anything be better if Earth’s huge population were spread out across the countryside?

And we have a world population that is almost 6.7 billion people. If you put say 3.3 billion people out of urban areas and into rural areas, what would happen to natural ecosystems? It would be disastrous. There’s no question about it.

Martine said that right now, about half of the world’s population lives on less than three percent of Earth’s land area.

The fact that cities concentrate most environmental problems is not because of concentration, per se. It is simply due to the fact that cities concentrate the lifestyles and the production and the consumption patterns of modern civilization such as we know it. So the problem is not concentration. The problem is the kind of civilization that we are promoting and the kind of concentration of wealthy and affluent consumers in cities.

总结
per se本身 in itself