Impact of Urban Expansion on Coastal Vegetation Conservation in Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality, South Africa

2. The Conceptualization Of Urbanization

All over the world, it is found that rapid urbanization is a consequence of population growth. Haub, (2011) opined that the human population all over the world has rapidly increased from 5 billion in 1987 to 6 billion in 1999 and to 7 billion in 2011 . According to current projections, the global population will reach eight billion by 2024, and is likely to reach around nine billion by 2042, with over half of these population figures living around coastal environments. As part of this development, coastal cities in the developing economies have undergone rapid urban expansion (Singh, 2013) and this has resulted in tremendous pressure on land from both unintended and unrestrained alterations in land use/land cover (LULC) (Chandra, 2018). Additionally, undue pressure on ecological systems have resulted in urban sprawl in most metropolitan areas, (Colantoni, 2016) contributing to environmental change on the global scene (Wu, 2013). Significant land use and land cover changes thus occurs in coastal cities, with population rise projected to more than 32% between 2015 and 2030 (Birkmann, 2016). These coastal cities perform important logistic, production and governance roles within the communities and regions they are found (Roberts, 2014). It is also projected that coastal cities have great impact on the future economic advancement of countries and larger geographic areas of the world (Roberts, 2014).