May 23rd represented a demographic shift in the world from predominately rural to predominately urban, according to researchers from N.C. State and the University of Georgia.

According to Ron Wimberley, a key researcher in the studies and a sociology professor, May 23 represents a “mayday” for rural areas that have conditions, which have gone unnoticed.

“Our original interest was in the rural south and the different quality of life compared to urban areas in terms of socioeconomic and health conditions of the people in rural areas,” Winberley said.

Wimberley said nobody intended to allow these disparaties to exist, but no one is paying much attention to them to do anything about it, either.

“The quality of education in rural areas, for instance, is poor,” he said. “That’s not to say education is in great shape everywhere, but [a disparity exists].”

He said inconsistencies also exist in terms of health care and general impoverishment in rural areas.

But, according to Wimberley, although some people still prefer to live in rural areas with the migrations going in both directions — urban and rural, more people are moving to urban cities.

“Around 1950, there was only one urban person for every two rural people worldwide,” he said. “In about 20 years, there will be three urban people for every two rural people.”

He said this shift has been taking place for over 100 years, with the trend increasing after World War I and World War II when mechanized agriculture displaced a lot of people from the rural countryside.

“There was a shift backwards in some instances, and in the south, the shift was much slower,” he said. “It just plays out at different speeds in different areas of the world.”

He said some people give up on rural areas, particularly in developing countries when urban cities provide them with more opportunities.

Joseph Best, a senior in sociology, agreed that the shift is apparent due to a more available job market in urban areas, more people going to colleges and less people staying on family-run businesses and farms.

“Environmentally, the quality of life lessens because of more cars and exhausts,” he said. “[But] we’ll see more urban sprawl. On the social aspect, the quality of life will improve because you’ll have more and more people together, and you’ll have less racial segregation.”

Wimberley said the urban sprawl may increase the quality of life to a certain extent, but that cities will have a hard time keeping up with offering their services due to an increasing population, as they already do now due to migrations and birth rates exceeding death rates.

“It’s what Raleigh and Wake County are experiencing now,” he said. “So many people are moving in and the old system doesn’t have enough [services] to keep up.”

Best said some of the problems he foresees in the urban sprawl is overcrowding and a lower standard of living due to more pollution and waste and higher prices.

“But, in turn, it might help boost wages,” he said.

Winberley, like Best, said people in rural areas are more isolated than those in urban areas, the reason being new technologies and communication methods are more readily available in urban cities.

Still, he said, some people are committed to living in rural areas for the quiet.

“North Carolina still has a small rural community scattered throughout the state, compared to the rest of the states,” he said.

According to Wimberely, the central part of the state is mostly urban, but as this shift continues, people in rural areas should not be forgotten or neglected in North Carolina and other areas of the world.

He said the irony is, despite the urban shift, people in urban areas will still depend on people in rural areas to provide them with resources.

“The cities will need more of rural natural resources and will depend upon people in those rural areas to provide them,” he said. “But technologies and other things will fill the gap as best they can.”

According to Wimberley, another issue to consider with the shift is globalization.

“As long as we can afford to ship materials from one part of the world to another that needs them, whoever can control moving the world’s natural resources around, it will be to their advantage,” he said.

He said if the United States’ rural areas run out of resources, the U.S. will lose its control in other parts of the world as well.