Projections for the year 2050 predict that most of the 8 billion people on the planet will live in megacities, with populations over 30 million. And these megacity clusters will form a network made up of smaller cities over 1 million in population. But these incredibly dense clusters will weave through a countryside that is emptying. It is already common to find entire villages in China, India, and South America abandoned by its inhabitants who fled to the swelling cities, leaving behind a few old folks, or often, no one at all.
This is the pattern on Earth. Extremely dense and vast populations in a network of megacities connected to each other with nerves of roads and wires, woven over an empty landscape of wild land, marginal pastures, and lightly populated farms.
By 2050 and beyond, Earth will be a urban planet, while the average place on the planet will be nearly wild.
[Averages are tricky.]
Source: The Technium
turnings :: daniel berlinger 
There’s only one thing for sure. All predictions are wrong. Often just the opposite comes true. There was a time over the last 100 years (and no I was not alive to see all of them) the “experts” predicted everyone would live in cities in 30 years and they all lived in the suburbs. Then they predicted people would live in the country and they moved to the cities. There are too many unknown (and unknowable) variables to accurately predict these things.
On the other hand, I started out making a prediction.
Heh. But in this case, the prediction is based on the pattern that is visibly developing. Which still doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong. Like I said, averages are tricky. And in this case the definition of “wilderness” is not carefully described.