A historic threshold is about to be crossed: By next year, more than half the world’s population (3.3 billion) will live in a city. A new report by the United Nations highlights many of the problems associated with the trend toward urbanization—problems the UN predicts are set to grow far worse.

“In human history we have never seen urban growth like this. It is unprecedented,” said Thoraya Obaid, the executive director of the UN Population Fund. “The shift from rural to urban changes a balance that has lasted for millennia.”

Most cities around the globe, especially those not found in First World countries, have pressing problems with infrastructure, sanitation, crime, and lack of clean water. Many Second and Third World cities additionally have sprawling, poverty-stricken and lawless shanty towns.

George Martine, who authored the UN report, also noted another side effect of the rapid development of cities, and their associated slums: the rise of religious fundamentalism. “The urbanization is jolting [people’s] mentalities and subjecting them to new influences. … [O]ne of the ways for people to reorganize themselves in this urban world is to associate themselves with new or strong, fundamentalist religion.”

The rise of radical Islam across much of Africa, the Middle East, and ever larger swaths of Asia is well documented, but Pentecostalism is also winning converts in sub-Saharan Africa, as radical evangelicals and Catholics struggle for minds in Latin America.

The United Nations expects that by 2030, the urban population will have ballooned to almost 5 billion. It says this wave of urbanization will be led by Africa and Asia, which are predicted to add 1.6 billion people—that’s close to five times the total population of the United States and Canada combined—to their cities over the next 25 years. The speed and scale of urban development is forecast to be so massive that countries and cities will be unable to cope with it.

The last time the world experienced a major urbanization boom it took place over a period of 200 years (1750 to 1950). At that time pressure on cities was relieved by migration to North America and Australia. This time, the UN says, the population pressure is many times greater, and the relief valve of unrestricted migration to North America and Australia no longer exists.

Obaid warns, “It concerns everyone … if we plan ahead we will create conditions for a stable world. If we do not … then these populations will become destructive, to themselves and others.”

While the UN’s evaluation of some of the problems that fester in modern cities is important to consider, its projections of what those cities will look like decades from now are inaccurate. The reality is, the existential problems of our day are far more urgent: most importantly, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction among nations and organizations that could credibly imperil human civilization. Biblical prophecy foretells the use of these weapons in a series of worldwide conflicts that would end all life on the planet.

However, the Bible also prophesies that this cataclysm will be cut short by divine intervention, and that God will bring about a new civilization of peace, productivity and prosperity. It vividly describes the cities of the future, beautiful, functional, productive, and completely free from the problems we see today. To see how this civilization will be brought about, read The Wonderful World Tomorrow.