Understanding the Concept of Carrying Capacity and its Relevance to Urban and Regional Planning

The increasing urbanization and the rapidly accumulating population have caused tremendous changes on the earth's landscape which do not only trigger off improvement in civilization and modernization, but have also progressed global challenges such as flooding, desertification, global warming, loss of bio-diversity, housing crises and hunger among others: which have not only remained a source of concern but also a herculean task for planners and other professionals in the built environment, to contend with in the 21st century. These challenges, however, denote that an overshoot of the earth's carrying capacity has been reached [1]. And if this issue is left unattended to there is the likelihood that, far greater calamities may be engendered to make the world both inhabitable and unsustainable in the years to come. If the focus of planning is to provide a desired array of ‘quality of life' to people now and without jeopardizing that of future generations, through physical and social designs of the human environment, it is therefore imperative to examine not only what is engineeringly, economically, socially, politically and legally acceptable, but also the degree to which physical and functional plans are tied to ecological systems for resource supplies and for residuals assimilation. The paper attempts to document the origin of carrying capacity as a concept, reviewing its dimensions as it relates to the understanding of urban and regional planning as a field of human endeavour. It argues that, recognizing and establishing the limits or capacities of urban activity system along the lines of the carrying capacities provides decision makers with a workable approach to assessing the natural and human viability of urban and regional planning proposals. The paper finally posits that, there is the need for all the stakeholders, urban analysts, professionals in the built environment who in their operations, are to inbuilt the finiteness of the earth's capital assets into the existing and potential goals and aspirations of man in the 21st century.