Cities all over the world are getting bigger as more and more people move from rural to urban sites, but that has created enormous problems with respect to environmental pollution and the general quality of life.

Dundes is pointing to a modern demographic shift—rapid urbanization—and stressing its unintended consequences. The quote frames city growth not simply as economic progress but as a driver of externalities: intensified air and water pollution, waste burdens, congestion, and stresses on housing and infrastructure that can erode everyday well-being. Implicitly, it treats “quality of life” as a holistic measure (health, livability, social conditions) that can decline even as cities expand. The statement reads as a caution that cultural and policy responses must keep pace with population concentration, or urban life becomes environmentally and socially unsustainable.