World Urban Realities (original) (raw)

World Urbanisation: Trends and Patterns

Springer Nature, Singapore, 2020

This chapter attempts to overview the trend and regional pattern of world urbanisation. It also analyses the spatial pattern of urban hierarchy of cities by size class of settlements. The results show that global urban population has grown significantly from 0.75 billion in 1950 to 4.22 billion in 2018. The projected estimates show that by mid-twenty-first century, 68% of the world's population will live in urban areas. The growth trend of global population shows a consistent increase in urban population during 1950-2025, thereafter, a slowdown is projected during 2025-2050. The spatial pattern of urbanisation shows that epicentre of the urbanisation has shifted from global north to global south. Cities in Asia and Africa are currently growing faster as compared to other regions, and future estimates show that African cities will take the lead globally during 2015-2050 with faster growth rate. The highest number of mega and large cities have increasingly mushroomed in Asia and Africa. Projections indicate that this trend is likely to continue. The concentration of small-and medium-sized cities in these two regions has also increased over time. Two Asian countries-China and India will be home of some of the world's largest cities in twenty-first century. The future global urban population will be concentrated mainly in Asia and Africa. In contrast, several cities in Northern America and Europe are shrinking. The challenges posed by climate change are likely to impact the entire globe. With increasing level of urbanisation, cities of the global south are facing multiple challenges of food security, poverty, access to housing and basic amenities, especially with regard to the urban poor. In this context, it is important to highlight that national urban policies in Asian and African countries, which are currently least equipped to deal the challenges of urbanisation, need to address these issues in a manner which will lead to sustainable development. Countries from these two regions need to build capacities to deal with the added challenges of globalisation, income and spatial disparities as well as demographic dividend. National urban policies could be instrumental in guiding these countries towards sustainable and resilient future.

World Cities Report 2016: Urbanization and Development - Emerging Futures

UN Habitat, 2016

The analysis of urban development of the past twenty years presented in this maiden edition of the World Cities Report shows, with compelling evidence, that there are new forms of collaboration and cooperation, planning, governance, finance and learning that can sustain positive change. The Report unequivocally demonstrates that the current urbanization model is unsustainable in many respects. It conveys a clear message that the pattern of urbanization needs to change in order to better respond to the challenges of our time, to address issues such as inequality, climate change, informality, insecurity, and the unsustainable forms of urban expansion. ISBN: 978-92-1-132708-3

The future may be urban ... but how sustainable is it?

A recent special issue of Scientific American proclaimed in its front cover “we have seen a brighter future, and it is urban”. Indeed, if current projections are anything to go by, 70 per cent of the global population will be urban by 2050. Although our changing climate, war, famine, global pandemics, potential major environmental disasters and major changes in social geography may dent these predictions yet, this overall trend is rather unlikely to change dramatically. Today, a hundred of the world’s largest cities are responsible jointly for 30 per cent of global GDP and some thinkers would argue that these megacities will continue to drive growth and innovation into the future, often overshadowing the sovereign states they belong to though, by the same token, much of the population growth of large cities will come as a result of rising immigration from rural areas to the slums of Rio de Janeiro, the gecekondular of Istanbul and similar examples of shanty towns and urban sprawl, particularly in India and China ...

Population predictions for the world’s largest cities in the 21st century

Environment and Urbanization, 2016

We project populations to 2100 for the world’s larger cities. Three socioeconomic scenarios with various levels of sustainability and global cooperation are evaluated, and individual “best fit” projections made for each city using global urbanization forecasts. In 2010, 757 million people resided in the 101 largest cities – 11 per cent of the world’s population. By the end of the century, world population is projected to range from 6.9 billion to 13.1 billion, with 15 per cent to 23 per cent of people residing in the 101 largest cities (1.6 billion to 2.3 billion). The disparate effects of socioeconomic pathways on regional distribution of the world’s 101 largest cities in the 21st century are examined by changes in population rank for 2010, 2025, 2050, 2075 and 2100. Socioeconomic pathways are assessed based on their influence on the world’s largest cities. Two aspects of the projections raise concerns about reliability: the unlikely degree of growth of cities suggested for Africa ...