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Urbanisation: Stop me if you Can
This is an year old UN report, which i found interesting to share with the SI members.
Global urbanization trends unstoppable, UN report says
New York- Half of the world's 6.7 billion people are expected to live in urbanareas by the end of 2008 for the first time in world history, theUnited Nations said Tuesday. The world population is expected toincrease by 2.5 billion by 2050, to 9.2 billion. By that time, urbanpopulation is expected to rise from nearly 3.4 billion in 2008 to 6.4billion in 2050. The urban regions thus will absorb most of theworld's population increase in the next four decades while drawing onsome of the rural population as well. There will be 600 million fewerinhabitants in rural areas by 2050, the report said. Theprojected urban population figure of 6.4 billion dollars represented adrop from last year's anticipation of 8.4 billion people in urban areasbecause experts believe the birth rates will decline more rapidly thanthey originally thought. The population department of the UNEconomic and Social Affairs, which studies trends and providesgovernments with data as a basis for policy, provided the revisions onTuesday. "In many countries, natural increase of population(births minus deaths) accounts for 60 per cent or more of urbanpopulation growth," the department said in the report, called the 2007Revision of World Urbanization Prospects. The report said thatcountries with policies that "facilitate the reduction of fertility bymaking it possible for couples to have the number of children theydesire" can actually help stabilize urban growth. As with thegeneral population growth, most of urban increases will take place indeveloping and less developed countries as opposed to developednations, in which 74 per cent of population already live in big citiesand towns. By 2050, 54 per cent of population in Asia and 19 per cent in Africa will live in cities. Africa and Asia still havelarge rural populations, but not Latin America and the Caribbean, where 78 per cent of the population already lives in cities. TheTokyo metropolis, currently with 35.7 million people, will continue todominate the group of 19 metropolises up to the year 2025 and beyond interms of population size. In 2007, the top 10 biggestagglomerations were Tokyo, New York/Newark, Mexico City, Mumbai, SaoPaulo, Delhi, Shanghai, Calcutta, Dhaka and Buenos Aires. In 2025, the top 10 are projected to be Tokyo, Mumbai, Delhi, Dhaka, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, New York/Newark, Calcutta, Shanghai. Karachi and Kinshasa could be tied for tenth largest.
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