chapter 4 - DRK

Strictly under embargo until Wednesday 22 September at 00:01 GMT (02:01 Geneva time)32CHAPTER 2A shift from most of the urban population being in high-income nations (1950)to most of the urban population being in low- and middle-income nations (2010and beyond).Africa with 4 per cent of the world’s urban population in 1950 and 15 per centby 2030.Asia with 32 per cent of the world’s urban population in 1950 and 55 per centby 2030.Figure 2.1Growth in urban population globallyand by regionPopulation (millions)5,0004,5004,0003,5003,0002,5002,0001,5001,00050001950 1970 1990 2010 2030Source: UN Population Division (2005)North AmericaLatin America andthe CaribbeanEuropeAsiaAfricaLow- andmiddle-income nationsHigh-income nationsWorldTwo aspects of the rapid growth in the world’s urban population are the increase in thenumber of large cities and the historically unprecedented size of the largest cities. Just twocenturies ago, there were only two ‘million-cities’ (cities with 1 million or more inhabitants)– London and Beijing (then called Peking). By 1950, there were 75; by 2008, 431. A largeand increasing proportion of these million-cities are in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Theaverage size of the world’s largest cities has also increased dramatically as Figure 2.2 illustrates.While there are examples of cities over the last two millennia that had populations of1 million or more inhabitants, the city or metropolitan area with several million inhabitantsis a recent phenomenon – London being the first to reach this size, in the second half of the19th century. By 2000, there were 17 ‘mega-cities’ with more than 10 million inhabitants.However, the economic transformations that underpin these statistics on rapid urbanchange are just as impressive – the six-fold increase in the size of the world economybetween 1950 and 2010 and the fact that most of this increase came from the growthin industrial production and services largely located in urban areas. There is a strongeconomic logic underpinning rapid urbanization (see Figure 2.3). Today, around 97percent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) is generated by industry and services,