World-Cities Expanding Faster than their Infrastructure: UN World Urbanization Prospects Report
World-Cities Expanding Faster than their Infrastructure: UN World Urbanization Prospects Report
With more than 50% of the world's 7 billion persons living in urban areas, mega cities with more than 10 million inhabitants are experiencing a less than welcome population explosion. World cities like Delhi, Shanghai, Mexico City, Tokyo and Sao Paulo are now facing a massive population overload, according to the UN World Urbanization Prospects report.
This proportion is now expected to increase so more than 6 billion people are expected to be city dwellers by 2045 according to the report. The massive jump will be driven by the need for people to move from rural to urban areas. The overall population growth is projected to continue over the next 35 years, according to John Wilmoth who is the director of the Population Division in the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, at a UN News conference.
Urbanization combined with overall population growth will certainly raise the numbers by 2.5 billion over the next 3 decades. Much of the growth is expected to be in developing countries, including Asia and Africa. India, China and Nigeria are set to account for 37% of the projected growth for the next 3 decades. Here are the numbers: India with 404 million more city residents, China at 292 million and Nigeria at 212 million by the year 2050.
There are not one, but many challenges for the 3: these include the urgent need for basic services such as education, infrastructure, housing, health care, energy, employment, transportation and energy for growing urban populations.
Wimoth has now indicated that managing urban areas is going to be “one of the most important development challenges of the 21st century”. Providing the infrastructure and services for a dense urban population is going to be tough task if governments do not plan for the growth.
On the bright side, Wilmoth has said that providing such services for urban areas will be less costly and more ecologically safe than for a dispersed rural population. If the governments do not wake up to the challenge, however, the result will be sprawls, slums and world-cities which are not world-class.
The urban population of these countries has expanded so rapidly that even the most intelligent planners will be tasked when it comes to meet all their needs. In 1990, there were only 10 mega cities. Now, there are 3 times as many-28 worldwide.
16 of the cities are in Asia, 4 in Latin America, 3 each in Africa and Europe while 2 are in Northern America. Tokyo is the world's most populous city at 38 million. Delhi is a close second with 25 million while Shanghai has around 23 million people and Mexico City, Sao Paulo and Mumbai have around 21 million people.
New York-Newark which was the third largest in 1990 is now number 9. Well managed cities offer health care, education and basic services for large numbers of people. For this, solid infrastructure and amenities are needed. The population in urban mega cities is clearly on the rise. One hopes that the planners can keep up with the pace.
