World population is urbanizing rapidly and, in this respect, 2008 was a momentous point in world history. In 2008, for the first time urban dwellers outnumbered those living in traditionally rural areas. But the current level of urbanization varies greatly across the world, as too does its rate of increase. In the hundred years up to 1950 the greatest changes took place in Europe and North America. Relatively few large cities developed elsewhere and most of these were in coastal locations with good trading connections with the imperial and industrial nations. The main feature of the past half a century has been the massive growth in the numbers of urban dwellers in the less developed regions.
The annual rise in the percentage of the world’s population living in cities has been accelerating steadily since the 1970s and it will be running at very high levels until at least 2030. As a result, by then, 3 in 5 people will be urbanites compared to 35 per cent in 1970 and 50 per cent in 2010. In absolute terms, the global population more than doubled between 1970 and 2000. There is a broad contrast in the level of urbanization between the more and less developed regions, but also a great deal of variation within them. In the more developed regions as a whole, three-quarters of the population now live in urban areas.
The Growth of Large Cities
Alongside the rise in the world’s urban population has occurred a massive increase in the number and size of cities and ‘megacities’. In 1950, New York was the only agglomeration with over 10 million inhabitants, and there were still only three cities of this size by 1975 - New York, Tokyo and Mexico City. By 2000, there were eighteen and there are expected to be twenty two by 2015. Urban areas are also becoming more diffuse and polycentric [having many centers, especially of authority or control], making the task of defining separate cities on the ground even more difficult.
2010, Collins World Atlas, London, Harper Collins Publishers.
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