Delhi, Mum top most-populated list

2 Cities That Didn’t Feature On Top-30 List In ’50 Now Hog Leading Spots

 

 

    Of all the big cities of the world, the rise of Delhi and Mumbai is the most dramatic growth story. By 2025, the two urban agglomerations will have 54 million residents between them.
    While Delhi did not even feature in the top 30 cities of the world in 1950, it is now the world’s second largest. Between 2000 and 2005, Delhi leapfrogged over Mumbai to become India’s largest urban agglomeration. Mumbai, which was the 17th largest city in 1950 will go from the world’s 4th to 3rd largest, overtaking Sao Paulo, over the next five years.
    The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Divisions 2009 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects shows that just as the 75 years between 1950 and 2025 are a story of the growth of cities in the developing world, particularly in India, they are also the story of the decline of Western cities. New York-Newark, the worlds biggest urban agglomeration in 1950, is now only the sixth largest and will drop to seventh by 2025. While the United States had eight of the world’s 30 largest cities in 1950, it now has three, Chicago and Los Angeles being the other two.
    The trend is even more pronounced in western Europe. London, the world’s third biggest city in 1950 now does not feature on the top-30 list. Paris is the only western European city still on the list, a far cry from 1950 when nine cities of the UK and western Europe were among the top 30.
    Tokyo, meanwhile, has consistently maintained its position. In 1950, it was the world’s second biggest city and by 1955, it became the largest, a position it will hold into 2025. However, it is the absolute numbers that tell the real story of Delhi and Mumbai’s explosion. In 2025, Tokyo will have 37.09 million residents, a little over three times its 1950 population. Mumbai, on the other hand, will have seen its population multiply over ten times in the same period to reach a staggering 25.81 million.

 

Just 14% of urban populace in 3 mega cities

    In mid-2009 it was declared that the tipping point has been crossed with world urban population breaching the 50% mark for the first time in human history. Contrary to the general impression, the bulk of this urban population does not stay in big metropolises. Over 53% of the world’s total urban population of 3.4 billion resides in towns with less than 5 lakh population. Of these, about 1.14 billion, or one third, stay in towns with less than 1 lakh population. At the other end of the spectrum, are the better-known mega cities, each with population of over 10 million (1 crore). Only about 9% of the world’s urban population lives in the 21 such mega cities existing today. These details of the fast changing face of the urban world have been released by the Population Division of the UN in its latest report on urbanization.
    The report provides first official confirmation that current urban population is just over 50% of the world population of 6.8 billion. It is expected that world population will increase to 9.1 billion by 2050. The urban segment will jump by 84% to reach about 6.3 billion by that year. In other words, 70% of humanity will be living in urban areas by then. Rural populations are projected to start declining by the end of this decade and by 2050, there will be 0.5 billion less rural people than today.
    The distribution of urban population varies widely across the globe. In Europe, 67% of urban dwellers live in cities with fewer than half a million inhabitants and only 8% live in cities with 5 million inhabitants or more. Africa is similar to Europe, with 58% of urban dwellers living in smaller cities and just 9% living in cities with over 5 million inhabitants.
    In Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Northern America, about one in every five urban dwellers live in a large urban agglomeration. The proportion of urban dwellers living in small cities is about 50% in Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean, but it is a low 37% in Northern America. In India, about 14% of the urban population, that is about 53 million people, stay in the three 10-million-plus urban agglomerations (Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. Another 9%, or 32 million stay in cities of size ranging between 5 to 10 million.