By APP
United Nations : Karachi and Lahore are expected to be placed in world’s mega cities category by 2025, according to a UN report, which predicts that half of the world’s 6.7 billion people are expected to live in urban areas by the end of this year. The report, entitled “2007 Revision of World Urbanisation Prospects”, provides the official UN estimates and projections of the urban, rural and city populations of all countries in the world up to 2050.
The latest data contained in the report confirms that “urbanization is growing everywhere,” Hania Zlotnik, Director of the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), told a news briefing at which the report was released.
Referring to “mega cities”—those with more than 10 million inhabitants—which today accounted for about 9 per cent of the world’s urban population. While it was estimated that the number of mega cities would increase to 27 by 2025, she pointed out that these centres would likely absorb only 12 per cent of the world’s urban population growth. Smaller cities were likely to grow more quickly.
Tokyo metropolis – with 36 million people in 2007 — was by far the most populous urban centre, and expected to retain that stature into 2025, she said.
That mega city accounted for 42 per cent of Japan’s urban population, making it the only “primary city” – or one that holds more than 40 per cent of a country’s population—among the world’s mega cities.
The fastest population growth rates would likely be found in Africa, in cities such as Lagos, Nigeria and Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which both could become mega cities in the coming decades. Dhaka, Bangladesh, and the Pakistani cities of Lahore and Karachi were also “prime candidates”, she added.
The report said the world population is expected to increase by 2.5 billion by 2050, to 9.2 billion. By that time, urban population is expected to rise from nearly 3.4 billion in 2008 to 6.4 billion in 2050.
The urban regions thus will absorb most of the world’s population increase in the next four decades while drawing on some of the rural population as well. There will be 600 million fewer inhabitants in rural areas by 2050, the report said.
The projected urban population figure of 6.4 billion dollars represented a drop from last year’s anticipation of 8.4 billion people in urban areas because experts believe the birth rates will decline more rapidly than they originally thought.
“In many countries, natural increase of population (births minus deaths) accounts for 60 per cent or more of urban population growth,” the report said.
It said that countries with policies that “facilitate the reduction of fertility by making it possible for couples to have the number of children they desire” can actually help stabilize urban growth.
As with the general population growth, most of urban increases will take place in developing and less developed countries as opposed to developed nations, in which 74 per cent of population already live in big cities and towns.
By 2050, 54 per cent of population in Asia and 19 per cent in Africa will live in cities. Africa and Asia still have large rural populations, but not Latin America and the Caribbean, where 78 per cent of the population already lives in cities.