Humanity moving to cities, towns
Half of them will live in urban areas by end of 2008:U.N. Half the world's people will live in urban areas by the end of this year and about 70 per cent will be city dwellers by 2050, with cities and towns in Asia and Africa registering the biggest growth, according to new U.N. projections. But India is expected to urbanise at a significantly lower rate than China, and is expected to remain the country with the largest rural population during coming decades. The report predicts that there will be 27 "megacities' with at least 10 million population by mid-century compared to 19 today, but it forecasts that at least half the urban growth in the coming decades will be in the many smaller cities with less than 500,000 people. According to the latest U.N. estimate last year, world population is expected to increase from 6.7 billion in 2007 to 9.2 billion in 2050. During the same time period, the report said, the population living in urban areas is projected to rise from 3.3 billion to 6.4 billion. "Thus, the urban areas of the world are expected to absorb all the population growth expected over the next four decades while at the same time drawing in some of the rural population,' the report said. "As a result, the world rural population is projected to start decreasing in about a decade, and 600 million fewer rural inhabitants are expected in 2050 than today.' The report stresses that these projections will take place only if the number of children in families in the developing world continues to decline, especially in Africa and Asia. Hania Zlotnik, head of the U.N. Population Division, expressed the hope that increasing urbanisation "will go hand in hand with economic growth.' She said more than 70 per cent of the population in Europe, North America, and many other richer developed countries already live in urban areas. But only 39 per cent of Africans and 41 per cent of Asians lived in urban areas last year . "During 2008, for the first time in history, the proportion of the population living in urban areas will reach 50 per cent,' it said. By mid-century, Asia is projected to see its urban population increase by 1.8 billion, Africa by 900 million, and Latin America and the Caribbean by 200 million, it said. China at this moment is 40 per cent urban, Ms. Zlotnik said. The U.N. expects its urban population to reach more than 70 per cent by 2050 , she said. By contrast India, currently has just over 300 million urban residents, or 29 per cent of its population living in urban areas, Ms. Zlotnik said, and by 2050 it is expected to have only 55 per cent of its population, about 900 million, in cities. "So India is expected to urbanise much less than China, and therefore it is expected to remain the country with the largest rural population during most of the future decades.'
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