New Delhi:
Less than 20 years from now, Mumbai will be the world's most densely populated city after Tokyo, with Delhi and Dhaka following right behind. By 2025, the world's four biggest cities will be in Asia.
This is forecast by UN Habitat in its State of the World's cities 2008/09 report. The three south Asian cities breaking into the top four will replace Mexico City, New York and Sao Paulo in Brazil. Tokyo is already in the top four.
Kolkata, currently the 8th biggest city, will retain its ranking despite its population having risen 40%. Chennai will join the ranks of mega cities ie those with more than 10 million people. By 2025, that list will have 26 cities, up from 19.
Indian metros are expected to grow at a rapid pace despite Asian cities predicted to account for the bulk of what the report describes as shrinking cities - those whose populations are in decline. Globally, 143 cities lost 13 million people altogether from 1990 to 2000. More than half this population loss hapened in Chinese cities and roughly 16% (2.1 million people) was in other Asian countries. Asia, the report noted, accounts for 60% of all shrinking cities in the developing world.
While the world's two most populous countries, India and China, are witnessing this phenomenon of shrinking cities, the patterns are not quite the same. DEMOGRAPHY DYNAMICS '55% of Indians will be living in cities by 2050'
According to UN Habitat in its latest report, State of the World's cities 2008/09, most of the cities in China projected to shrink are intermediate and big cities. In India, which accounts for 20% of the shrinking cities, it is the smaller urban centres that are shrinking as people migrate to bigger cities or to other newer cities that become more attractive as destinations for migration.
For instance, local authorities, along with the political and economic elite, are transforming their cities into dynamic economic areas as in the case of Salem, Pimpri, Chinchawad and Pune, which are all growing at an annual rate of 3% or more by adopting pro-growth strategies through marketing, promotion and focusing on high-potential economic sectors, the report says.
Despite shrinking cities, the urban population keeps growing as a proportion to the total in the developing world, as rural towns and centres grow to become new cities and further migration happens between these cities.
Migration has been the primary reason for growth of cities in countries with low levels of urbanisation as is the case in Asia and Africa. However, in many countries, the largest movements of population are taking place between cities and not from rural to urban areas. This city-to-city movement has been one of the strongest reasons for some cities expanding at the cost of others.
Dhaka is the fastest growing meta city those with populations above 20 million - in the world with a population growth rate of 4.4% per year. But some of the fastest growing cities are in China, with Chongqing, Xiamen and Shenzhen all growing at over 10% per year. It's no surprise that China is expected to be 70% urban by 2050.
In India, on the other hand, urbanisation is likely to be at a slower pace.The report estimates that about 55% of the population or 900 million people would be living in urban areas by 2050. In the case of the developed world, legal and illegal migration account for approximately one-third of the urban growth in the developed world, the report points out and concludes that without migration the urban population in the developed world would probably decline or remain the same in the coming decades.
In the last 30 years, more cities in the developed world shrank than grew, mostly cities in North America and Europe. This again could be due to people from one city moving in another city and due to migrants choosing to move into certain cities and not others. Many cities in countries of the former Soviet bloc too are losing their populations. Nearly 100 Russian cities experienced negative growth in the 1990s; in Ukraine, 40 cities contracted.
