World Disasters Report 2010 - International Federation of Red Cross ...

CHAPTER 2
32
�� A shift from most of the urban population being in high-income nations (1950)
to most of the urban population being in low- and middle-income nations (2010
and beyond).
�� Africa with 4 per cent of the world’s urban population in 1950 and 15 per cent
by 2030.
�� Asia with 32 per cent of the world’s urban population in 1950 and 55 per cent
by 2030.
Figure 2.1
Growth in urban population globally
and by region
Population (millions)
5,000
4,500
4,000
3,500
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
1950 1970 1990 2010 2030
Source: UN Population Division (2005)
North America
Latin America and
the Caribbean
Europe
Asia
Africa
Low- and
middle-income nations
High-income nations
World
Two aspects of the rapid growth in the world’s urban population are the increase in the
number of large cities and the historically unprecedented size of the largest cities. Just two
centuries ago, there were only two ‘million-cities’ (cities with 1 million or more inhabitants)
– London and Beijing (then called Peking). By 1950, there were 75; by 2008, 431. A large
and increasing proportion of these million-cities are in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The
average size of the world’s largest cities has also increased dramatically as Figure 2.2 illustrates.
While there are examples of cities over the last two millennia that had populations of
1 million or more inhabitants, the city or metropolitan area with several million inhabitants
is a recent phenomenon – London being the first to reach this size, in the second half of the
19th century. By 2000, there were 17 ‘mega-cities’ with more than 10 million inhabitants.
However, the economic transformations that underpin these statistics on rapid urban
change are just as impressive – the six-fold increase in the size of the world economy
between 1950 and 2010 and the fact that most of this increase came from the growth
in industrial production and services largely located in urban areas. There is a strong
economic logic underpinning rapid urbanization (see Figure 2.3). Today, around 97per
cent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) is generated by industry and services,