SHAPING THE FUTURE HOW CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS CAN POWER HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

In the last 30 years,
Asia-Pacific added
over a billion people
to its cities; it will
add another billion in
the next 30 years
AN URBANIZING REGION
The rapid movement of people to cities is one
of the most important development stories of
recent decades. 3 In 2010, for the first time in
history, globally, more people lived in urban
than rural areas. By 2050, the share of urban
residents is expected to rise from about half to
two-thirds of the total population. 4
The shares of people living in urban areas
in Africa and Asia-Pacific have traditionally
lagged those of the rest of the world (Figure
5.1). But both regions are now urbanizing rapidly,
resulting in the transformation of economies and
societies. In Asia-Pacific, the scale and speed
of urbanization are historically unprecedented.
In the last 30 years, Asia-Pacific added more
than a billion people to its cities—more than all
other regions combined—and another billion
will be added in the next 30 years. 5 More than
3 billion people will live in the region’s cities by
2050 compared to 1.9 billion people now.
From 1950 to 2015, the share of people in
the region’s cities increased from 17 percent
to 47 percent, and is expected to cross into a
majority around 2025. While the move to an
urban majority took 210 years in Latin America
FIGURE 5.1:
The pace of urbanization in Asia-Pacific has accelerated rapidly
and the Caribbean, and 150 years in Europe,
countries such as China, Bhutan, Indonesia
and Lao People’s Democratic Republic will
make the same transition in about 60 years, and
Asia-Pacific in about 95 years. 6
Urbanization in Asia-Pacific has some
additional distinctive features. For example,
population densities are generally very high
compared to elsewhere in the world. And unlike
in Western and Latin American countries,
where the process of urbanization has matured,
and urban population might even decline in the
coming decades, Asia-Pacific’s cities are likely
to continue to grow at least until the end of this
century. Recent United Nations projections confirm
that urbanization there still has a long way
to go, with cities escalating in number and size.
VARYING SHIFTS TO THE CITY
Among the 1.1 billion new urban dwellers in
Asia-Pacific from 2015 to 2050, 589 million will
be in South Asia, 268 million in East Asia and
206 million in South-east Asia. East Asia will
be the most urbanized sub-region; the Pacific
the least. In developed Asia-Pacific, the share of
urban residents was close to 90 percent in 2015,
154
Source: Based on UN DESA 2014a.