Although Tokyo will remain the largest city in the world, New York, at second place in 19, is projected to be at the bottom of the list by 2015, while Mumbai will have climbed from sixth to second place, and Jakarta from last to fifth place. If one considers population projections for the 11 largest urban agglomerates in 2015 (Figure 1), in 15 years most of the largest cities of the world will be in the developing world, a significant change from the largest city populations in 19. In the ancient world, Rome, with its over 1 million inhabitants, was a megacity, and today, London or Chicago could be considered megacities, even if they fall below the 10 million UN threshold.Īlthough there are numerous examples in the developed world, megacities are primarily a phenomenon of the developing world. The definition of what is a megacity is clearly arbitrary, as the population concentration that differentiates megacities from other urban areas changes with time and context. 1 From 1975 to 2015, the number of megacities will have grown from five - three of them in the developing world - to 26 - all but four in the developing world (UN, 1998). The concentration of the world’s population in urban areas is growing at an enormously rapid rate, and within that phenomenon, projections call for even more rapid growth of megacities, currently defined by the United Nations (UN) as cities of over 10 million people. The large urban agglomerates we call megacities are increasingly a developing world phenomenon that will affect the future prosperity and stability of the entire world.
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