New research published by the World Bank for World Population Day reveals that the global population level has reached 6.6 billion. Unprecedentedly, more than half of the world’s people now live in cities, bringing new pressures to bear on sanitation and health services and completely changing our understanding of how and where people live. It is now more common for a citizen of a poor country to live in an urban environment than a rural one. Increasing proportions of the world’s poor live in cities.
According to the Bank, there are three pressing policy issues arising from these demographic changes. Firstly, the rights of the poor to live in cities should be recognised and governments should stop efforts aimed at preventing or reversing migration from the rural to the urban. Secondly, it will be necessary to adopt a much broader and more long-term vision for the use of urban space, housing and the impact of future city growth on the physical environment. Thirdly, it will be important to begin planning now for cross-border initiatives and understanding of future cities and their growth, especially with respect to those mega-cities with more than 10 million residents. However, more than half of the world’s urban dwellers live in cities with populations of less than 500,000; these smaller cities tend to have more scope for flexibility in expansion and growth and should be better placed than mega-cities to cope with new population shocks.
Much of the developing world is projected to grow at very high rates, with Africa leading the way, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. As a whole, the population of Africa is projected to rise from its current level of 945 million to 1,937 million (i.e. nearly 2 billion) by 2050, with the majority of that increase contributed by larger cities. Arab states are expected to grow from 335 to 599 million in the same time frame and Latin and Caribbean Countries from 577 to 773 million. Much of the rest of the world will grow at a much more sedate rate, as increased economic opportunities and control over fertility have led to women generally having fewer babies. Indeed, in Europe and some of the former Soviet Union countries, the population is expected to decline up to 2050 as the number of deaths exceeds the number of live births.
The increasing populations of the world will intensify competition for scarce resources including water and energy. Resultant political changes are hard to predict but may be profound.
