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With just under half of its population living
in cities, the world is already urbanized. When measured in
knowledge, attitude, aspiration, commercial sense, technology,
travel and access to information, even most rural societies are, to
one extent or another, woven into a global network of cities.
Globalization
seriously took off during the industrial revolution of the late 18th
century. Since then, the steam engine, the telephone, the elevator,
and now, the Internet and cheap air transport, have conveyed people,
goods and ideas both horizontally and vertically at an unprecedented
volume and velocity. The focal point of these activities has
invariably been the city, a place of deals and decisions, take-offs
and landings - a place less concerned with the rhythms of nature,
where everything can be bought or sold, especially one's ideas and
labour.
In today's globalized world, cities no longer
stand apart as islands. They are the nexus of commerce, gateways to
the world in one direction and focus of their own hinterland. Tied
together in a vast web of communication and transport, cities are
concentrations of energy in a global field. In a real sense, the
world is completely urbanized, as this force field has the power to
connect all places and all people into a productive, constantly
adapting unity.
Three billion people - nearly every other
person on earth - already live in cities. Today the planet hosts 19
cities with 10 million or more people; 22 cities with 5 to 10
million people; 370 cities with 1 to 5 million people; and 433
cities with 0.5 to 1 million people. By 2030, over 60 percent of the
world's population (4.9 billion out of 8.1 billion people) will live
in cities.
Developed country cities are rapidly
disappearing from the list of the world's largest cities. Between
1980 and 2000, Lagos, Dhaka, Cairo, Tianjin, Hyderabad and Lahore,
among others, joined the list of 30 largest cities in the world. By
2010, Lagos is projected to become the third largest city in the
world, after Tokyo and Mumbai, Milan, Essen and London will
disappear from the 30 largest cities list, and New York, Osaka and
Paris will have slipped farther down the list by 2010.
The current worldwide rate of urbanization
(that is, the percentage, per year, that the urban share of the
total population is expanding) is about 0.8 percent, varying between
1.6 percent for all African countries to about 0.3 percent for all
highly industrialized countries. Urbanization of poverty is a
growing phenomenon; it is estimated that between one-quarter and
one-third of all urban households in the world live in absolute
poverty.
Starting with this 2001 edition, the State of
the World's Cities Report takes the reader through Africa, the Arab
States, Asia and the Pacific, the highly industrialized countries,
Latin America and the Caribbean and countries with economies in
transition to understand better how shelter, society, environment,
economy, and, above all, systems of governance can contribute to
urban vibrancy and viability in a globalizing world.
Source: The State of the World's Cities Report
2001 -United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) |
