The New Megacities

How do the world's new "megacities" cope with rapid urbanization?

1 minute read

May 13, 2002, 7:00 AM PDT

By Abhijeet Chavan @http://twitter.com/legalaidtech

"[P]eople are moving to cities in droves. In 1950, two-thirds of the world's population lived in the countryside. New York was then the only settlement with more than 10m people. Today there are 20 such megacities, and more are on the way.Most of these megacities are in developing countries that are struggling to cope with both the speed and the scale of human migration...By 2030 nearly two-thirds of the world's population will be urban...If there is one thing that everybody agrees on, it is that urbanisation is unstoppable. Migrants attempting to escape poverty, and refugees escaping conflict, are piling into cities in what the executive director of UN-HABITAT, Anna Tibaijuka, describes as 'premature urbanisation'."

Thanks to Abhijeet Chavan

FULL STORY: The brown revolution

Friday, October 7, 2005 in The Economist

Community / Economic Development United States

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