Delhi projected to become world’s most populous city

CURRENTLY, 55% OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION LIVES IN URBAN AREAS, UN ESTIMATES SHOW

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Delhi is projected to become the most populous city in the world around 2028, according to new United Nations estimates released here on Wednesday, which said India is expected to add the largest number of urban dwellers by 2050.

The 2018 Revision of World Urbanisation Prospects produced by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) and released here Wednesday said that 68 per cent of the world population is projected to live in urban areas by 2050.

Currently, 55 per cent of the world’s population lives in urban areas.

The report notes that future increases in the size of the world’s urban population are expected to be highly concentrated in just a few countries.

Together, India, China and Nigeria will account for 35 per cent of the projected growth of the world’s urban population ■ ■ between 2018 and 2050. By 2050, it is projected that India will have added 416 million urban dwellers, China 255 million and Nigeria 189 million.

Tokyo is the world’s largest city with an agglomeration of 37 million inhabitants, followed by New Delhi with 29 million, Shanghai with 26 million, and Mexico City and São Paulo, each with around 22 million inhabitants. Cairo, Mumbai, Beijing and Dhaka all have close to 20 million inhabitants.

“By 2020, Tokyo’s population is projected to begin to decline, while Delhi is projected to continue growing and to become the most populous city in the world around 2028,” the report said.

The projected population size of New Delhi in 2028 is about 37.2 million, surpassing Tokyo’s 36.8 million, it added.

By 2030, the world is projected to have 43 megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants, most of them in developing regions. However, some of the fastest-growing urban agglomerations are cities with fewer than a million inhabitants, many of them located in Asia and Africa.

Projections show that urbanisation, the gradual shift in residence of the human population from rural to urban areas, combined with the overall growth of the world’s population could add another 2.5 billion people to urban areas by 2050, with close to 90 per cent of this increase taking place in Asia and Africa, according to the new United Nations data set.

The urban population of the world has grown rapidly from 751 million in 1950 to 4.2 billion in 2018. Asia is home to 54 per cent of the world’s urban population, followed by Europe and Africa with 13 per cent each.

was temperature, as cold weather set in amid storms.

of growth in world’s urban population will be accounted for by India, China and Nigeria

PTI Actor Kamal Haasan, who is also president of the Makkal Needhi Maiam party, during a rally in Panagudi town, in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu yesterday.