UN figures show that four-fifths of the global population now live in major settlements. We’re still figuring out how to cope
C
ities have existed for millennia, but their triumph is remarkably recent. As recently as 1950, only 30% of the world’s population were urban dwellers. This week, a United Nations report suggested that more than 80% of people are now urbanites, with most of those living in cities. London became the first city to reach a million inhabitants in the early 19th century. Now, almost 500 have done so.
Jakarta, with 42 million residents, has just overtaken Tokyo as the most populous of the lot; nine of the 10 largest megacities are in Asia. The UN report revealed the scale of the recent population shift to towns and cities thanks to a new, standardised measure in place of the widely varying national criteria previously used. The urbanisation rate in its 2018 report was just 55%.
Jakarta’s explosive growth – its population has grown almost 30-fold since 1950 – demonstrates both the costs of rapid urbanisation and the difficulties of addressing them. It is choked by traffic and pollution, regularly floods and is sinking fast due to the overextraction of groundwater. The government is now building a new administrative capital more than 1,000km away, in Borneo. But such projects have an uninspiring record. The new city of Nusantra is behind schedule and short on funding and would-be inhabitants.
