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ASIA & PACIFIC COUNTRIES
source: www.ehproject.org/PDF/Activity_
Reports/AR109ANEUrbHlthweb.pdf
www.citymayors.com/society/
asian_cities.html
www.careinternational.org.uk/
resource_centre/urban/urbanisation
_of_poverty.doc
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The combined outcome of demographic growth, global economic reorganisation and changes in state–society–capital relations in parts of Asia-Pacific region is leading to hyper-urbanisation never before seen in world’s history…- urban growth rates in the region are among the highest on earth. By 2015, Asian developing countries will hold 3 of the world’s 5 largest urban agglomerations: Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Dhaka and Delhi;
- Calcutta, Delhi, and Mumbai (India), Karachi in Pakistan, and Dhaka in Bangladesh registered an estimated population of at least 11 million in 2000. These large cities, including Jakarta in Indonesia, each will absorb 5 million or more additional residents in the next 15 years;
- Dhaka, from a mere 417,000 inhabitants in 1950, is currently the world’s 9th largest urban agglomeration, with 12.5 million inhabitants. Within a decade, it will grow to become the world’s 2nd largest metropolis, with 22.8 million people;
- today, the Extended Bangkok Metropolitan Region (EMR) consists of 17.5 million people and makes up 28% of the country’s total population. Bangkok grew from 67 km2 during the late 1950s to 426 km2 by the mid 1990s;
- from 1992 to 1998, the Philippines’ urban population rose from 52% to 58% of the national total. The average annual urban growth is 3.7%, whereas the overall growth rate is 2.3%. Metro Manila is a mega-city of 17 cities and municipalities, home to 10.5 million people in 2000. However, Davao and Cebu are growing 9 times faster than Manila;
- it is expected that, by 2020, 2/3 of the entire Association of East Asian States (ASEAN) urban population will live in only five Mega-Urban-Regions (MURs): the Bangkok-centred MUR (30 million); the Kuala Lumpur–Klang MUR (6 million); the Singapore Triangle (10 million); the Java MUR (100 million); and the Manila MUR (30 million);
- by 2025, according to the Far Eastern Economic Review, Asia alone could have 10 or 11 conurbations with more than 20 million inhabitants (the estimated urban population of the world at the time of the French Revolution), including Jakarta (24.9 million), Dhaka (25 million) and Karachi (26.5 million). Shanghai, whose growth was frozen for decades by Maoist policies of deliberate under-urbanisation, could have as many as 27 million residents in its huge estuarial metro-region. Mumbai (Bombay) meanwhile is projected to attain a population of 33 million, although no one knows whether such gigantic concentrations of poverty are biologically or ecologically sustainable;
- big cities capture attention. Still, most of the world's urban population lives in smaller urban settlements. The UN projects that the largest share of the increase in the urban population through 2015 will be in such smaller urban areas, reflecting both population growth and reclassification of rural areas to urban;
- in China, for example, the number of official cities has soared from 193 to 660 since 1978. But the great metropolises, despite extraordinary growth, have actually declined in relative share of urban population. It is, rather, the small cities and recently ‘citized’ towns that have absorbed the majority of the rural labour-power made redundant by post-1979 market reforms (see ‘China’ following fact sheet).
source: United Nation Population Division, “World Urbanization Prospects: The 2001 Revision” (1960-2000 estimates; 2005-2030 projections)
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