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Population (billion) Development group
Average annual rate of change (percentage)
1950
1970
2011
2030
2050
1950-1970
1970-2011
2011-2030
2030-2050
1.79
2.34
3.34
3.34
3.05
1.36
.87
-0.01
-.44
Rural population World More developed regions
.37
.34
.28
.23
.18
-.48
-.48
-.92
-1.14
Less developed regions
1.42
2.01
3.07
3.11
2.87
1.74
1.03
.07
-.4
Source: United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2011 Revision (ST/ESA/SER.A/322), table 1, available from http://esa.un.org/unup/pdf/FINAL-FINAL_REPORT%20WUP2011_Annextables_ 01Aug2012_Final.pdf.
2.
The scale and pace of urbanization 550. In 2008, for the first time, more than half of the world’s population lived in the city. Between 1990 and 2010, 90 per cent of the growth in the urban population occurred in developing countries, where the urban-dwelling population increased from 35 per cent to 46 per cent. During this period, the size of the urban population in the least developed countries more than doubled, from 107 million to 234 million. Though developed countries experienced this transition earliest, Latin America also underwent a surprisingly rapid and early urban transition. 410 551. The world’s urban areas (towns and cities) are projected to gain 2.6 billion people by mid-century, growing from 3,630,000,000 people in 2011 to 6,250,000,000 2050 (see table 3). However, while the scale of this growth is enormous, the rate is actually declining. Between 1950 and 2011, the world urban population grew at an average rate of 2.6 per cent per year and increased nearly fivefold. In contrast, from 2011 to 2030, the world urban population is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 1.7 per cent.410 552. Meanwhile, the world rural population is projected to start decreasing in about a decade, with an expected 300 million fewer rural inhabitants in 2050 than today. Most of the anticipated population growth in urban areas will be concentrated in the cities and towns of the less developed regions, with Asia projected to see its urban population increase by 1.4 billion, Africa by 900 million, and Latin America and the Caribbean by 200 million. The sheer scale of new urban residents in the coming decades is without parallel in human history, ushering in unprecedented opportunities and challenges and requiring new and visionary responses.410 553. Today’s 3.6 billion urban dwellers are distributed unevenly among urban settlements of varying size. As seen in figure 48, over half of the world’s 3.6 billion urban dwellers (51 per cent) still live in cities or towns with fewer than half a million inhabitants. To date, the absolute growth of these smaller cities has been considerably greater than that of cities of larger size.
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World Urbanization Prospects: The 2011 Revision (ST/ESA/SER.A/322).
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