Demography of the city

WORLD POPULATION

7 846 043 598 17 436 504 165, 619 7 320 262 69 531 10 116 242

96,088 Current World Population Births this year Births today Deaths this year Deaths today Net population growth this year Net population growth today

The “people counter“ website which updates in real-time about the constant growth of the human population. World Population Prospect: the 2017 Revision – United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (June 21, 2017) International Programs Center at the U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division. For more detailed information: World Population.

Fig. 1 Current population, growth and mortality rates.

begin with their demographic evolution, today the first element needed to understand cities.

The demography of the city

The website www.worldometers.info registers the demographic evolution of the human species on planet earth in real time. At the precise moment this book is being written it tells us that there are 7 846 043 598 human beings living on the planet. While in actuality, of course, the website gives approximate numbers based on statistical estimates, the remarkable and indisputable fact is that the human population is now growing at a rate unprecedented in the history of the species (Fig. 1). According to a 1960 study by Edward Smith Deevey1, the

1 Edward Smith Deevey Jr. (1914 - 1988), born in Albany, New York, was a prominent American ecologist and paleolimnologist and an early student of G. Evelyn Hutchinson at Yale University. He was a pioneer in several areas of research, including population dynamics, systematics and ecology.

WORLD POPULATION BILLIONS

10,0

1.0 annual increase: 7 50 000 15 000 000

6 billion

0.1

0.01

0.001

0.0001

1 000 000

LANGUAGE TOOLMAKING FIRE

100 000 7 million 500 million

AGRICOLTURE ANIMAL HUSBANDRY CIVILISATION SCIENTIFIC METHOD

10 000 1 000

TIMESCALE 2003 A.D.

100 10 1

Fig. 2 Annual increase in human population (estimated) from the Neolithic period to the present day (2003 data) Deevey, E. S. (1960). Graphic revision from source: The human population. Scientific American CCIII: 195-204.

total human population of the planet around 300 000 years ago can be estimated to be around 1 million. At the time of the so-called Neolithic Revolution, around 10 000 years ago, the estimated human population would have been roughly 5 million. Only 8000 years later, at the time of the Roman Empire, the global human population reached around 133 million, meaning that the human population has grown 70 times faster in the last 8 millennia than it did in the previous 300 000 years, shading the light of an exponential growth into the future of humanity to the present day (Fig. 2). Thus, if we include the last two millennia in this demographic progression, the average annual population growth rate over the last 10 000 years can be estimated at 123 times the rate before the Neolithic Revolution2 .

2 Deevey E. S. 1960, The human population, W. H. Freeman Co, USA, pp. 195–204.

The data presented here places the demographic explosion of the human species in an irrefutably parallel relationship with the initiation and growth of the urban experience: it seems difficult, therefore, not to correlate the two phenomena. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs3 states that, according to the 2018 data campaign, about 55% of the human population lives in urbanised environments. In 1950, only 30% of humanity lived in urban areas and, according to United Nations population projections, 68%t of humans will live in cities by 20504 . At the end of the second millennium, the United Nations estimated that there were 371 cities having at least one million inhabitants, while by 2018 this urban typology had grown to the staggering figure of 548 with a projection that in 2030 there would be 706 cities of one million inhabitants or more. As shown in Figure 3, urban areas with more than 10 million inhabitants, often referred to as Megacities, were 33 in 2018, with the prospect that they will be 43 in 2030. At present, the largest megalopolis is Tokyo with around 37 million inhabitants, followed by New Delhi with 29 million, Shanghai with 26 million and Mexico City and São Paulo with around 22 million each, while Cairo,

3 United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs – DESA. 4 In recent decades, the world has been urbanizing rapidly. The global urbanization rate masks important differences in urbanization levels across geographic regions. Northern America is the most urbanized region, with 82% of its population residing in urban areas, whereas Asia is approximately 50% urban, and Africa remains mostly rural with 43% of its population living in urban areas in 2018. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division 2018. World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision, p. 1.

THE WORLD'S TEN LARGEST CITIES IN 2018 AND 2030

City size Population in 2018 Population in 2030

rank city (thousands) city (thousands) 1 Tokyo, Japan 37 469 Delhi, India 38 939 2 Delhi, India 28 514 Tokyo, Japan 36 574 3 Shanghai, China 25 582 Shanghai, China 32 869 4 São Paulo, Brazil 21 650 Dhaka, 28 076 Bangladesh

5 Ciudad de México (México City) México 21 581 Al Qahirah (Cairo), Egype 25 517

6 Al Qahirah (Cairo), Egype 7 Mumbai (Bombay), India 20 076 Mumbai (Bombay), India 24 572

19 980 Beijing, China 24 282

8 Beijing, China 19 618 Ciudad de México (México City) México 24 111

9 Dhaka, Bangladesh 10 Kimki M.M.A. (Osaka), Japan 19 578 São Paulo, Brazil 23 824

19 281 Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo 21 914

Tab. 1 Demographic evolution of megacities (2018/2030 period). Source: The World’s Cities in 2018 (United Nations/DESA.)

Mumbai, Beijing and Dhaka are all close to 20 million inhabitants. It is difficult to deduce from these simple but disturbing figures how to define this ‘mega-urbanisation’ process of our species, whether in terms of quality of life or with regard to the functioning of the housing, urban and socio-sanitary systems. Considering the abnormal growth of the urban population, however, especially at

latitudes where the quality of life is generally very poor, it seems clear that this process is not leading to the growth of ‘ideal’ cities, but rather to a carcinomic development of precarious and unhealthy shantytowns, lacking the most basic social and health services. Delhi, in India, is the city whose estimated growth is highest: an increase of 10 million inhabitants is projected between 2018 and 2030. During the same period, it is foreseen that the population of Tokyo in Japan will decrease by about 900 000 inhabitants, as is clearly illustrated in Table 1. The same table shows how the human geography of megacities is heading towards exponential population growth in all the urban agglomerations of the southern hemisphere, with a halt or decrease in growth in the cities of the northern hemisphere or those belonging to the more developed economies. In the list of the most populated cities, the two most striking cases are Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, apparently destined to reach almost 22 million inhabitants by 2030, and Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh (Fig. 3), destined to increase from about 19 million to over 28 million inhabitants, making it the fourth most populated city. The year 2010 represented a turning point in human history. In that year, the number of people living in urban areas (3.42 billion) surpassed the number living in predominantly rural areas (3.41 billion). Current projections suggest that the world’s urban population will increase by 84% by 2050, from 3.4 billion at the end of 2009 to 6.3 billion in 2050 (Fig. 4).

Cities with 1 million inhabitants or more, 2018 and 2030

2018

2030

City population

10 milion or more 5 milion to 10 milion 1 milion to 5 milion

Fig. 3 Population growth in urban areas 2018/2030 and evidence from agglomerations of more than 1 million inhabitants (Source: The World’s Cities in 2018, United Nations/DESA).

By the middle of the 21st century, the world population living in cities will be numerically equivalent to the entire world population recorded in 2004. Globally, the concentration of population in urban areas has been rising exponentially since the 1950s, with particularly high rates of increase in Asia, Africa and the Latin American subcontinent, in accordance with the general population growth trends in these regions5 .

5 United Nation Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2009, Urban and rural area.