According to Stewart Brand at a TED presentation given in 2006, projected population figures show that as at 2015, the ten largest cities in the world are anticipated to be Tokyo (26.4 million), Mumbai (26.1 million), Lagos (23.2 million), Dhaka (21.1 million), Sao Paolo (20.4 million), Karachi (19.2 million), Mexico City (19.2 million), New York (17.4 million), Jakarta (17.3 million) and Calcutta (17.3 million). Global urbanisation is now in full swing, with 70 million new people moving to live in cities each year. Villages are being deserted.
Life in villages is typically very difficult, with limited opportunities for economic growth, and the only work available being labour-intensive with little reward. Life in the city is seen as more exciting, with greater opportunities for economic improvement; however most people move to squatter cities rather than to places which might be regarded as more desirable. Stewart Brand says “These are not really people pressed by poverty; they are people getting out of poverty as fast as they can.”
Brand says that one billion people now live in squatter cities, and two billion more are expected, but that is good news rather than bad. Cities have lower birth rates, and they are wealth creators, helping billions of people to climb out of poverty. It’s an interesting perspective, and it seems to be true of cities such as Mumbai, but from my own observations urbanisation does not seem to be causing any improvement in conditions in major African cities because there are too many other factors biased towards keeping people impoverished.