Housing
The Uneven Future of Urbanization
The United Nations projects a huge global urban population boom by 2050, but in some places more than others.
"Yeah, yeah," you're probably saying. "More than half the world's population is urban. We get it."
That milestone was reached years ago and is not likely news to anyone reading this website. But the story's not over. The world is undergoing a sustained urbanization process that's pulling more people into city centers and turning more places from rural outposts into denser urban organisms. A new report [PDF] from the United Nations projects that the world's urban population – roughly 3.6 billion in 2011 – will grow by about 72 percent between now and 2050, bringing the urban population up to 6.3 billion. That's about the same amount of people on the entire planet in 2002.