Housing
East Asia's Massive Urban Growth, in 5 Infographics
If everyone who recently migrated to cities in the region were a country unto themselves, it would be the world's sixth largest.
Almost 200 million people in East Asia migrated from rural areas to cities between 2001 and 2010. If all these people were to band together and declare themselves a country, it would be the world's sixth largest. That's a lot of people.
A new World Bank report uses satellite imagery and geospatial mapping to compare this influx of people with the expansion of urban areas from Mongolia and Myanmar on up to Japan. It finds that although cities in the region expanded at breakneck speeds during this period, they couldn't keep up with ballooning urban populations. New residents poured into cities at an average of 3 percent per year, while land expansion happened at a 2.4 percent annual rate, according to the report.