PHA-Exchange> State of the World's Cities Report 2001

[Aviva]

> "State of the World's Cities Report 2001"
The United Nations Center for Human Settlements (Habitat)
> Available online as a series of PDF-files at:
> http://www.unchs.org/Istanbul+5/statereport.htm

> "....... Three billion people - nearly every other person on earth -
> already live in cities. Today the planet hosts 19 cities with 10 million
or more people; 22 cities with 5 to 10 million people; 370 cities with 1 to
5 million people; and 433 cities with 0.5 to 1 million people. By 2030, over
60 percent of the world's population (4.9 billion out of 8.1 billion people)
will live in cities.

> Developed country cities are rapidly disappearing from the list of the
world's largest cities. Between 1980 and 2000, Lagos, Dhaka, Cairo, Tianjin,
Hyderabad and Lahore, among others, joined the list of 30 largest cities in
the world. By 2010, Lagos is projected to become the third largest city in
the world, after Tokyo and Mumbai, Milan, Essen and London will disappear
from the 30 largest cities list, and New York, Osaka and Paris will have
slipped farther down the list by 2010.
>
> The current worldwide rate of urbanization (that is, the percentage, per
year, that the urban share of the total population is expanding) is about
0.8 percent, varying between 1.6 percent for all African countries to about
0.3 percent for all highly industrialized countries.
Urbanization of poverty is a growing phenomenon; it is estimated that
between one-quarter and one-third of all urban households in the world live
in absolute poverty.