Summary

In today’s increasingly global and interconnected world, over half of the world’s population (54 per cent) lives in urban areas although there is still substantial variability in the levels of urbanization across countries (figure 1). The coming decades will bring further profound changes to the size and spatial distribution of the global population. The continuing urbanization and overall growth of the world’s population is projected to add 2.5 billion people to the urban population by 2050, with nearly 90 per cent of the increase concentrated in Asia and Africa. At the same time, the proportion of the world’s population living in urban areas is expected to increase, reaching 66 per cent by 2050.