Photo by: Duane Daws
As megacities continue to develop across all corners of the globe, urbanisation is progressing ever faster, with the emergence of “gigacities” – supercities of more than 50-million inhabitants.
A new report has revealed that gigacities could become a reality as soon as 2020, with Shanghai home to some 170-million inhabitants – more than double the population of South Africa.
“The Chinese government is reportedly planning to connect multiple cities in five integrated urban conurbations, which would, together, be home to half a billion people by 2020.
“If these ambitious plans are realised, there will be four urban areas in China, each with more inhabitants than the whole of Germany,” the Allianz Risk Pulse report, titled ‘The megacity state: the world’s biggest cities shaping our future’ explained.
More than half the world’s populations already lived in cities, with predictions that this would increase to two-thirds by 2030 – many of them in megacities – conglomerations with ten-million inhabitants or more.
There were currently 29 megacities, home to more than 12%, or 470-million, city dwellers, with Tokyo, housing some 38-million, Delhi some 25.7-million, and Shanghai 23.7-million, the largest megacities.
By 2030, 12 new megacities would have emerged – ten of them in Asia or Africa, with Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg and Luanda expected to join the megacities club.
Johannesburg had around 9.7-million citizens in 2015, which was expected to rise to 11.9-million by 2030.
Luanda, which was home to 5.5-million people, was expected to double its population to 10.4-million in the next 15 years.
Delhi, Dhaka and Lagos – already megacities – would add more than ten-million inhabitants each.