changes in percentage of population living in cities by global region

For most regions and many nations, 2015-20 brought the lowest rate of change recorded going back to 1960-65. The UN Population Division provides figures on the average annual rate of change of urban populations for five-year periods from 1950. However, the growth rate of urban populations in most nations and many regions is declining. The time needed for one billion additional urban dwellersĤ to 5 billion urban dwellers (projected)įigure 1 below shows the rapid growth in the world’s urban population from 1960 (when it was 1 billion) to 4.4 billion in 2020. The table below shows how the time needed for one billion people to be added to the world’s urban population has decreased dramatically. Many aspects of urban change in recent decades are unprecedented – not only the size of the world’s urban population and its level of urbanisation, but also the number of countries becoming more urbanised, the size of their urban populations and, as the first three blogs in this series explored, the size and number of very large cities. Over the last 60 years, the number living in urban centres has grown more than fourfold today, the proportion of urban dwellers reaches 56.2%, compared to less than 15% in 1900 and 34% in 1960. The world’s urban population today is around 4.4 billion people – more than the world’s total population in 1975. This blog looks at the size of the world’s urban population, the scale of its growth and how its distribution has changed between regions and between countries.

Changes in percentage of population living in cities by global region