Cities have existed for millennia, but their triumph is remarkably recent. As recently as 1950, only 30% of the world’s population were urban dwellers. This week, a United Nations report suggested that more than 80% of people are now urbanites, with most of those living in cities. London became the first city to reach a million inhabitants in the early 19th century. Now, almost 500 have done so.

Jakarta, with 42 million residents, has just overtaken Tokyo as the most populous of the lot; nine of the 10 largest megacities are in Asia. The UN report revealed the scale of the recent population shift to towns and cities thanks to a new, standardised measure in place of the widely varying national criteria previously used. The urbanisation rate in its 2018 report was just 55%.

Jakarta’s explosive growth – its population has grown almost 30-fold since 1950 – demonstrates both the costs of rapid urbanisation and the difficulties of addressing them. It........

© The Guardian