Global Urban Growth |
The extent to which the Global South will be at the center of the world’s growing urbanization is highlighted in the UN’s World Urbanization Prospects report 2025. With Dhaka predicted to become the world’s largest city by the mid of the century and Karachi predicted to rank in the top 10 by 2030 and the top five by 2050, more than half of the world’s megacities are currently located in Asia and are still growing.
Only seven nations—India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Egypt, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—are expected to contribute to the predicted 986 million increase in the world’s population living in cities by 2050, including Pakistan.
This goes beyond simple trivia. This implies that for the next two to three decades, Pakistan and the rest of the Global South will have a significant influence on global development outcomes. The nation’s urban policy will literally influence how the world develops.
This will be a problem not only for megacities like Karachi or other big cities like Lahore and Peshawar, but also for the many peri-urban areas and small and medium-sized cities that are truly responsible for the majority of the nation’s present urban growth. The UN research states that integrated planning that views cities, towns, and rural areas as interconnected and interdependent will be necessary for sustainable development in this context of growing urbanization. Quixotically, both urban and rural policies must be developed with one another in mind, even........