Global urbanisation and megacities

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Latin America and the Caribbean, which increased from 41% to 81%, an increase of 40 percentage points.

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Cities have more hospitals, clinics and doctors, so illnesses can be treated. Also, many city residents have clean water and sanitation, which reduces the spread of diseases such as cholera.

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NEEs such as China have industrialised very quickly, and most new factories have been built in cities, especially on the coast. These factories, many of them run by TNCs attracted by cheap labour and government incentives such as China's Special Economic Zones, need millions of workers. Factory wages are much higher than what people can earn from farming, so huge numbers of young people have moved from the countryside to the cities. At the same time, mechanisation has reduced the number of farm jobs, pushing people out of rural areas. As a result, China's urban population grew from about 20% in 1980 to over 60% by 2020.

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In 1950 there were only two megacities, New York and Tokyo, but by 2018 there were 33. The main reason is rapid urbanisation in LICs and NEEs. The world's population grew from about 2.5 billion in 1950 to about 8 billion by 2022, and much of this growth happened in countries with very large populations such as China, India and Nigeria, so their biggest cities could pass 10 million.

Millions of people have migrated from rural areas to these cities, pushed by poverty, drought and the mechanisation of farming, and pulled by the hope of jobs and better services. Cities such as Lagos and Dhaka receive thousands of new migrants every week. Because the migrants are mostly young adults, natural increase is also high, so these cities grow even faster.

Globalisation and industrialisation have also concentrated economic activity in a few large cities. TNCs build factories and offices in cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou, where there is cheap labour and good port access, creating jobs that attract more migrants. In many countries one primate city, such as Lagos or Mexico City, receives most of the investment, so it grows much larger than other cities. As these cities spread outwards and merge with nearby towns, more urban areas pass the 10 million mark.