Nearly half of global population live in cities, UN says
Nearly half of the global population of 8.2 billion live in cities across the world today, according to a UN report released Tuesday, Xinhua reported.
The World Urbanization Prospects 2025: Summary of Results showed that the world has become increasingly urban, with the number of people living in cities having more than doubled to 45 percent since 1950, when only 20 percent of the world's 2.5 billion people lived in cities.
The number of megacities, urban areas with 10 million or more inhabitants, has quadrupled from eight in 1975 to 33 in 2025, with 19 of them located in Asia.
The report, released by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, showed that Indonesia's Jakarta is currently the world's most populous city with nearly 42 million residents. The number of megacities is expected to rise to 37 by 2050.
Despite the prominence of megacities, the report finds that small and medium-sized cities are home to more people than megacities and are growing at a faster pace, particularly in Africa and Asia.
Of the 12,000 cities analyzed, 96 percent have fewer than 1 million inhabitants, and 81 percent have fewer than 250,000.
The total number of cities worldwide more than doubled between 1975 and 2025, and projections indicate that by 2050, the number of cities worldwide could exceed 15,000, with most having populations below 250,000.
Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that UK plans to tighten asylum policy and refugee family reunification rules.
