BROUGHT OUT BY the Population Division of the United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects is a biannual publication which presents a revised and updated estimate, as well as a projection, of the rural and urban populations of all the countries in the world and their urban agglomerations. The 1999 revision covers the period 1950-2030 and comprehensively documents the urban and rural populations of the world in terms of 21 regions and five major areas.
The chapters devoted to the analysis of the report are divided into two groups. The first (Chapters two to four) revolves around a discussion of urban and rural population growth and urbanization trends, whilst the second group (Chapters five and six) focuses on the dynamics of city growth and its implications for urban hierarchy. The use of graphs and tables enables a lucid understanding of the report, which is informative and detailed.
Chapter 1 provides in point form a summary of the key findings of the report, followed by a short note on the organization and content of the report. In Chapter 2, the contrasting trends of world urbanization and rural population growth are highlighted at the global level between different regions. Through the exploration of the rate of urbanization and counter-urbanization, the patterns of urban and rural growth are shown for the major areas. Chapter 3 proceeds to analyze these trends at the global level, and also looks in detail at the urban and rural population growth as well as the proportion of urban population, i.e. the urbanization rate. Chapter IV describes patterns of urbanization at the country level and introduces the temporal element. This provides a framework for grasping interesting facts. For example, by 2030, of the 17 countries that are expected to account for 75 per cent of the world ‘s rural population, only five are likely to experience rural growth rates above 1 per cent. This chapter also looks at the size and growth of the urban rural populations, respectively.
Chapter V, entitled “The Urban Hierarchy”, explores the concept of urban agglomeration, where large numbers of people are concentrated in relatively small urbanized spaces. The data reveal the paradox that despite the development of the aforementioned agglomerations, rural areas still account for the largest share of the world population. Divided into two main sub-sections, this chapter focuses on the urban hierarchy by major area and on the distribution of urban increment by city size. Chapter VI, entitled “Population Growth in Cities”, analyzes the importance of the initial size of the city to the population growth rate. A comparative analysis is carried out between cities with various growth rates to establish an inverse relationship between the two factors, although exceptions do exist.
Chapter VII unpacks the assumptions and adaptations made with respect to the procedures for estimating and projecting the population of urban areas and urban agglomerations. As indicated, the quality of the estimates and projections which are made is highly dependent upon the quality of the basic information for calculating the urban proportion. This chapter therefore highlights some of the variations that may arise from using different national sources, and illustrates how different realities make it undesirable to adopt uniform criteria. For example, a stipulation that any areal unit with at least 5,000 inhabitants be considered urban is not appropriate in populous countries such as China or India, where rural settlements with none of the characteristics of urban areas often have large numbers of inhabitants. Chapter 8 contains information on the sources of data used in estimating and projecting the population of urban areas and of urban agglomerations. The annex at the end of the book provides detailed results of the World Urbanization Prospects.