population

• By 2050, the population of Southeast Asia is expected to reach 760 million people.
• In its global assessment survey, the UN projected that the population in India would be living under severe water stress by 2050.
• The latest UN projection is that population will be tailing off to a total figure of just over 11 billion at the turn of this century.
• Central Frankfurt will have a population of nearly 825,000 within its administrative boundaries by 2020 and up to 2.5 million residents living in its greater urban area.
• By 2050, 60 percent of Africa's population will be urbanised.
• By 2050, Africa's urban population is projected to reach 1.2 billion.
• African urban populations nearly doubled between 1995 and 2015 and are projected to almost double again by 2035.
• By 2030, half of the Central Africa population is expected to live in urban areas.
• China's urban population will increase by 292 million people by 2050.
• By 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban regions.
• 80 per cent of the Earth's population will live in urban areas by 2050.
• Every year between now and 2050 the global urban population will increase at twice the rate of the global population.
• Up to 1.4 million people are moving into urban areas per week, and estimates show that nearly 1 billion new dwelling units will be built by 2050 to support this growing population.
• The overall population in low-income countries is expected to double by 2050, resulting in an enormous global youth cohort residing in urban areas.
  

growth

• Growing adoption of digital aerial imagery in urban planning and increasing popularity of location-based services are the major drivers which help in surging the growth of aerial imaging market whereas rising concern over privacy, public safety, and national security act as a restraining factor.
• Urban agglomerations will make up more than 90% of the growth in global gas consumption through 2040.
• Food demand in Africa is projected to grow by more than 50 per cent in the coming years due to continued population growth, rapid urbanisation, and dietary changes as household incomes rise.
• The world's urban population is expected to rise by 2.5 billion people by 2050-nearly equal to the expected total population growth worldwide by 2050.
• Up to 90 percent of all future world population growth until 2050 will be added into cities of various sizes and definitions.
• High demand for improvement of traffic congestion in urban setup is expected to propel the market growth during 2018 to 2024.
• Cities in arid regions are expected to experience the highest rates of natural population growth and urbanization in the coming century.
• In the next 30 years, virtually all net population growth will occur in urban regions of developing countries.
• Forest loss in the United States associated with population growth is projected to exceed 50 million acres by 2050 as urban land area grows by an estimated 79 percent.
  

area

• Central Frankfurt will have a population of nearly 825,000 within its administrative boundaries by 2020 and up to 2.5 million residents living in its greater urban area.
• The ongoing development of a drinking water system in Hutan Kota Penjaringan is expected to be complete by late 2019 and result in an additional 3 percent clean water supply coverage for low-income areas in West and North Jakarta.
• Energy consumption for spatial heating and cooling in residential buildings in urban areas is projected to increase by approximately 50% by 2050
• About 843 million people are expected to live in urban areas by 2030.
• By 2030, half of the Central Africa population is expected to live in urban areas.
• The overall population in low-income countries is expected to double by 2050, resulting in an enormous global youth cohort residing in urban areas.
• By 2030, 60 percent of the world's population will live in urban areas compared to the 54.5 percent of 2016.
• 80 per cent of the Earth's population will live in urban areas by 2050.
• A 2013 presidential decree in France mandates that by 2019 the location of critical underground infrastructure in urban areas will be mapped to 40 cm or better.
  

change

• Scientists warned that a combination of deforestation, climate change and widespread use of fire in the Amazon region might be linked to the severe droughts and flooding that have affected cities in Brazil and adjacent countries in recent years.
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts an average sea level rise of 0.4 meters by 2100 in the best and least-likely scenario.
• Food demand in Africa is projected to grow by more than 50 per cent in the coming years due to continued population growth, rapid urbanisation, and dietary changes as household incomes rise.
• The 21st century will be marked by the critical role of Information and Communication Technologies in shaping urban responses to global environmental change.
• The 21st century has been hailed as the urban century and one in which ICT-led transformations will shape urban responses to global environmental change.
  

region

• Under the reference scenario, bus network infrastructure will continue to develop at a moderate rate in all regions up to 2030, whilst overall urban transport activity increases by approximately 13%, 20% and 67% in North America, Latin America and South Asia, respectively.
• Cities in arid regions are expected to experience the highest rates of natural population growth and urbanization in the coming century.
• The Asia Pacific region will make up half of the world's global economic output by 2050 on the back of significant population growth.
• In many of the developing and developed regions of the world, the demand for fish has continued to grow.
• By 2050, the northern regions will be 84% urbanised and Africa 62% urbanised, which has potential for economic growth, but may expose people to marginalisation, conflict and exploitation.
• By 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban regions.
• In the next 30 years, virtually all net population growth will occur in urban regions of developing countries.
  

development

• In India, smart homes are expected to be the next step in the process of urbanization and development.
• Cross River Rail's four new and two upgraded stations operational by 2024 will generate unique opportunities for urban renewal, economic development and the revitalisation of inner-city precincts creating jobs and growth well into the future.
• The small town of Beveridge is expecting to accommodate at least 150,000 people in new urban development over the next 30 years.
• The ongoing development of a drinking water system in Hutan Kota Penjaringan is expected to be complete by late 2019 and result in an additional 3 percent clean water supply coverage for low-income areas in West and North Jakarta.
• The highest rates of land conversion over the next few decades will likely take place in biodiversity hotspots that were relatively undisturbed by urban development in the last century.
  

journey

• Swapping one in four car journeys in urban areas across the UK for walking or cycling could save over £1.1 billion in health damage costs per year.
• Swapping 1 in 4 car journeys in urban areas for walking or cycling could save over £1.1 billion in health damage costs per year.
• Swapping one million urban car journeys from a diesel to electric vehicle could save more than £360m in UK health costs annually.
• Mobility-as-a-Service platforms will replace over 2.3 billion urban private car journeys annually by 2023.
• Adoption of MaaS platforms will replace over 2.3 billion urban private car journeys annually by 2023.
  

transport

• By 2030, urban transport will be attributable to an increasingly large share of remaining outdoor air pollution.
• A global push to increase cycling could cut CO2 emissions from urban passenger transport by nearly 11 percent in 2050.
  

resident

• By 2030, there will be forty-three megacities with more than ten million residents each.
• Central Frankfurt will have a population of nearly 825,000 within its administrative boundaries by 2020 and up to 2.5 million residents living in its greater urban area.
• Urban residents make up 55 percent of the world's population and will reach 68 percent by 2050.
• By 2020, China will comprehensively build a well-off society, the overall population is stable, GDP and per capita income of urban and rural residents will double than in 2010.
  

rate

• Every year between now and 2050 the global urban population will increase at twice the rate of the global population.
• Together with the multiple effects of the upgrading of urbanization and consumption structure, China is expected to maintain an economic growth rate of about 6 percent during the next 10 years and 5 percent in the 15 years that follow.
• By 2050, about 80 percent of the world's population will live in urban areas, reaching a population growth rate of three to five percent per year in West Africa and Asia alone.
• The highest rates of land conversion over the next few decades will likely take place in biodiversity hotspots that were relatively undisturbed by urban development in the last century.
• Cities in arid regions are expected to experience the highest rates of natural population growth and urbanization in the coming century.
• Under the reference scenario, bus network infrastructure will continue to develop at a moderate rate in all regions up to 2030, whilst overall urban transport activity increases by approximately 13%, 20% and 67% in North America, Latin America and South Asia, respectively.
  

consumption

• Energy consumption for spatial heating and cooling in residential buildings in urban areas is projected to increase by approximately 50% by 2050
• By 2035, global energy consumption will have increased 30%.
• Urban agglomerations will make up more than 90% of the growth in global gas consumption through 2040.
• World food fish consumption in 2030 is projected to be 20 percent higher than in 2016.

Do contact us to see how we can help you track emerging uncertainty issues and developments as they are announced or reported.

Systems map
Emerging changes in urbanization will affect just about everything, everywhere presenting major opportunities for growth and risks, particularly in supply and demand for housing, utilities, services and clean, good living.

Sentiment analysis
Attitudes to urbanization have been nett neutral for several years. This may well change in future decades as climate change and geopolitics forces more migrants to shelter in cities. Tensions may well boil over between the haves and the have nots if city authorities fail to cope with rising influxes of people seeking safety and security.

Pie charts
Athena calculates that the tipping point for rising urbanization will be around 2042 from aggregating the views of all her sources. Similarly, those same sources collectively rank the issue as High and assess future Impact in the Billions and Trillions range with 62.3% placing it in the early stage development.

Cloud
The cloud shows the enormous range of associated topics that will drive or be affected by urbanization. We recommend you explore associated topics of interest to you at shapingtomorrow.com and then anticipate and prepare for emerging opportunities and risks accordingly.

Radar
Athena calculates that transport will be the biggest sector affected by rising urbanization followed by government, financial services, manufacturing, real estate, construction. These five sectors all have major opportunities for growth and significantly improved service provision if actioned well.

Graph-It
By 2023, Athena suggests that demand for investment in steel and food supply plus retail and technological delivery will be the key areas for growth.

Heat Map
The heat map highlights which sectors and topics show the most opportunity. Three areas stand out: construction in Northern Europe, Financial services in Asia and transportation as a service throughout the world. Construction also shows as the largest opportunity across most of the world.

Geographies
Canada, China and particularly India stand out as the three countries with the likely highest urbanization rates in the coming decades.

Year-on-Year
Sectoral issues with urbanization continue to run very high with financial services and education at the top of the list in 2018. Authorities will need to forecast future service demand for cities under several scenarios ranging from business as usual to rapid population growth, sudden transformation and collapse to ensure agility and resilience to change going forward. Contact us to see how our automated scenario generator can instantly develop these scenarios for emerging urbaization change and allow your rapid response to be built collaboratively and in near-real time..

Influencers
Not surprisingly, China and India are the two foremost countries to likely experience rapid urbanization especially with the rise of many new cities in these two countries.
 

Sources
Athena used the sources below as the top ones to create this report and determined which embedded forecasts are included in this Trend Alert. She found 5,466 forecasts in seconds on the 20th September 2018 to allow us to publish this summary in less than an hour. She can turn these into PowerPoint slides and Audio files in minutes too as you wish, or we can prepare a full customized and professionally written brief for you to order covering all 5,466 forecasts. You can also use these forecasts in collaborative workshops to develop your strategic responses in hours rather than the weeks and months of traditional foresight projects.

Athena

Athena does show duplicates to aid your understanding of themes as well as contradictory forecasts. She may also show near-duplicates. You can speed read past the duplicates and near-duplicates if you wish, though the latter may show additional information. You can use the contradictory, and likely uncertain forecasts she finds to imagine different scenarios. The future is unpredictable, but we can examine the possibilities and choose our preferable future from the choices she presents. 
Athena is apolitical. She will report forecasts from different viewpoints however distasteful that might be to our own values. Wearing rose-colored glasses is not her purpose; reporting potential futures is. So, we recommend you check her veracity before responding to her extracted forecasts.

Just like humans, Athena can be fallible. Do recognize that you and your associates are biased too. But whereas you tire, make mistakes and only recognize what interests you, she does not. She might miss or misinterpret as you do, but with far less frequency and she'll take uncomfortable truths and alternative ideas in her stride. But, please let us know if you feel her bias can be reduced. We want to do our best for you. And, as with any research, you should check and triangulate her findings for yourself.

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