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The cities of 2100

By Janamitra Devan

26 February 2009

It took about a million years for the global human population to reach 1 billion in 1800. In the next 200 years, it reached 6 billion, and it will take only about 13 more years to add another billion. By 2100, the United Nations estimates that the global population will level off at about 10 billion, thanks to rising living standards and more widespread population control. By the end of 2008, slightly less than 50 percent of the global population lived in cities. If economic development proceeds at today’s pace, over the next century or so it is highly likely that 8 billion people will live in urban centers, up from today’s roughly 3.3 billion.

Yes, the world will indeed be able to sustain this many people. The major reason is urbanization. By 2100, 80 percent of the world’s population will live in cities. There will be many more new cities, and some of today’s megacities (greater than 10 million people) will become supercities (greater than 20 million). Among the obvious candidates: Beijing, Delhi, Jakarta, Mexico City, Mumbai, São Paulo, and Shanghai. At the same time, recent advances in agriculture, energy, and water technologies suggest that human ingenuity will keep up with population growth.

Of course, the process of change will be uneven. For some time, perhaps as much as 50 to 70 years, urban living will continue to be associated with an underclass of people struggling to make ends meet and to secure a future. Income inequality within cities is likely to get worse before it gets better; it takes time for infrastructure and urban services to get to the masses. But the opportunities will be great. Large cities, if organized and planned well, allow governments to scale up training, education, and pollution control. And the movement of people from the countryside would free up arable land and allow larger-scale agriculture. Another benefit of a less dense rural population is more land to provide biodiversity, recreation, and tourism. That would help allow rural areas to catch up economically.

Migration will not only be from rural to urban. Over the next 100 years, we are likely to see large movements of people between cities, or more appropriately, between cultural centers. Net result? Well, think of more American-type melting pots in Europe, and traditional bastions of ethnic homogeneity like Japan and China crumbling in the face of an unrelentingly more mobile global talent market. Cities that don’t compete for these talents will fall by the wayside. Contrary to the argument for the maintenance of cultural uniqueness, the ensuing blending of cultures such mobility will bring about will introduce even greater diversity: the cultural evolution and renaissance of the 21st century will be about experimentation and innovation.

What will future urbanization look like? The question is, of course, speculative. So let’s speculate. First, convergence between rich and poor will happen. In fact, it is already happening. China has seen more convergence with the rest of the world in the past 15 years than it has in the previous 50. Its urbanization level went from about 20 percent in the late 1970s to about 44 percent now. That figure will likely be 66 percent by 2025 and probably 80 percent (today’s US level) by 2040. India, which has about 29 percent of its population in cities now, will also continue to urbanize, running about a generation behind China until 2040, and then closing the gap. It’s not inconceivable that India could be 70 percent urban by 2100. China will be predominately middle-class, in global terms, by 2050 and advanced by 2100. India will not be far behind. That spells convergence of the two largest countries, by population, in a little more than the expected lifetime of an infant born today. In historic terms, that is incredibly fast. And countries such as Brazil (200 million people) and Indonesia (238 million) are on similar trajectories.

Rural to urban migration should be pretty much complete by 2100. But urban-to-urban cross-border migration will be even more prevalent than it is now. If the European Union of today is a precursor to the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Mercosur, and the Arab alliance, for instance, then an immense intermingling of ethnicities will become reality. Think of large numbers of Chinese and Indians choosing to live in Europe and Africa, and Americans and Australians choosing to live in China, India, or Latin America. A big if, but certainly a possibility.

There will be other changes. By 2100, the world will go from a 7,000-language planet to a couple of hundred languages at the most. Putting aside the concerns about losing so much linguistic history, English will be the major medium of communication in many countries and the second-most prevalent in China, Japan, Korea, and much of Africa and Latin America—as it already is in most of Europe.

Highways in the sky? Maybe. Teleporter technology? Well, maybe not. But one thing’s for sure: just as today’s cities look and feel and smell different than those of 100 or 200 years ago, the cities of 2100 will evolve in a dynamic of rapid cultural, technical, and economic change. One constant is that cities will continue to be social networks—and I hope, of course, that we will always have New York, Paris, and Tokyo.

Comment [25]

Agree? Disagree? Let us know what you think. Please include your full name with your comment. Comments may be edited.

May I respectfully disagree with the article? Where is the role of the internet? To me it is at present still seen too much as some super telephone network. I think the growth of the mmorpg’s is a sign of things to come. With better transmission and compression, virtual worlds, for gaming or otherwise, could replace commercial real estate. Any company could just have some virtual office and nothing more. This would even more allow anyone to work anywhere. What’ya need a city for?

Posted 27 March 2009, 11:36 by Jamisia
Lovely thought-provoker, Jane Jacobs (and Saskia Sassen) might have pushed further perhaps.

With 80% of the world’s population in urban cities you do indeed have city states. When you combine this with “regional” blocs such as the EU etc. then the principle of nationhood starts to unravel into ethnicity, culture and the like. The role of national government (if it survived) in this kind of world would be very different from today. Intriguing to see the Jacobs-like world economy built on cities, fed by massive (highly automated?) agricultural concerns. This is not without risks as the UK experience will testify!

Thanks for a thought provoking article, but I think that Jacobs should have got some postumous credit for her “Wealth of Cities” published over 25 years ago.

Martin Cawthorne-Nugent

Posted 27 March 2009, 06:19 by Martin Cawthorne-Nugent
Interesting reading… Thanks all.

A few thoughts:

1. Changing religious demographics (due to various views on birth control etc) will impact migration and cultural stability related issues significantly.

2. What do Nostradamus and his ilk say?

3. Impact of the nuclear threat on the design of high density population hubs – the cities of 2100?

Sanjay

Posted 27 March 2009, 04:53 by Sanjay Agarwal
I’m going to take a naysayer’s position on this, though I think your article represents one, reasonably high probability future. However, I’d also contend that the carrying capacity of the planet is likely no more than 6.5 to 7 billion people, and may even be lower, and exceeding that may very well bring massive societal collapse.

Rapid global oil depletion over the next decade will reduce the standard of living globally as well, significantly diminishing access to life extending technologies while at the same time making it harder to deal with severe infectious diseases. If urbanization does increase (and there’s no reason it shouldn’t) that will also have a strong tendency to reduce reproduction rates, especially in “first world” countries.

I also suspect that access to the Internet may, in the long run, also have a negative impact upon birth rates, as poor education is typically implicated as one of the most significant aspects governing the number of children a woman has.

If climate change does prove to be true, this will also be a major limiting factor – growth economies require energy, and if there’s an upper limit to the amount of energy consumable before it interacts with the climate.

It’s a little more dystopian, but I think its a worthwhile analysis to perform.

Posted 27 March 2009, 03:59 by Kurt Cagle
Well, interesting article for me thinking about this kinds of issues again.

In regards to urbanisation, personally I would like to say the rise to 44% in rate of urbanisation in China was almost done in the recent decade, and it works as vast opportunities and lower costs of public service people can enjoy in urban areas, meanwhile the people living in highly populated rural areas can’t break even on a small piece of land available unless growing commercial agricultural products with high value.

This trend may creates more opportunities worldwide as consumption in cities increase dramatically since then. However,the distribution of income, possession and use vacated land as well as the loss of cultural roots and problems of unskilled emigrants would be a challenge.

Posted 26 March 2009, 22:29 by Kelen
I too have been mentally taking globalization to its extreme – where I also see a single global currency.

Certain nationalistic aspects such as presence of national health care program, other welfare aspects such as unemployment insurance, variation in tax rates and income levels, etc do not land clearly in this “extreme view” on whether convergence will occur. To the extent these still vary, they may influence individual decisions about residency preferences.

The pace of convergence of languages, currencies, etc could take quite a long time. Perhaps two to five generations?

Posted 26 March 2009, 15:25 by Shiraz
When I think about the matter of population growth which is somewhat translated into the the old-fashioned matter of more and more people competing for the same resources available, the only thing that comes into my mind is that Lemings Game I used to play in my computer.

The game is about coordinating a mass population of Lemings that constantly walks into a single direction. Your goal is to divert the Lemings population’s direction so that the Lemings reach a specific place set as the game goal in each phase.

Of course, some of them will fall down in cliffs or stay trapped for life in holes as well as in no-way-out-rooms… but that’s not a problem at Lemings. The important thing is that you do the right movements in the right time so that at least some Lemings will get to the place desired supposed to be full of resources available for their basic conditions of living and where the Lemings will all be happy and satisfied with the one that coordinated them towards this specific place.

The remaining Lemings that reached the goal in a specific phase of the game are headed into another phase to join other Lemings that are about to be coordinated again.

Sorry for having the apocaliptic way of seeing it… that’s just one persons’ opinion though.

Posted 26 March 2009, 13:40 by Sergio Lazzeri
Responding to Matthew Shofnos’ comments on cities growing vertically, I agree it would be a tragedy to lose cultural identity and uniqueness that existing structures bring. With regulation and preservation we will keep at least some of that in every city, but we always have to build new or our cities would look like Roman ruins. I am skeptical about cost & practicality of going extremely vertical. At a certain height, construction costs get out of line for common use buildings (middle class apartments, small businesses). Also, the law of gravity will always be there, keeping us more or less “ground dwellers”.

Technological innovation has shifted from physical to electronic and now informational. So don’t expect a new invention like the airplane, but the proliferation of electronics and intelligence into our current physical goods, as well as new services facilitated by technology infrastructure. I doubt, however, that technology can cost-effectively replace travel and there is strong (albeit unquantified) value in face-to-face in both business transactions, and of course in personal relationships.

Responding to Sanket, I disagree on point 1 as well as 2 & 3 (inter-related)…..
1) Chinese, one of the hardest languages for Westerners to learn, will become a major world language like French or Portuguese, but will NOT replace English. Size of GDP does not equal linguistic basis for world trade. English is already too intrenched.

2) Migration will continue as there will always be a hunger in humanity to explore plus some regions will have greater opportunities due to differences in economies, government policies, education, etc. And the fact is we cannot eliminate migration drivers like war or poverty.

3) Related to #2, migration will continue AND each country will still have a unique cultural identity, but we will start to recognize & talk in terms of city cultures (megacities are really city-states). Demand for talent will push for more migration to keep bringing in diversity. You can train skills but you cannot impart into an individual different cultural identity, intelligence, attitudes, psychological makeup, belief systems. These are developed “naturally” during our lifetime through our families & communities; only the most paternalistic states (N.Korea) try to control people’s minds and spirits (with limited success). To really acquire cultures we need interactive experiences. As cultures blend & homogenize the need for using native/domestic talent diminishes, but I think the author is right, unique cultures will develop within the mega-cities and that will spur the need/demand for continued movement.

I agree with all others that unique languages need to be preserved if at all possible. One factor not mentioned is the efforts by Christians to translate the Bible into every ‘viable’ language (only about 1/2 of the thousands of languages are viable). If this is successful in the next 25-50 years, it will create a written linguistic system where many people have none today. Starting with the Bible, people will become literate in their native languages and potentially “save” them by also writing other literature and continuing use of the language. Bible translation of minor languages only began in earnest about 75 years ago and technology has radically cut translation times (from 20-30 years to 10+/-) Learn more at www.wycliffe.org.

Posted 26 March 2009, 13:17 by Matthew W.
The discussion is timely. Selection of the topic is really good. Appreciate the same.
As regards the question,we need to first re-define globalization after the current financial crisis.We all know that there is a consensus amongst both, developed as well as developing countries that international coordination is the one of the main answers to the present crisis. The contagion has spread all around all of a sudeen and beyond expectations of all at least in terms of speed (the real perpetrators of the financial tumor might have been aware of the consequences to some extent. The culprit and the innocent have all been involved due to internationalization of the financial crisis, on account of financial integration and ICT revolution. No country or the MNC, regional corps or the national enterprises can get along individually. So globalization is already there. The fate of the global economy however depends on the role played by all in sync with universally acknowledged princples of recovery acceptable to all. No more grinding of own axes. The cliches have changed. The so called powers with the so called invincible systems are looking towards those not liked in the past. The economic crisis has at least brought some sort of eqaulity if not equity in the globe. So let us all resolve to think of the global economy, the GLOBE IST should be the universal slogan now, not the country ist. The HOW part is important and it needs our focus.
This off the cuff remark will be substantiated further after looking into the response of the fairly large number of the commentators on this important subject.

Posted 26 March 2009, 12:34 by sardar amin
I would like to disagree with some of the observations.
1- I believe Chinese rather than English will be the world’s lingua franca. Chinese economy is expected to becomes much larger than USA
2- I think migration will decrease. People move towards opportunities. When the entire world becomes more developed, people will have same opportunities near their homes and hence will not migrate.
3- Movement of people due to talent concerns is an over-rated concept. Why can’t a Japanese company find the requisite talent in Japan? The base is big enough and hence unless the talent is highly specific, the company can find the same in Japan. So, unless the world economy gets converted to a set of specialized hubs, I don’t see any large-scale migration due to talent. And the over-specialized hubs will have to change their primary business to retain the dynamism of change. Else, all infrastructure in those areas will train future citizens in the skills required by those hubs and hence, the hubs will fulfill almost all their requirements internally and not depend on external taent.
4- Every language is infinite in its power to express. I hope some global agency would be there to help preserve, enrich, and teach all languages.

Posted 17 March 2009, 10:21 by Sanket

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