Novembre 2025
Nations Unies (124 pages).
Ths report highlights the key findings of the 2025 Revision of the World Urbanization Prospects, offering an overview of global urban transformation. It integrates worldwide and regional trends with detailed country-level insights spanning from 1950 to 2050, showing that the world is becoming increasingly urban, with cities now home to 45 per cent of the global population of 8.2 billion. This is more than double the share in 1950. The report summarizes the latest estimates of city, town and rural populations for 237 countries or areas from 1950 to 2025, with projections until 2050.
- In 1950, city living was relatively unusual: just 20 per cent of the world’s 2.5 billion people lived in cities, defined as population centres with at least 50,000 inhabitants and a density of at least 1,500 people per km2. Following many decades of urbanization, cities are now (in 2025) home to 45 per cent of the world’s 8.2 billion people, more than double the proportion in 1950.
- The share of the global population living in towns, defined as population clusters of at least 5,000 inhabitants and a density of at least 300 people per km2, declined gradually from 40 per cent in 1950 to 36 per cent in 2025.
- Rural communities are less densely populated than cities and towns. Today, they are home to just 19 per cent of the global population, a share that has fallen by half since 1950.
- Projections indicate that two thirds of the growth of the world’s population between now and 2050 will take place in cities, with most of the remainder concentrated in towns. The size of the global rural population is expected to peak sometime during the 2040s and then begin to decline.
- Urbanization is one of the most significant demographic shifts in human history, fundamentally altering how and where people live, work and build communities across the globe.
- The number of megacities quadrupled from eight in 1975 to 33 in 2025, with 19 in Asia. Projections indicate that there will be 37 megacities globally by 2050, as the populations of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Dar es Salaam (United Republic of Tanzania), Hajipur (India) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) grow to over 10 million.
- Jakarta (Indonesia) is the world’s most populous city, with nearly 42 million inhabitants in 2025, followed by Dhaka (Bangladesh) with almost 37 million and Tokyo (Japan) with 33 million. Cairo (Egypt) is the only city among the world’s ten largest that is not located in Asia.
- Fast-growing Dhaka is expected to become the world’s largest city by mid-century. Karachi (Pakistan) will enter the top ten by 2030 and could rank fifth by 2050. Meanwhile, Tokyo is projected to fall in rank from third in 2025 to seventh in 2050, as its population shrinks to around 31 million. More people live in small and medium-sized cities than in megacities; many of these smaller settlements are among the fastest growing, especially in Africa and Asia.
- The total number of cities worldwide more than doubled between 1975 and 2025. Among the world’s 12,000 cities, 96 per cent have fewer than 1 million inhabitants, and 81 per cent have populations below 250,000. This distribution underscores that the majority of the world’s urban population resides not in megacities, but in small and medium-sized urban centres that play a critical role in shaping sustainable urban development. By 2050, there could be more than 15,000 cities in the world, mostly with populations below 250,000.
Of the roughly 400 cities that grew faster than 4 per cent per year between 2015 and 2025, one third were in sub-Saharan Africa and another quarter were in Central and Southern Asia. Over two thirds had fewer than 250,000 inhabitants.
- Smaller settlements often lack the planning capacity and resources to manage their growth sustainably. They can benefit from improved access to basic services, better land-use management and increased connectivity. Growth of the world’s city population between now and 2050 will be concentrated in seven countries.
- Taken together, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Bangladesh and Ethiopia are expected to add more than 500 million city residents between 2025 and 2050, accounting for over half of the projected 986 million increase in the global number of city dwellers over that period.
- The success or failure of urbanization in these key countries will shape global development outcomes. Their ability to manage city growth sustainably will have profound implications not only for their populations but also for global progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals and climate objectives.
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