| Staggering projections for urbanization in East Asia will place huge strains on already inadequate road, electricity, water and sanitation systems. By 2025, the urban population in the region is expected to jump by 65 percent or 500 million people. These are the findings of the report“Sustainable Development in East Asia’s Urban Fringe,” the special focus section of the latest East Asia Update. Two features that make East Asia’s urbanization notable in comparison with other regions are the overall low urbanization level and the high population density of its mega cities. East Asia is remarkably under-urbanized in comparison to regions such as the Americas and Europe. Even if one takes into account income figures, several countries in East Asia are still relatively under-urbanized. For example, China has about 75 percent of Brazil’s real gross domestic product (GDP) per person in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms but while 84 percent of the Brazilians live in cities, only around 40 percent of the Chinese do so. Even richer East Asian economies such as Korea, while having more than 2.5 times Brazil’s per capita real PPP GDP, is slightly less urbanized (81 percent). Yet, if one looks at the East Asian mega cities, not only are they comparably large but they are also more densely packed. Average urban densities in East Asia range from 10,000 to around 15,000 persons per sq km -- about double the urban densities of Latin America, triple those of Europe, and ten times those of US cities. In other words, not many East Asians live in cities, but those who do are crowded into a relatively small area. |
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