ABSTRACT
At the beginning of this century, there were little more than a dozen or so cities in the world with more than a million people. They were all in the advanced capitalist countries and London, by far the largest of them, had just under 7 million. At the beginning of this century too, no more than 7 per cent of the world’s population could reasonably be classified as ‘urban’. By the year 2000 there may be as many as 500 cities with more than a million inhabitants. The largest of them (like Tokyo, São Paulo, Bombay and possibly Shanghai) will boast populations of more than 20 million, trailed by a score of cities, mostly in the so-called developing countries, with upwards of 10 million. Sometime early next century, if present trends continue, more than half of the world’s population will be classified as urban rather than rural.
