In 1900 London had a population of 6.5 million; New York had 4.2 million; followed by Paris, Berlin, Chicago, Vienna, Tokyo, Saint Petersburg, Manchester and Philadelphia. Tokyo is the only surprise in the top-ten list. Fifty years later, in 1950, the leading ten cities had doubled in size, and Shanghai, Buenos Aires, and Calcutta had joined the list. Fifty years after that, in 2003, the top ten cities had further tripled in size, but that was the least of their changes. The leaders now were Tokyo with 35 million, Mexico City with 19 million, New York with 18 million, Sao Paulo with 18 million, Mumbai with 17 million, Delhi with 14 million, Calcutta with 13 million, and Jakarta with 12 million. These big numbers are big events. By 2015, according to United Nations predictions, the top-ten roster will be joined by Dhaka, in Bangladesh, and Lagos, in Nigeria, and coming on fast will be Karachi, Cairo, Manila, Istanbul, Lima, Tehran, and Beijing. The trend is pretty clear. The rise of the West is over. The world looks the way it did a thousand years ago, when the ten largest cities were Cordoba, in Spain; Kaifeng, in China; Constantinople; Angkor, in Cambodia; Kyoto; Cairo; Baghdad; Nishaur, in Iran; Al-Hasa, in Saudi Arabia; and Patan, in India. As Swedish statistician Hans Rosling says, The world will be normal again; it will be an Asian world, as it always was except for these last thousand years. They are working like hell to make that happen, whereas we are consuming like hell. - Stewart Brand
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 22:24:59 +0000
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