South Asia leads city growth
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Indian and sub-continental cities will see the fastest population growth from now until 2020, a study has shown. The report ‘Managing Asian Cities’ was commissioned by the Asian Development Bank and shows India providing six of the top ten cities in terms of population growth. Bangladesh provides a further two (Chittagong and Dhaka). Gujarati city Surat leads the list of growing cities, with population size expected to increase 97.9% from 2006 to 2020, when it expected to reach 7.7 million inhabitants. Yemeni capital Sanaa is second with a predicted growth of 97.6% taking the city to 3.4 million people. Kabul, Afghanistan, completes the top three. The remaining Indian cities making up the top ten are Patna, Jaipur, New Delhi, Pune and Indore. Delhi’s predicted 61.4% population growth is expected to take it to an incredible 25.8 million inhabitants by 2020. Other key cities expected to see populations rise over 20 million by 2020 are Mumbai (37.8% growth, reaching 25.9 million inhabitants), Dhaka (68.4%, 22.0 million) and Jakarta (51.9%, 20.8 million). While the report stresses that this data can never be wholly accurate, due to the transient, seasonal nature of many urban populations, the rapid growth, especially in South Asia, highlights the need for infrastructure development and employment creation in Asian cities.
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