Healthy People, Healthy Cities, Healthy Economies
The four largest emerging-market economies are forecast to overtake the G-7 in combined size by 2030, with today’s emerging-market economies representing more than half the global economy and an even larger share of the world’s population by 2050. But will emerging-market cities be healthy enough to drive rapid economic growth?
OXFORD – The forces that drove the growth of European and North American cities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are now driving urbanization in Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Russia, and other emerging-market countries. Because the growth of these cities has been accelerated and magnified by productive technologies, rapid internal migration, and high net reproduction rates, many have reached unprecedented sizes at breathless speed. Indeed, all but three of the world’s 20 largest cities are in emerging markets.
OXFORD – The forces that drove the growth of European and North American cities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are now driving urbanization in Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Russia, and other emerging-market countries. Because the growth of these cities has been accelerated and magnified by productive technologies, rapid internal migration, and high net reproduction rates, many have reached unprecedented sizes at breathless speed. Indeed, all but three of the world’s 20 largest cities are in emerging markets.