2035, urbanization has changed the world as well as the country. India, the world’s third-largest economy after America with China already surpassing the USA and India surpassing Japan to become a larger #economy is now behind China in terms of urbanization with 675 million people living in urbanized cities as compared to China which has 1bn people living in urbanized cities. But what is the cost of urbanization? Social cost? Is it positive or negative? Has it eased our leaving or are we becoming more AI-driven?
Technology has always been the driving force for any change in society be it from the industrial revolution in the 18th century to the advancement of the Internet. The world has changed massively and is continuously changing with cities transforming into smart ones with more #opportunities and #betterment of life. Cities change the future and they are the #engines of economic growth and modernization. With half of the world now living in #urban cities. It is this urbanization that is changing the trajectory of growth miraculously. The present cities which are in the top 10 with the highest #GDP share might not be there in the list of 2035. A report by Oxford Economics claims that most of the cities will be from Asia with New York and London still being the leader as it has deep roots in banking and finance institutes. Likewise, Population and demographics can become major assets to a country’s growth. India’s burgeoning working-age demographics will present a #unique advantage for themselves and the country is projected to contain several of the fastest-growing cities in the coming years. If we talk about the annual GDP growth rate of the cities which are likely to top the charts, it is also a surprise for the West. Not a single city is from the West anymore but all are from the Asian block, mainly dominated by India and China, and some cities from Southeast Asia. Bangalore with a massive GDP growth rate of 8.5 percent leads the pack followed by Dhaka, Mumbai, and Delhi. Bangalore has a colossal amount of talent pool and the startup culture makes it unique on its own. It is safe to say the next Silicon Valley of Asia and the world is Bangalore itself. The amount of startups it generates now is huge. It has the potential to be one of the most urbanized cities in the world. The annual average GDP growth of the entire world, which will be around 2.5 percent, is very minimal for these cities which will surpass it by a fair amount.
Surely countries will grow as well as cities will be modernized to cater to the needs of society. Migration from rural to urban has been a key reason for the expansion of urban cities. But if we can maintain a balance between both the environment and sustainable growth, the future would be better for us as well as our future generations. Climate change is real and it’s affecting us. The impacts of climate change will lead to a worsening of environmental conditions in vast regions in the form of extended heat episodes, more erratic rainfall, drought, and flooding. As we are seeing in Europe, China, and Pakistan. Heatwaves in the entire continent of Europe have caused problems in society, likewise, China is experiencing severe heat waves in the country causing rivers to dry up due to which hydroelectricity cannot be generated. Pakistan witnessed an unprecedented amount of floods in the region. Out of 160 districts,110 districts are underwater and a loss of almost 10bn dollars. These impacts particularly affect rural agrarian and pastoralist communities of society which heavily depend on the environment. With livelihoods being increasingly disrupted by climate change across the globe, climate-driven migration will likely increase. According to the World Bank Groundswell report, Sub-Saharan, and Southeast Asia could see more than 130 million people move within their countries’ making it a massive amount of migration if no urgent global and national climate actions are taken right now.(Rigaud et al., 2018) Urbanization also affects the broader prospects of regional environments. Regions downwind from large industrial complexes also see huge increases in the amount of air pollution, precipitation, and the number of days with thunderstorms. Urban areas generate more rain, but they reduce the infiltration of water and thus lower the water tables.
Energy consumption for electricity, transportation, cooking, and heating is much higher in urban areas than in rural villages. For example, urban populations nowadays have more cars than rural populations. Almost all of the cars in the world in the 1930s were in the country of the United States. Today we have a car for every two people in that country. China, the United States, and India are the top three countries that contribute to the global greenhouse emitter. If that becomes the norm, in 2050 there would be almost 5.3 billion cars in the world, all using the energy of cars and destroying the environment with their global emission.
A large share of migrants will be moving to cities. In many countries, including the G20 ones, urbanization processes are driven by rural-urban migration in response to rapid changes in production, especially manufacturing. India is now trying to catch up with manufacturing after becoming successful in the service sector as it sees an opportunity in front of them. With China 2035 moving towards a more AI-based service sector, it will be the young population of India that will cater to the needs of the world. Better labor market prospects in urban areas pull in young people, while lack of social and economic opportunities as well as environmental drivers of the society push people out of their rural origins to search for a better and higher standard of living in the urban centers. As a consequence, G20 countries like China, India, and South Africa have seen major urban growth in the past decades. People who live in urban areas have very different consumption patterns than the residents of rural areas. For example, urban populations consume much more amounts of food, energy, and durable goods than rural populations. In China during the 1970s, the urban populations also consumed more than twice as much pork as the rural populations who were raising pigs. With economic development, people now have declined their consumption as the rural populations of the countries ate better diets.
The health implications of environmental problems include respiratory infections and other infectious and parasitic diseases. Capital costs for building improved environmental infrastructure are also costly for example, investments in a cleaner public transportation system such as a subway — and for building more hospitals and clinics are higher in cities than people in rural areas, where wages exceed those paid in rural areas and also the cost to avail the services are much higher in urban cities than in rural areas.
Infrastructure does play an important role in the process of urbanization. India, which is now aiming toward a 5 trillion economy, is building up a huge infrastructure to support the economy. Infrastructure like roads, bridges, and railway networks are the veins of an economy. Just like China created a pool of massive infrastructures to support the economy Being a developing country India has to prioritize sectors for their both inclusive as well as exclusive growth and as India moves towards a manufacturing hub, India needs to move towards better network and fast-paced network to support the movement of logistics Often it is said- roads are the true mirror of the economy as India is moving from highways to expressways it needs to sustain these changes so that shortly you have infrastructures ready to move ahead in leaps and bounds. Therefore, to enable macroeconomic stabilization through the expansion of revenue expenditure, ring-fencing of capital expenditure levels as a share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) becomes critical.
Of course, any number of variables could impact these projections of 2035, from financial recessions to wars, food securities to pandemics, and political uncertainty to rapid urbanization and technological advances.
But one thing’s certain— it is in these coming decades, cities are where many of these factors will converge and play out on the world stage.
Blackcoffer Insights 44: Souptik Dirghangi, MOUSUMI PROKASHANI PRIVATE LIMITED
