Urban Transport in the OIC Megacities
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2. Current State in the OIC Member States
2.1. Introduction
Over the past century, the urban population of the planet has grown rapidly. In 1900, 10% of the
world’s population lived in cities. By 2007 this %age had increased to 50%, and it is expected that
75%of the world population will be living in cities by 2050. Today, over half of the world’s population
(54%) lives in urban areas although there is still substantial variability in the levels of urbanization
across countries (Gehl, 2010; United Nations, 2014).
2.2. What is a Megacity?
The urban population growth of the 19th Century was fuelled more by migration from rural areas to
manufacturing centres than by absolute population growth. As a result, last decades have witnessed
the emergence of a number of megacities. The most common definition of a megacity is a city with a
population of 10 million or more. This definition is also used in the “World Urbanization Prospects:
The 2014 Revision” report published by the United Nations (2014), which is the basis for the
classification used in this report. In this report, the term urban agglomeration1 is used instead of the
term city. This term was considered appropriate for the present study as transport problems and
solutions for a city are not and should not be limited to its administrative or geographical boundaries.
Cities and megacities in particular, have significantly larger trip catchment areas especially for
commuting purposes (Schubel and Levi, 2000).
The estimates of the proportion of the population that is urban and the size of urban agglomerations
presented in “World Urbanisation Prospects: The 2014 Revision” are based on national statistics.
Population censuses are the most commonly used sources of data, although estimates obtained from
population registers or administrative statistics are also incorporated for some countries. It is
recognised that there is no common global definition of what constitutes an urban settlement and the
definitions given by various national statistics offices vary widely across countries. In estimating the
proportion of urban in the World Urbanization Prospects, adjustments were made to the national
estimates only to ensure consistency of the definitions of urban settlements within countries across
time (United Nations, 2014).
below, includes a list of 28 megacities of 10 million inhabitants or more.
Table 1: Population size and ranking of urban agglomeration as of 1 July 2014
Urban
Agglomeration
Country or
area
Population(thousands) Rank
Average
annual rate
of change
(percent)
2010-2015
1990 2014 2030 1990 2014 2030
Tokyo Japan 32530 37833 37190 1 1 1 0.6
Delhi India 9726 24953 36060 12 2 2 3.2
Shanghai China 7823 22991 30751 20 3 3 3.4
Cuidad de Mexico
(Mexico City)
Mexico 15642 20843 23865 4 4 10 0.8
Sao Paulo Brazil 14776 20831 23444 5 5 11 1.4
Mumbai (Bombay) India 12436 20741 27706 23 8 5 4.6
1“A large locality of a country (that is to say, a city or a town) is often part of an urban agglomeration, which comprises
the city or town proper and also the suburban fringe or thickly settled territory lying outside, but adjacent to, its
boundaries. The urban agglomeration is therefore not identical with the locality but is an additional geographical unit,
which may include more than one locality. In some cases, a single large urban agglomeration may comprise several
cities or towns and their suburban fringe” (United Nations, 2013b).