Mehr  News Agency: Regarding the latest statistics of urbanization at the global level, Seyyed Mohsen Tabatabaei Mozdabadi, the secretary of IUESA said, “Urbanization has been rapidly increased in the world since the second half of last century and this trend has been more prominent in the developing countries”.

Saying that in the beginning of the 20th century Japan and temperate zone of Latin America were urbanized across Asia, Latin America, Africa had the majority of urbanized people, he said, but the mentioned areas changed into the most urbanized areas with high rate of urbanization during 20th century and particularly its second half.

Adding that the world population was mainly rural in 1950 so that more than two-third of the world population lived in rural settlements, but more than half of the world population became urbanized in 2014, he said, it is predicted that two-third of the world population become urbanized by 2050.

Emphasizing that the world urban population has reached from 0.7 billion people in 1950 to 3.9 billion people in 2014 and according to the UN it is predicted that it will reach to 6.3 billion people by 2050, he added, among 233 countries in 1950 only 15% of them had urban population with more than 60% and only 6% of them had urbanization more than 80%, but in 2014, half of the countries had more than 60% urban population and 25% of countries had urbanization more than 80%.  The figures for 2050 will be as follows: nearly 70% of the world countries will experience more than 60% urban population and 38% of them will have more than 80% urbanization. There will be only 27 countries in 2050 that its urban population will be less than 40% and also among different countries, North America, Latin America and Caribbean area will have the highest rate of urbanization and more than 80% of their population was citizens in 2014.

Adding that 70% of Europe population was urbanized and it is expected that it will reach to 80% by 2050, he said, urban population was 40% and 48% in Asia and Africa respectively and urban areas of Asia and Africa will cover all the world population increase during 2014 to 2050.