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Urban Development

The 2017 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals: a new visual guide to data and development

World Bank Data Team's picture
Also available in: 中文 | العربية | Español | Français

The World Bank is pleased to release the 2017 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals. With over 150 maps and data visualizations, the new publication charts the progress societies are making towards the 17 SDGs.

The Atlas is part of the World Development Indicators (WDI) family of products that offer high-quality, cross-country comparable statistics about development and people’s lives around the globe. You can:

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and their associated 169 targets are ambitious. They will be challenging to implement, and challenging to measure. The Atlas offers the perspective of experts in the World Bank on each of the SDGs.

Trends, comparisons + country-level analysis for 17 SDGs

For example, the interactive treemap below illustrates how the number and distribution of people living in extreme poverty has changed between 1990 and 2013. The reduction in the number of poor in East Asia and Pacific is dramatic, and despite the decline in the Sub-Saharan Africa’s extreme poverty rate to 41 percent in 2013, the region’s population growth means that 389 million people lived on less than $1.90/day in 2013 - 113 million more than in 1990

Note: the light shaded areas in the treemap above represent the largest number of people living in extreme poverty in that country, in a single year, over the period 1990-2013.

Newly published data, methods and approaches for measuring development

Chart: Public Transport in African Cities Often Unaffordable

Tariq Khokhar's picture
Also available in: 中文

The typical household in many African cities cannot afford public transport fares. According to a new report, public transport in Sub-Saharan Africa's major cities is dominated by informal minibuses, and is expensive relative to household budgets making it largely unaffordable on a daily basis, especially for the poorest.

Read more in the new report "Africa’s Cities - Opening Doors to the World"

Chart: 25 Years of Growth in The World's Largest Cities

Tariq Khokhar's picture
Also available in: العربية | 中文

By 2030, two thirds of the world will live in cities. The world's 12 largest city areas are each home to over 15 million people, and over the last 25 years, cities such as Delhi, Shanghai and Beijing have tripled in size.

Chart: Over Half the World Lives in Cities

Tariq Khokhar's picture
Also available in: 中文

Over half the world lives in cities, and those cities are responsible for over 80% of global GDP. However, the high density of people, jobs, and assets which make cities so successful, also makes them vulnerable to the wide range of natural and manmade shocks and stresses increasingly affecting them today. Read more about how the World Bank is investing in urban reslience. 

A tale of many cities: monitoring the world's urban transformation

Chandan Deuskar's picture
Also available in: Español | العربية | Français


This is part of a series of blogs focused on the Sustainable Development Goals and data from the 2016 Edition of World Development Indicators.  Chris Sall also contributed to this blog.

By 2030 around 60 percent of people will live in urban areas, according to the UN. Much of the 1 billion increase in urban population between now and 2030 will be in Asia and Africa, both of which are in the midst of transformations that will permanently change their economic, environmental, social, and political trajectories.

Sustainable Development Goal 11 aims to ensure that cities and other human settlements are safe, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable by targeting housing and slums, transportation, participatory planning processes, cultural heritage, waste management, air quality, disaster risk management, and other issues.

Chart: By 2030, Delhi’s Population Will Approach Tokyo’s

Tariq Khokhar's picture
Also available in: العربية | Español | 中文 | Français
According to the UN's World Urbanization Prospects, by 2030, the world is projected to have 41 mega-cities with more than 10 million inhabitants each. Tokyo is expected to remain the world’s largest city in 2030, followed closely by Delhi. The fastest-growing cities will be in Asia and Africa.

But what exactly is a city?

Chandan Deuskar's blog explores exactly this question. There's currently no standard definition of an "urban area" or "urban population" - each country relies on its own definition and collects data accodringly. This is an important area of data to improve - the Sustainable Development Goals include many indicators and targets explicity concerning cities and new standards and approaches such as using satellite imagery may provide more accurate data and definitions. 
 

New data and research help measure a decade of urban expansion across East Asia

Chandan Deuskar's picture
Also available in: Français | العربية | Español
How do you measure something when there’s no agreement on how to define an indicator?  How do you compare urban data when the word “urban” doesn’t have the same definition in every country? And what happens when cities stop counting the population that starts to spill over the municipal boundaries?
 

 

Tracking Urbanization: How big data can drive policies to make cities work for the poor

Axel van Trotsenburg's picture

Every minute, dozens of people in East Asia move from the countryside to the city.
The massive population shift is creating some of the world’s biggest mega-cities including Tokyo, Shanghai, Jakarta, Seoul and Manila, as well as hundreds of medium and smaller urban areas.

This transformation touches on every aspect of life and livelihoods, from access to clean water to high-speed trains that transport millions of people in and out of cities during rush hour each weekday.

Africa’s urban population growth: trends and projections

Leila Rafei's picture
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On the periphery of Lagos, Nigeria, lies Makoko, a burgeoning slum community perched on a lagoon. Residents live in makeshift homes on stilts made of collected wood and tarp, and get around primarily by canoe.  Once a small fishing village, Makoko now draws migrants from neighboring countries, who flock to Nigeria for low-paying, unskilled jobs.
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