The World Bank recently released the East Asia’s Changing Urban Landscape report, a study on the spatial growth of urbanisation in East Asia between 2000 and 2010. The study used detailed data collected from more than 850 urban areas along with satellite imagery to provide one of the most comprehensive studies on the pace, scale and form of urbanisation to date.

The study found:

Nearly 200 million moved to urban areas in East Asia from 2000-2010, a figure which would be the world’s sixth largest population for any single country.
Most of East Asia's population still lives outside urban areas, meaning the region will continue to face decades of further urbanisation.
The Pearl River Delta in China – which includes the cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan and Dongguan – has overtaken Tokyo as the world’s largest urban area in both size and population, with more inhabitants than countries such as Argentina, Australia or Canada.

Important to the work of economists and planners across the region, the study reinforced the correlation between urbanisation and economic development. GDP per capita for more than 12 countries was tracked alongside the growth of the urban population (as a percentage of whole population) and consistently showed a positive correlation. However, whilst urbanisation can bring economic opportunity, it must also be accompanied by strong urban management to avoid the problems of exacerbated inequality in access to services, employment and housing along with significant environmental impacts.

The good news is that East Asia appears better equipped to face the challenges of urbanisation. When comparing the urbanisation threshold of 50%, East Asia is urbanising at higher incomes, providing cities with the opportunities to finance the infrastructure required to support urban growth. East Asia passed this threshold in 2009 with average GPD per capita at $5,300 which is significantly higher than Latin America who crossed the same threshold in 1961 with a GDP per capita of $2,900. In comparison Sub-Saharan Africa with an urbanisation rate of 37%, has an average GDP per capita of $992.

Communicating complex economic and demographic data is always a challenge for economists and planners. In response, the World Bank set up a competition to visualise the massive data set developed for the East Asia report. Released this week, the winning entry by Nadieh Bremer is a fascinating summary of the spatial story of urbanisation in region and can be viewed by clicking on the image below.