Global Urban Transformation Map: Visualize the unprecedented urbanization of the world
The world is undergoing a rapid urban transformation and by 2050, two-thirds of the world population is predicted to live in urban areas compared to 54% today. The rate of transformation is phenomenal and this new visualization from Duncan Smith from the University College London is yet another great example of the power of visualizing data using maps – the Global Urban Transformation map!
The map uses data from the UN World Urban Propospects and the tools from CartoDB. For detailed information – have a look at this page. In addition to visualizing the urbanization trends from 1950 till date, the map also has some simple SQL queries that can be used to get a better idea of the urbanization e.g. “Highest absolute growth 2015-2030“.
The pace of recent change at the city level is unprecedented in human history. Shanghai (click on the city link to focus the map) gained 16 million people between 1990 and 2015, Beijing 13.6 million, Dhaka 11 million. Delhi gained 16 million residents between 1990-2015 and is now the world’s second largest city of 26m. Delhi will likely overtake Tokyo to become the world’s largest city in the 2030s with nearly 40m residents. – Luminocity.com
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Today is the last day of 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. Leaders from all around the world where discussing policies that could reduce global warming but still allowing country economies to grow.
Why it is important to act and why the world leaders suddenly started to care about it? Earlier this week we’ve written about a striking visualisation showing how will your city be affected by the rising sea level. Another visualisation below puts it in a global perspective…
It’s been predicted that the oceans will rise by around 65.8 metres (216 feet) if all ice on the planet were to melt completely. As National Geographic reported back in 2013, it would probably take at least 5,000 years to melt all five million cubic miles of ice on Earth, but some cities like Venice, Calcutta, Shanghai of most of the Florida could be under water much sooner.
If we don’t start to act now some changes will be irreversible and will even accelerate. So let’s start from our own backyard and start be more ‘ecological’ every day.
Source: Business Insider
