The Big City 2015

Forbes has an interesting series of articles this week on the future of cities and the statistics are staggering. First, here’s a little history. The ten biggest cities in 1900 were:

1. London (6.5 million)
2. New York (4.2 million)
3. Paris (3.3 million)
4. Berlin (2.7 million)
5. Chicago (1.7 million)
6. Vienna (1.7 million
7. Tokyo (1.5 million)
8. St. Petersburg (1.4 million)
9. Manchester (1.4 million)
10.Philadelphia (1.4 million)

All but one of these cities—Tokyo—were in Europe or the United States.

Now here’s the projected top ten most populous cities list for 2015:

1. Tokyo (35.5 million)
2. Mumbai (21.9 million)
3. Mexico City (21.6 million)
4. Sao Paulo (20.5 million)
5. New York (19.9 million)
6. Delhi (18.6 million
7. Shanghai (17.2 million)
8. Calcutta (17.0 million)
9. Dhaka (16.8 million)
10.Jakarta (16.8 million)

Only one city on the 2015 list is in Europe or the United States: New York. Just off the bottom of the list are Lagos and Karachi with projected populations of 16.1 million and 15.2 million, respectively. The growth of Lagos is a story in itself. It had a population of 300,000 in 1950!

By the way, the projected world population for 2015 is about 7.2 billion.

Assuming any sizable population at all with some disposable income in these megacities, the center of the marketing world in the future certainly won’t be “The West.” I tried to find total marketing dollar spend per continent now and projected with no luck, but my assumption is there will be (has been) a pronounced shift to Asia.