A megacity is a city with a population over 10 millions. On the page you can find a survey over all the megacities in the word. The survey is from 2006.
The statistics on page 136 shows how over the two last centuries the worlds population has gone from living in rural areas, too 60 % of the population living in cities.
Asia is the continent with the biggest amount of people living in rural areas, but there are also many people living in cities. In fact Japan has two of the biggest megacities in the world. After Asia comes Africa when it comes to the amount of the people living in rural areas. In Europe, South America and North America the majority lives in cities, and the statistics shows that as the population increase the population in cities will increase as well. So the majority of children in the time to come will grow up in cities.
In the cites in the southern part of the world the slum is a very big issue. One of three people living in megacities lives in slum areas. In Brazil for example many people live in so called favelas. Crime is a huge challenge in these areas and the people living there, especially the children do not have the safe surroundings that a child should have growing up.
For the last centuries there has been a huge growth of people within the cities and suburban areas. I think this development is going to continue, but I believe that the best solution for some people would be to settle in rural areas and live of growing crops and going back to the old way of living. Especially in the biggest cities where poverty and crime is a huge problem. Very often these people have no education and therefore no work.
An other question that we have to answer is how we are going to make room for all these people, and how we are going to feed them. Someone have to produce food for the next, big generation. We cannot afford all people in the world living like we in the western part of the world do today. The earth doesn't have the resources so everyone can live the life of a Norwegian or an American.
