Quote:
Originally Posted by yuriandrade
New Delhi and its neighbouring districts (16,373 km² - as comparison New York MSA is at 17,315 km²) had 34.7 million inh. according to the 2011 Census. It will probably be above 41 million for 2021.
So I guess New Delhi is on its way to reach those 60 million inh.
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Delhi may be one of the very few exceptions, considering that the Indian Capital region has relatively decent transport infrastructure bones and a large and growing metro network. However that does not consider the fact that commute times are a big factor in where people choose to live. Manila is rather small in urban area but has a very high average commute, some even taking upwards of 4 hours.
I doubt many will have the tolerance to commute upwards of 5 hours just to get to work, which is something that seems likely in the "predicted" megacities of 60+ million people, Much of this urban migration will move to other locations as commutes stop being hellish and start becoming downright impossible to achieve.
There are also geographic considerations, Kinshasa and Dar Es Salaam have serious hurdles in terms of developing transport infrastructure, Lagos as I had stated will likely be severely impacted by rising sea levels to the point where I would presume many internal migrants would turn to Abuja. Another major consideration that has been pointed out by CaliNative that many nations would likely struggle to be able to feed that many people, especially since they are less developed, the logistics in supporting a large urban population requires good transport infrastructure, and in some cases even requires nations to import food from abroad to meet demand, I don't see how that is sustainable in other than the short term.
This last point is a bit subjective but I also find it difficult to consider one conurbanation a single city if people in different parts of a large 'megalopolis' commute to very distant centres. There is a difference of a single city with many nodes, and completely separate cities in close proximity and even share the same 'built-up' area. A couple notable examples would be Washington DC and Baltimore; and New York and Philadelphia. Both pairs have minimal undeveloped land between each respective urban area, Washington and Baltimore share the same 'Built up' area as well, but they are considered separate because few people commute from the Baltimore metro to Washington DC and vice versa, even more so for New York and Philadelphia. There are some, but not enough to really consider either a single urban area.