42 million inhabitants: The world’s largest city is starting to sink

In 1950, about one fifth of the world’s population lived in cities; today that number is approaching 50 % when looking at areas with more than 50,000 inhabitants.

At the same time, the number of megacities with more than 10 million people has gone from 8 to 33 in roughly 50 years.

At the top of the new ranking we no longer find Tokyo but Jakarta. Indonesia’s capital now has approximately 42 million inhabitants, and the congestion gives new meaning to words like rush hour and traffic jam.

The city’s shopping centres cover as much ground as a small municipality, and drivers can spend so much time at a standstill that a trip on the motorway starts to feel like a slow walk through town.

According to the UN’s new urbanisation report, we live in a world where big cities have become engines for growth, consumption and migration, while some of them at the same time are moving in a very different direction – downwards.

When the groundwater disappears, the city goes with it

Jakarta has become a textbook example of how quickly things can change when growth runs ahead of planning.

Regional studies show the city is sinking between 10 and 30 centimetres a year.

Millions of people and a large number of businesses are pumping groundwater from beneath the city. As the water disappears, the soil loses its strength and neighbourhoods subside.

At the same time, sea levels are rising, storms are getting stronger, and uneven tides are pushing in towards the coast. In the end, entire districts will end up below sea level.

A massive coastal wall is, for now, keeping the sea out, but it looks more like a postponement than a lasting solution.

Local media such as the Jakarta Globe report on residential areas where the ground floors of houses lie lower than the water outside the dikes.

At one end of the city, new skyscrapers are shooting up and sketching a modern skyline, while at the other end residents are battling floods, damp damage and a basic uncertainty how long their neighbourhood will remain liveable.

Asia’s megacities

The new list of the world’s largest cities is dominated by Asia. After Jakarta come Dhaka, Tokyo, New Delhi, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and only in seventh place do we find a city outside the continent, Cairo, with 25.6 million inhabitants.

Manila, Calcutta and Seoul complete the top ten, while São Paulo, Mexico City, Bombay, Beijing and Osaka sit just below.

This shift is changing the centre of gravity in the global economy. Investment, jobs and talent are increasingly moving towards gigantic regions in Asia and the Middle East.

The effects can be felt all the way up in Northern Europe, where exports, supply chains and the industry of the future are having to adapt.

At the same time, overtourism is growing in many major cities, so travel writers are pointing to more distant destinations like Bhutan in the Himalayas as an expensive but attractive alternative. The capital, Thimphu, has roughly the same number of inhabitants as Cheltenham in England, which means it is far from being a giant metropolis in the style of Jakarta or Tokyo.