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This article was first published 12 years ago

25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Last updated on: August 14, 2012 12:09 IST

Image: The buildings of European headquarters of the UN are pictured in Geneva.
Photographs: Denis Balibouse/Reuters

The move to urban living is lifting the incomes of millions of people around the world. In cities, one billion people will enter the global "consuming class" by 2025, with incomes high enough to become significant consumers of goods and services.

Let's take a look at three Indian cities that are growing fastest and 25 fastest-growing cities in the world, according to a study by McKinsey Global Institute.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: Guards stand in Mughal gardens surrounding Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.
Photographs: Pool/Reuters

New Delhi

Global rank: 39

New Delhi is known as the microcosm of India and is one of the world's top global cities The metropolis of Delhi is the second-most populous in India, with a total population nearing 17 million residents, and the 10th most populous city in the world by city proper.

New Delhi is the most expensive city in India for expatriates in terms of cost of living, figuring 113th in the list of 214 cities.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: A view of the Bandra-Worli sea link bridge, also called the Rajiv Gandhi Sethu, in Mumbai.
Photographs: John Goh/Reuters

Mumbai

Global rank: 53

Mumbai is the commercial and entertainment capital of India, it is also one of the world's top 10 centres of commerce in terms of global financial flow, generating five per cent of India's GDP, and accounting for 25 per cent of industrial output, 70 per cent of maritime trade in India, and 70 per cent of capital transactions to India's economy.

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Tags: India , GDP

25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: Metro train travels along an elevated track as traffic passes below in the Indira Nagar area of Bangalore.
Photographs: Vivek Prakash/Reuters

Bangalore

Global rank: 75

As a large and growing metropolis, Bangalore is home to many well-recognised colleges and research institutions in India. Numerous public sector heavy industries, software companies, aerospace, telecommunications and defence organisations are located in the city.

Bangalore is known as the Silicon Valley of India because of its position as the nation's leading IT exporter.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: China Maritime Museum is seen in the Shanghai Lingang Industrial Parkin in Shanghai.
Photographs: Aly Song/Reuters

Shanghai

Global rank: 1

The move to urban living is lifting the incomes of millions of people around the world. In cities, one billion people will enter the global "consuming class" by 2025, with incomes high enough to become significant consumers of goods and services.

Around 600 million of them will live in only around 440 cities in emerging markets that are expected to generate close to half of global GDP growth between 2010 and 2025.

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Tags: , GDP , Shanghai

25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: A view of the city skyline from the Zhongfu Building at night in Beijing.
Photographs: Jason Lee/Reuters

Beijing

Global rank: 2

The incomes of these new consuming classes are rising even faster than the number of individuals in the consuming classes. This means that many products and services are hitting take-off points at which their consumption rises swiftly and steeply.

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Tags: , Beijing

25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: Two women walk through a building that resembles a Roman Coliseum at the Florentia Village in Wuqing, located on the outskirts of Tianjin.
Photographs: David Gray/Reuters

Tianjin

Global rank: 3

By 2025, urban consumers are likely to inject around $20 trillion a year in additional spending into the world economy. Catering to the burgeoning urban consumer classes will also require a boom in the construction of buildings and infrastructure.

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Tags: , Tianjin

25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: Storm clouds are seen above the city in Sao Paulo.
Photographs: Stringer/Reuters

Sao Paulo

Global rank: 4

MGI estimates that cities will need annual physical capital investment to more than double from nearly $10 trillion today to more than $20 trillion by 2025, the lion's share of which will be in the emerging world.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: View of Chinese city of Guangzhou.
Photographs: Siu Chiu/Reuters

Guangzhou

Global rank: 5

This huge sum of consumption and investment could inject more than $30 trillion of annual spending into the world economy by 2025 - a powerful and welcome boost to global economic growth.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: High rise commercial and residential buildings are seen in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.
Photographs: Siu Chiu/Reuters

Shenzhen

Global rank: 6

But there will be challenges, too. Rapidly urbanising emerging economies and their increasingly wealthy consumers are already driving strong demand for the world's natural and capital resources.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: The Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge is seen from the 90th storey of One World Trade Center in New York.
Photographs: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

New York

Global rank: 7

Cities can be part of the solution to such stresses, as concentrated population centers can be more productive in their resource use than areas that are more sparsely populated.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: A man steers his boat past a bridge on the Yangtze River near Wanzhou in the Chongqing municipality in the south-west part of China.
Photographs: David Gray/Reuters

Chongqing

Global rank: 8

But if cities fail to invest in a way that keeps abreast of the rising needs of their growing populations, they may lock in inefficient, costly practices that will become constraints to sustained growth later on.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: People cross a road, with the Vostok or East tower, seen in the background in Moscow.
Photographs: David Gray/Reuters

Moscow

Global rank: 9

How countries and cities meet this rising urban demand therefore matters a great deal. Beyond the direct impact of the investment, their choices will have broad effects on global demand for resources, capital investment, and labor market outcomes.

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Tags: , Moscow

25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: Japan's Mt Fuji, covered with snow, is seen through Shinjuku skyscrapers in Tokyo.
Photographs: Kimimasa Mayama/Reuters

Tokyo

Global rank: 10

How companies and governments react to this tectonic shift will fundamentally shape their future prospects.

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Tags: , Tokyo

25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: A boat plys the water of East Lake at sunset in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
Photographs: China Photos/Reuters

Wuhan

Global rank: 11

The MGI Cityscope is a database of more than 2,600 cities around the world that allows us to understand the evolving shape of global urban economies; extract many different city rankings and groupings by region, variable, and target market; test the growth momentum from doing business in particular geographies; and develop projections of growth in urban markets of a range of products and services.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: A view of the downtown area in Los Angeles.
Photographs: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

Los Angeles

Global rank: 12

Until 1500, Asia was the centre of gravity of the world economy, accounting for roughly two-thirds of global GDP. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, urbanisation and industrialisation vaulted Europe and the United States to prominence.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: Worker introduces a ceramic tiger to visitors at an exhibition hall of Xinshiwan ceramic factory in Foshan, Guangdong province, China.
Photographs: Joe Tan/Reuters

Foshan

Global rank: 13

China's economic transformation resulting from urbanisation and industrialisation is happening at 100 times the scale of the first country in the world to urbanise - the United Kingdom - and at 10 times the speed.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: A view of Istanbul's financial district.
Photographs: Murad Sezer/Reuters

Istanbul

Global rank: 14

The recession that has hit the United States and Western Europe particularly hard has accelerated the shift in the global economic balance. From 2007 to 2010, the GDP of large Chinese cities rose from 20 per cent of that of large cities in the United States to 37 per cent.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: Window cleaners wash windows of the Zifeng Tower in Nanjing.
Photographs: Aly Song/Reuters

Nanjing

Global rank: 15

In these three years alone, three more Chinese cities reached megacity status with populations of 10 million or more - one new megacity a year. Contrast that with the developed world, whose urban landscape is far more mature.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: Visitors cross 260-metre Anian cable bridge over Minjiang River at Dujiangyan, 50km north of Chengdu, capital of China's Sichuan province.
Photographs: Bobby Yip/Reuters

Chengdu

Global rank: 16

Between now and 2025, Chicago is the only city in the developed world expected to pass the 10 million population mark.

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Tags: , Chengdu , Global , Chicago

25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: A fishing boat is seen at sunset on the West Lake in Hangzhou, capital city of east China's Zhejiang Province.
Photographs: China Photos/Reuters

Hangzhou

Global rank: 17

But the speed at which the global balance is changing is not simply a China and Asia story. In 2007, the GDP of Latin America's cities was 26 per cent that of their European counterparts; by 2010, that figure had risen to 37 per cent.

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Tags: , GDP , Latin America , China , Asia

25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: Migrant workers carrying their luggage walk to the Dongguan East train station in China
Photographs: Bobby Yip/Reuters

Dongguan

Global rank: 18

Urban growth is highly concentrated in just a few hundred cities and will continue to be. The analysis suggests that just the top 600 cities by their contribution to global GDP growth to 2025 - a group MGI calls the City 600 - will generate nearly 65 per cent of world economic growth in this period.

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Tags: MGI , GDP

25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: An aerial view of Marina Bay and Singapore.
Photographs: David Loh/Reuters

Singapore

Global rank: 19

Today, the City 600 is home to just over 20 per cent of the world's population but accounts for nearly $34 trillion, or more than half, of global GDP.

Between 2010 and 2025, we expect the City 600's combined GDP to nearly double to $65 trillion.

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Tags: GDP , Global , Singapore

25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: Piccadilly Circus at rush hour in central London.
Photographs: Olivia Harris/Reuters

London

Global rank: 20

But the most dramatic chapter of today's urbanisation story is the role played by the so-called Emerging 440. These emerging market cities in the City 600 will account for close to half (47 per cent) of expected global GDP growth between 2010 and 2025.

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Tags: , GDP , City , London

25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: Traffic flows at dusk with the downtown Houston skyline in the background as night falls.
Photographs: Richard Carson/Reuters

Houston

Global rank: 21

The Emerging 440 boasts 20 megacities, including Shanghai in China, Sao Paulo in Brazil, Istanbul in Turkey and Lagos in Nigeria.

Together these megacities will generate an estimated $5.8 trillion of GDP growth by 2025, a compound annual growth of 7.6 per cent - almost double the growth rate expected for the global economy as a whole.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: A view of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in Dallas, Texas.
Photographs: Mike Stone/Reuters

Dallas

Global rank: 22

But more than 400 cities of the group are middleweight cities with populations of between 200,000 and 10 million, spread out across 57 countries and every continent except for Oceania.

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Tags: , Dallas , Oceania

25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: Tomb No 1, the largest of the three pits where China's army of terracotta soldiers are buried, at a museum located about 40km from the ancient capital of Xian in northern China.
Photographs: Viktor Korotayev/Reuters

Xian

Global rank: 23

We expect these middleweights to grow even faster at an eight per cent annual compound rate, contributing $17.7 trillion in GDP growth by 2025.

In the Emerging 440, China is an important part of the equation with 242 cities in this group, of which 236 are middleweights.

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Tags: , GDP , China

25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: Downtown Washington is seen in an aerial view.
Photographs: Jim Bourg/Reuters

Washington

Global rank: 24

Latin America has 57 cities in this dynamic group, 53 of them middleweights including Belo Horizonte in Brazil and Cali in Colombia. South Asia, including India, has 36 cities in this group.

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25 fastest-growing cities in the world

Image: A view shows the Concorde obelisk, Champs Elysees Avenue and the Arc de Triomphe monument in Paris.
Photographs: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

Paris

Global rank: 25

There are 28 Indian middleweight cities in the Emerging 440, including Bangalore, Pune, and Kochi. Africa and the Middle East together contribute 39 cities to the group, and 37 of them are middleweights, including Angola's capital Luanda, Kumasi in Ghana, Port Harcourt in Nigeria and Doha in Qatar.