This introduction covers 300,000 New Arrivals Every Year within Urban Sustainability and Megacities for GCSE Geography. Revise Urban Sustainability and Megacities in Urban Issues and Challenges for GCSE Geography with 17 exam-style questions and 20 flashcards. This is a high-frequency topic, so it is worth revising until the explanation feels precise and repeatable. It is section 1 of 14 in this topic. Use this introduction to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
🏙️ 300,000 New Arrivals Every Year
She is one of approximately 300,000 people who move to Dhaka every single year. That is the equivalent of a city the size of Coventry arriving in Dhaka in twelve months. Add them year after year, decade after decade, and you have one of the most extraordinary human stories of our time: the rise of the megacity.
In 1950, there were just two cities on Earth with more than 10 million inhabitants — New York and Tokyo. By 2024 there were 37 of them, home to more than half a billion people. Almost all of that growth happened not in the wealthy countries of Europe and North America, but in the rapidly urbanising nations of Africa and Asia. Understanding why megacities grow, what problems they create, and how those problems can be managed is one of the central challenges of 21st-century geography — and one of the most reliably examined topics in your GCSE.
Practice questions for Urban Sustainability and Megacities
What is the minimum population required for a city to be classified as a megacity?
Describe two features of a sustainable city.