World Bank

East Asia's changing urban landscape: measuring a decade of spatial growth - Urban development series World Bank

This book is based on the findings of analysis that measured the expansion and population change in urban agglomerations across East Asia between 2000 and 2010. Key findings show an overall rapid pace of urban growth, both in terms of land and population, dominated mostly by China. In the coming decades, urban areas will be the place where millions of East Asians will have the chance to leave extreme poverty behind and to prosper. But getting the urban form, density, and administrative coordination right will be essential to increase the odds of that happening. There is much policy makers can do to influence urban growth in a coordinated way both at a national level through a system of cities and at the level of individual agglomerations to make urban growth more economically efficient, more socially inclusive, and more environmentally sustainable.