Sustainability and protection of the environment should be front and center in any assessment of cities of the future.

Like Mr. Tochukwu, a lot of people find the fact that Ibadan is growing so fast unbelievable. While I do not dispute that Onicha and Port Harcourt should have been included, I work out of Ibadan and it is surprising to see the enormous growth that has taken place, given its closeness to Lagos and other cities.

The number of people who now live in Ibadan and work in Lagos is also rapidly increasing; if it were not for the bad road network, that number would be even bigger. There has also been an increasing number of weekenders who stay in Lagos during the week and visit their families in Ibadan on the weekend. Factories are also moving to Ibadan for its cheaper infrastructure and easier access to Lagos and other parts of Nigeria. I think McKinsey got this right, but the omission of Onithsa and Port Harcourt should be looked into.

I would have expected to see more growth throughout Brazil, especially in Brazilian coastal cities such as São Paulo and especially Rio de Janeiro with the recent discoveries of pre-salt fields. Furthermore, the Brazilian company Petrobras will be the operator of all future pre-salt discoveries, which is estimated to result in 50 billion barrels of oil, whereas its current reserves are 14.2 billion barrels. As the Brazilian president has noted, Petrobras is the country’s “passport to the future.”

I am surprised that you would feature Ibadan (in southwestern Nigeria) among the 600 global cities of the future without making a mention of either Onicha in the southeast or Port Harcourt in the far south of the country. Onicha is a major financial hub and linkage route for the whole of southern Nigeria, and it houses what is arguably the largest single market in the whole of Western Africa. The two cities are in the estimation of most Nigerians more viable financial centers than the ancient city of Ibadan.

I believe these projections may not quite play out. The first of the hurdles here, rightly pointed out by a few commenters, is the uneven resource distribution that may upset the sustainability of the growth rates currently enjoyed by the big Asian economies, China and India. This obviously will lead to resources exploitation abroad (mainly, in the Gulf and in Africa) and could lead to political unrest, thus making the resources costly and bringing down growth.

Second, while India does not depend heavily on exports to the developed world (except for in the IT industry), the Chinese do. And if the developed economies slow down or face crises as they are currently, then Chinese sustainability becomes questionable. So not everything is as linear as is assumed, or even exponential.

Finally, I believe the migrations to cities—and, hence, their growth—will be powered mainly by the drop in agricultural returns, in which case even the food availability will pose questions in front of the projected population.

Lucknow, the capital of India’s most populous state, has a culture of ‘nazakat and tehzeeb,’ which means finesse in relationships for ages. It has all the potential to be the customer relationship management hub for the world. This is an unteachable natural ingredient essential for responsive health care and hospitality—already, some of the best hotel chains recruit front-office staff largely from Lucknow, and some of the best medical professionals also come from there.

The most interesting facts to me are the growth projections for China. You see cities like Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin around 42 to 45 per capita GDP, which is seen as surpassing Berlin and on a par with Montreal and almost Tokyo.

Obviously that requires very strong growth over the next decade or so and lots of potential to be derailed. Secondarily, if true, this fact suggests even greater social and political pressures within China itself as the western regions will remain far less developed (they too have impressive growth rates so the ratio of income disparity may drop).

Cities like Wuhan are expected to essentially double their income every 6 years to achieve that rate. I just do not believe that is possible, though that does not take away from the enormous growth story going on there at all.

Qujing is expected to go from $1,000 per cap GDP to $8,000. Yizhou from $3,000 to $29,000. All the while the population in these cities doubles. This is an honest extrapolation, but shows the dangers/limitations of such analysis.

Madrid and Barcelona’s per capita income shrinking projections seem acurate to me. I do not agree with the growth in the number of people of all cities in general, though. Standard of living and the demand for telework keep increasing, as do the costs of housing and living in the cities, and technology evolution plays towards more rural housing. Any thoughts against my expectations?

For sustainable growth, we must have a policy where industrial growth is distributed in smaller cites, also. We know that in a country like India, the infrastructure is still lacking in villages for starting bigger industries there. But, the infrastructure in smaller cities has improved enough to start bigger industrial clusters in smaller cities. This will relieve bigger cities from exploding and will definitely help to minimize the population migration to bigger cities. Also, this will help to increase the living standard in smaller cities, which will eventually develop as growth centers. This must be done as fast as possible, so that the overall development of country is evenly distributed across the geography. Many smaller cities with flourishing economies are far better than some Mega cities boast.

Increased urbanization is surely going to get affected by resource availability/scarcity. Considering that the globe can carry a maximum of 9.5 billion people because of resource availability, think of how this issue will be exacerbated within these top 600 cities, and the impact it will have on their development.

This trend needs to be taken into account. Also, see the impact of the recent disasters to metros like Tokyo. This drives home the point that there are more variables to this equation than simply a population x gdp x per capita math.

Economist Keith Boulding argued: “Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”.

This modeling ignores the finite nature of our non renewable resources and the cracking pace we are consuming them. Water, oil, and food will become the constraints of civilisation, irrespective of how climate change impacts us.

I wonder how this analysis would appear if conversative assumptions around resource depletion was applied.

Regarding the comment on March 27, “McKinsey managed to miss a country the size of the US called Australia”...

Is the chip on your shoulder obstructing your view? The five cities Syd, Mel, Adel, Bris and Perth are all on the first map and others.

Saw Detroit on the map. I sure would like to know where the optimism is coming from because I would like to have some.

I see in the hotspots that Indonesia and Philippines are mentioned as hot spots. What about Vietnam (which is part of the VISTA countries) and Thailand? Any reasons why these countries are not hot spots?

The article should be a wake up call to leaders in Africa. No city in Africa will be of a significant reckoning in the next fifteen years. Several cities in Asia seem to be building on the impetus of the last three decades in manufacuring, technology, and even agriculture and mining. I hope the failures of Africa will not be a drag on the rest of the world.

The projected GDP per capita figures for Belfast and Dublin appear to be very optimistic in comparison to similar sized cities in England and Scotland.

Here’s an interesting fact. The world’s population is estimated to grow on average by 38 percent over the next four decades, from 6.8 billion today, to 9.4 billion in 2050, according to the Washington-based think tank the Population Reference Bureau.

But get this: Australia’s Treasurer, Wayne Swan, has just announced that Australia’s rate of population growth will be approaching double that, or 65 percent, to 35 million by 2049. How does that stack up against other countries? Well, if you lined up all the leaders of the G20 nations according to expected percentage growth in their populations from now until 2050, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah would be in pole position. Australia’s Kevin Rudd comes second in line, followed by Manmohan Singh, India’s Prime Minister.

I wonder whether the planners would use appropriate weights to distribute taxes to avoid political unrest.

McKinsey managed to miss a country the size of the US called Australia.

I see a trend that cities of the future will become small micronations, where local administration will run the city as a country. Growth will be decided at local government level. In the future, cities will be managed as profit centers of productivity rather than cost centres where public spending gets stuck in red tape.

I was interested to see that it looks like you have the 2007 population of London at 14.5 million. The official figures show it to be 7.5 million. Am I bonkers or have you got an error there?

It would be interesting to know what will fuel the growth of the ‘middleweight’ cities that you mentioned. For example, Vishakapatnam in India, which is primarily a port city, whose growth has probably not taken off due to poor connectivity. What industries are likely to take off in Vishakapatnam? Similarly, you mentioned Vadodara, which is well connected but has not seen significant growth in the IT/ITES sector. Vadodara is known for the manufacturing sector, specifically chemicals. what will fuel Vadodara’s growth?

The future need not be an extrapolation of the past. Major disasters, scarce resources, the Internet, and growing rural prosperity (in India at least), could reduce if not reverse the trend of migration to metros. Farm labor is so hard to find in major producing belts with small land-holdings (and hence unsuited for current mechanization technologies), that it will soon bludgeon in to a significant food security issue. I know scores of farmers who have moved away from labor-intensive crops such as vegetables.

Perhaps we should consider urban facilities in villages and small towns, with caps on growth as per available infrastructure, as well as prohibition of unplanned occupation and construction. There could be potential for apocalypse if the projections in the article become real.

An individual is like an atom. If many individuals are structured in a community, these individuals act like a molecule. Like different molecules, different cities have different characteristics. If the strategy of growth at the country level still considers the individual utility, you’ll get a failure because the individual utilities have been changed by the structure of city.

I think that one more important factor in comparing cities is the PPP. It would help in comparing the living standards of the cities in emerging countries with the ones in developed countries. We’ll also have to consider the expected changes in PPP as the Forex equation evolves with the changing economic scenario.

I’ve watched your interactive map and I’ve missed the Rhin-Main-Region (around Frankfurt) in Germany. More than 6 million inhabitants and one of the most successful regions in Western-Germany, much more than, for example, the region of Saarbrücken.

My compliments on a very good presentation. It confirms the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. My only quibble is the omission of a clear statement on the source of the data presented.

As any analytical exercise which ventures into the dark waters of forecasting the future, I found this report intriguing and entertaining—though a quick look made me question the quality of the analyses behind the report. It appears that by 2025, Buenos Aires will have a per capita GDP of USD 13,000, a solid 60 percent below Montevideo across the river, about 25 percent below El Salvador in Central America, and on par with cities like Fortaleza and Belem in Brazil.

Surely nobody who was involved in the report has ever visited any of these places? Any forecasting effort is bound to produce a few comical results in retrospective, but this undermines the credibility of the whole report.

How much did you factor in impact political forces/changes, and socio-economic forces like of Porter’s five forces? Could they influence growth of adjacencies?

The one thing I would like to see that wasn’t there is a graphic of change from 2007 to 2025 (percent change and absolute change in each of the categories (population, GDP and per capita GDP).

The units of analyses do not seem comparable. While metro Beijing and Tokyo are shown as single units, metro San Francisco is shown in several parts (SF, San Jose, Santa Rosa). Metro Seoul is cut up into even more fine-grained chunks, strictly following city boundaries. Given this, I am wondering what meaningful interpretation I can assign to these results.

As I see them, the figures in the map are not accurate. The population of Munich was much lower than 3,328,000 in 2007. It was around 1.3 million.