Intro Quiz: Megacities

Video: Megacities

﻿Hello geographers and welcome to this urban lesson about megacities. I live in a really small village. We've got one small shop and a Junkie garage. Megacities have populations of over 10 million people, I can't even imagine what that must be like. I'm sure I'll get lost within about an hour. For today's lesson all you're going to need is a pen and paper. In a second I'm going to ask you to pause and take a moment to get those and clear away all the distractions around you Alternatively, you might choose to move to somewhere quieter. So you're not going to be disturbed, pause now and I'll see you back in a second. Well done. So we're going to write a title. It's megacities, underline it for me, and then we'll be ready to go. How has our population changed over time? This graph shows us world population growth. First thing that we notice is that our population has increased exponentially, but not only is our population changed, where we live is also changed, and this is due to the process of urbanisation. Urbanisation is an increase in the percentage of a population, Living in towns or cities. Urbanisation has meant that urban populations are increasing rapidly. More than 50% of our population live in cities today. The speed of this urbanisation though varies in different types of countries. Quick recap, world population has decreased or grown rapidly. Puts the area on the screen, Three, two, one, and I hope you got that it is grown rapidly. We use that word exponential. Which population is growing most rapidly though, urban or rural, three, two, one, urban areas you should have got. And finally, let's recap that definition of urbanisation. Is it the number of people living in towns and cities, or is it an increase in the percentage of a population living in towns and cities? So five seconds to process this one, point to the answer for me decide now. So urbanisation is an increase in the percentage of a population living in towns and cities. If urbanisation increases, so will the number of people live in towns and cities, but we call this the urban population. So we need a definition of megacity written down. A megacity is a city with over 10 million inhabitants, pause now and get that jotted down for me. But let's look at the global distribution of megacities. Where are they located? This is a proportional circle map, which shows the location of the 10 largest megacities. So the size of the circle shows how many people live in there. And you can see straight away that the largest megacity is Tokyo. The smallest megacity out of the 10 is New York. In 1950, there were only three megacities, it was London, Tokyo and New York. Today there are 33 megacities across the world, but it does depend where you define the extent of the city. If you look at different websites, they will talk about different numbers of megacities, and it depends on which data they're looking at, where they decide the edge of the city is to make that categorization. So we're going to jump straight in. We want to describe the distribution. Distribution means how something is spread out, of the world's largest 10 megacities. It's three marks, and for those marks, I would like you to think about the overall pattern. I'd like you to give an example, and then I'd like you to think of something that doesn't fit the pattern. So you can use these sentence starters to help, pause the video and I'll see you in a couple of minutes when you're done. Let's check those answers. So most of the world's largest megacities are located in Asia. Make sure it's got that capital letter. It's vitally important for us as geographers that we get this right. For example, the largest is in Tokyo. Again, check that capital letter. However, there is one in another continent, which is New York in North America. This is another map showing us the distribution of different megacities, and this map has got latitude and longitude lines, which is a really important skill for a geographer. I would like you to decide which letter out of A, B and C represent which megacities. I've given you the latitude and longitude of Lagos, Sao Paulo, and Tokyo. So you see if you can work out which one's, which. I would also like you to give me the location of New York. So I'd like you to read off the axis to decide whether New York is located at which of the options below. Pause now tackle it, let's see how you've done in a minute. Did you find it easier or is it a little bit tricky? Let's go through and check. So Lagos was location B, Sao Paulo was location A, and Tokyo was location C. If you really struggled with that, I would take the opportunity to pause now and have a look at the figures, now you know the correct answers. The location of New York, if we put the arrows on, to either go along to the axis was around 40 degrees North, and then if we look up it's around 70, 80 ish. So I'm going to go with B, 40 degrees North, 74 degrees West. So what defines a megacity? Can you remember choose which one of these options put to the screen for me, three, two, one. It is 10 million people for a megacity, 10 million. Where are most of the megacities? Which continent write it down for me now, five seconds. For I'll give you the answer, I want you to check that capital letter. Most Megacities are in Asia. So you know what all megacities are, but how has the number of megacities changed? I would like you to look at these two maps. The map at the top from 2015 shows where the megacities were. However, in 2030, they've projected how many megacities there will be then. Can you complete the sentences? And I would like you to choose four of the words from the word bank in purple. Pause now off you go. Let's see. So the number of megacities will increase, give it a tick. The greatest increase in the number of megacities will be in Southern Asia, two capital letters. They predict no new megacities in half of the continent on the 2030 map. Let's just show you how you found that one. So here we've got North America, three megacities and three megacities. Down here, South America, we've got three megacities and then we've got five. So South America has increased, that's one. Europe no increase, Africa an increase. So we've now got South America and Africa showing an increase. Over here, We've got Asia, definitely increasing Australia, not increasing. So we've got three continent, South America, Africa, and Asia, where the number of megacities will increase. And we've got three continents, Australia, Europe, and North America, where the number of megacities will not increase. They predict no new megacities in half of the continents on the 2030 map. Finally, it's the continent of Africa that predicts a 100% growth in the number of megacities. Lets have a look Why? So here's Africa, but one, two, three megacities in 2015. In 2013, we've got one, two, three, four, five, six megacities. So from three to six is a 100% growth. So we know that Asia has the most megacities, but why? The majority of megacities are located in LICs and NEEs, 27 out of the 33 megacities. Most of these are in Asia where we've got lots of countries moving to newly emerging economy status. Because NEEs are industrialising with this comes rapid world to Urban migration. People are leaving the countryside and moving to these cities. Urban planning in NEEs is less effective. So some NEEs aren't limiting the area of the growth. So the city will grow uncontrollably. Infrastructure and resources tend to be focused on just a few key cities. So populations become more concentrated. And finally, we know we've got this rapid rural to urban migration right now, and that is in the LICs and NEEs. In HICs, our rural to urban migration rate has slowed down. In fact, some people are leaving. So counter optimization is happening. But why mega city so important? They have a huge role to play in the global regional economies. They're really important for manufacturing. Businesses tend to put their factories in large cities because that's where there are better roads and access to international airports. This means that megacities create large amounts of income. In Lagos for example, the megacity contributes to 30% of Nigeria's GDP. They're really important for migration. Migrants tend to hedge straight into these large urban areas. This means that some areas suffer from the brain drain. People with good qualifications, tend to leave the area to move into these larger cities where they feel they will get a better job. They're really important for globalisation. They help us connect different places in the world through trade, through business, through transport. These world megacities are therefore central to keeping the world economy running. And finally governance. Many of the political decisions that take place happen in megacities. So for our task today, we're going to suggest reasons why an increasing number of megacities are located in developing countries. It's a former question. So I need you to give me two reasons. I would like you to try and develop them. And we're thinking about why are large numbers of megacities in LICs or NEEs? Pause the video, tackle it, take about five minutes, and then I look forward to seeing how you've gone on. Let's see what you got. You could have had any of these bullet points you needed two. Rapid rural to urban migration is occurring in developing countries, tick. Due to city's having more opportunities for a higher standard of living, such as access to health care, tick. Many megacities are major centres for economic activity like manufacturing. This means that many people migrate there from rural areas, looking for work. There are large inequality in developing countries. So rural areas have many push factors, such as poor access to services, which drives people to migrate to larger cities. Or final option might have been that many people have migrated to cities, and these tend to be young. This means that they have a higher birth rate resulting in natural increase. Remember you just need it for marks. So any two of these reasons would have been okay for a format question. Well, that brings us to the end of this mega lesson. We've learned about megacities. Most of them are in Asia where rapid rural to urban migration is occurring. They have over 10 million people living in them, but before you go, I need you to click on the next page and complete the not so mega little quiz, so I can see how you've got on today. I don't think you'll find it too challenging. Have a great day. Thank you so much for your time.

Exit Quiz: Megacities

Completed: Megacities

This lesson looks at megacities and where they're located. We consider their importance to our rapidly growing global population.

Geography

Megacities

Introductory Quiz

Video

Final Quiz

Lesson Complete