Asia Tipped For Sustained Housing Boom In Decades Ahead Due To Exploding Urbanisation
Asian cities will need to plan in advance and prepare for the inevitable explosion of the continent’s thriving urban areas. Over the next decade, there will be at least 10 new megacities that will rise and according to the United Nations (UN), metropolises in Asia stand to dominate the list. Consequently, these expanding cities will require more housing and potentially fire up the property market.
In Asia, the UN identified the cities of Seoul, Ho Chi Minh, Chengdu, Nanjing, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, and Tehran as emerging urban concentration, and next in line to join the likes of Tokyo in Japan and New York in the United States. Between now and in 2030, these cities will be hard pressed to accommodate more than 10 million inhabitants – the threshold set by the UN for megacity status.
And by 2030, the world will count no less than 43 megacities, where presumably the needs and demands for property space will increase, and correspondingly the value of real estate assets.
“The rise in the number of megacities is the most visible evidence of the accelerating global trend towards urbanisation,” the World Economic Forum (WEC) reported.
Urban Explosion
In the same report, the WEC took note of the development that points to a significant shift to urbanisation, characterised by the UN as the migration of a sizeable chunk of the populace to increasingly congested cities. It was estimated that the majority of the predicted urban explosion, set at around 90 percent, will happen in Asia and Africa.
On the other hand, other major cities appear to experience a reversal of the trend. Osaka in Japan, for instance, will likely drop out of the Top 10 Megacities by 2030 as the city continues to absorb the negative effects of an ageing population.
In the same way, while Tokyo will remain on top of the list the Japanese capital will soon be outpaced by Delhi in India. The latter city will have 39 million people by 2030, and the Indian population will continue to grow at a dizzying rate, clocking at 416 million city dwellers after only 20 years, based on the projections cited by the WEC report.
Creating Market Needs
As things stand today, the report indicated that cities around the world have a total of 4.2 billion inhabitants, and the numbers will be considerably padded up in the passing of another generation.
The report by WEC said in the next decade or so, the urban explosion will see the city population growing by another 2.5 billion, likely setting off a housing requirement that will overwhelm the property markets in key megacities cited in the UN furnished data.
