They’re all “world middleweight cities” that are likely to become regional megacities (10 million people) by 2025—along with Dongguan, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, and Wuhan (China); Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo); Jakarta (Indonesia); Lahore (Pakistan); and Chennai (India).
These “emerging middleweight” cities are among the “City 600,” the top 600 cities by contribution to global GDP growth from 2007 to 2005, as defined in a new report from McKinsey Global Institute: “Urban World: Mapping the economic power of cities”.
The 1.5 billion people who live in the City 600 (22% of world population) accounted for $30 trillion of GDP in 2007—more than half of global GDP. The top 100 alone generated $21 trillion, 38% of global GDP, according to McKinsey.
By 2025, these 600 cities will be home to 2.0 billion, a quarter of the world’s population, and account for $64 trillion, or 60% of global GDP.
The top 25 “hot spots” for GDP by 2025 include (in rank order) New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Houston, Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco, along with such places as São Paolo (Brazil), Rhein-Ruhr (Germany), Mexico City, Randstad (Netherlands), Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong.
Other key findings of the McKinsey study:
• By 2025, the makeup of the City 600 will change as the center of gravity of the urban world moves south and east. One-third of developed market cities will no longer make the top 600.
• By 2025, up to 136 new cities will enter the City 600 list, all of them from the developing world—100 of them from China alone, including Haerbin, Shantou, and Guiyang.
• India will contribute 13 newcomers to the City 600 list, including Hyderabad and Surat. Latin America will add eight, notably Cancún (Mexico) and Barranquilla (Colombia).
• About 310 million more people of working-age population will live in the City 600 by 2025—almost 35% of the expansion of the global workforce, almost all of it in emerging markets and two-thirds in China and South Asia.
What do all these fascinating data points mean to the design and construction industry, and to you as an AEC professional? In a nutshell, the McKinsey people are saying, If you want to grow your business—and your career—over the next 15 years, you must look to foreign climes.
It is in the emerging cities that GDP will be growing at a faster rate than global GDP. Where the workforce will be expanding more quickly than in the rest of the world. Where demand for housing, retail shops, schools, libraries, museums, data centers, universities, office buildings, religious centers—all the magnificent structures you and your firms create and build—will be accelerating at a hyperfast rate compared to the growth, if any, in much of the developed world.
To be competitive in the coming decade and a half, AEC firms and professionals are going to have to shift their lines of sight eastward and southerly, to places with names like Luanda, Chongqing, Dhaka, Colombo, and Grande Vitória.
Related Stories
| Oct 27, 2014
Top 10 green building products for 2015
Among the breakthrough products to make BuildingGreen's annual Top-10 Green Building Products list are halogen-free polyiso insulation and a high-flow-rate biofiltration system.
| Oct 27, 2014
Studio Gang Architects designs residential tower with exoskeleton-like exterior for Miami
Jeanne Gang's design reinvents the Florida room with shaded, asymmetrical balconies.
| Oct 26, 2014
New York initiates design competition for upgrading LaGuardia, Kennedy airports
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that the state would open design competitions to fix and upgrade New York City’s aging airports. But financing construction is still unsettled.
| Oct 26, 2014
Study asks: Do green schools improve student performance?
A study by DLR Group and Colorado State University attempts to quantify the student performance benefits of green schools.
Sponsored | | Oct 24, 2014
Infographic: 5 key considerations for securing modular workspace
Keep these five considerations in mind for your next project that may benefit from modular space. SPONSORED CONTENT
| Oct 24, 2014
Herzog & de Meuron reveals plans for redesign of Roche pharmaceutical campus in Germany
The project includes the addition of a 205-meter-high tower and research center, as well as the renovation of an historic office building designed by Swiss architect Otto R. Salvisber.
Sponsored | | Oct 23, 2014
From slots to public safety: Abandoned Detroit casino transformed into LEED-certified public safety headquarters
First constructed as an office for the Internal Revenue Service, the city's new public safety headquarters had more recently served as a temporary home for the MGM Casino. SPONSORED CONTENT
| Oct 23, 2014
Santiago Calatrava-designed church breaks ground in Lower Manhattan
Saturday marked the public "ground blessing" ceremony for the Saint Nicholas National Shrine, the Greek Orthodox Church destroyed on 9/11 by the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.
| Oct 23, 2014
Prehistory museum's slanted roof mimics archaeological excavation [slideshow]
Mimicking the unearthing of archaeological sites, Henning Larsen Architects' recently opened Moesgaard Museum in Denmark has a planted roof that slopes upward out of the landscape.
| Oct 23, 2014
China's 'weird' buildings: President Xi Jinping wants no more of them
During a literary symposium in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping urged architects, authors, actors, and other artists to produce work with "artistic and moral value."