New Delhi: As per an UN report, Delhi will overtake Tokyo as the world’s largest urban agglomeration by 2030 and have a population of 43.3 million by 2035. The same report also predicts that over half of India’s population will live in urban areas by 2050.

In 2015, the Delhi urban agglomeration — which includes the capital and its contiguous satellite towns — had an estimated population of 25.9 million but that will grow by 67.6% over two decades to cross 43 mn according to World Urbanisation Prospects, a report by the UN’s population division. Tokyo will be a fairly second with 36 mn with its population likely to decline a little from 37.3 mn in 2015.

The only urban agglomerations in the top 10 in 2035 that would have seen faster growth since 2015 would be Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, up from 11.6 mn to 26.7 mn, and Dhaka which would reach 31.2 mn against just 17.6 mn in 2015, the reported projected.

Mumbai, which in 2015 had a population of 19.3 mn will grow by a more modest 41.6% over the two decades to reach 27.3 mn in 2035, just a little bigger than Delhi’s current size. No other Indian city would figure among the world’s 10 biggest, a list that includes six Asian cities, two from Africa and one each from South and Central America.

The list of the biggest urban agglomerations in India will see Kozhikode in Kerala entering the top 10 by 2035. It will also see Bengaluru overtaking Chennai as the country’s fourth largest urban centre and Surat overtaking Pune to become the eighth largest. Kozhikode is projected to more than double its population to 5.6 mn between 2015 and 2035 and Surat will come close to matching that pace, according to the report.