THE Pearl River Delta (PRD) area, comprising a cluster of cities in Guangdong Province, has overtaken Tokyo as the world’s largest urban area both in size and population, the World Bank said Monday.

    The PRD, including nine cities of Guangdong, namely Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Foshan, Huizhou, Jiangmen and Zhao-qing, had 42 million inhabitants as of 2010, a population larger than that of Argentina, Canada or Malaysia, the bank said in a report on urbanization in East Asia.

    The PRD has been one of most economically dynamic regions of China since the launch of the reform and opening-up policy in 1979. By 2007, its GDP rose to US$448 billion, which made its economy about the size of Taiwan’s. The abundance of employment opportunities created a pool of wealthy, middle-income, professional consumers with an annual per capita income that puts them among China’s wealthiest.

    Meanwhile, the World Bank report said that almost 200 million people in East Asia, which includes Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, moved to urban areas in the decade ended in 2010.

    About 36 percent of the population in the region lived in urban areas as of 2010, up from 29 percent 10 years ago.

    The report, based on data including those gathered through satellite imagery and geospatial mapping, said that East Asia has 869 urban areas with more than 100,000 people, including eight megacities with a population of over 10 million as of 2010. Urban areas in the region expanded at an average rate of 2.4 percent per year during the decade, with urban land reaching 134,800 square kilometers in 2010. Urban populations rose at a faster rate of 3 percent. The report also finds a link between urbanization and income growth.

    World Bank urban development expert Abhas Jha said he hopes the report will push policymakers to a shift from a “car centric” to a “people centric” strategy in growing cities to address challenges such as traffic congestions.(SD-Agencies)