David Baker
www.davidbakeronline.com


Maps

The world’s biggest cities
The death penalty
Financial Times The Business Magazine, March 3 and June 2, 2001
Illustrations by David Newton



The world’s biggest cities
The countryside is about to get quieter. According to CIA projections, by 2015 more than half the world’s population will live in cities and the number of people living in “megacities” - those with more than 10m inhabitants - will double to more than 400m.

In Asia, the drift to urban life will be so strong that six of the continent’s cities will come from behind to overtake those in the Americas as the world’s most populous conurbations. Tokyo will still be the world’s largest city in 2015, with a population of almost 30m, but it will grow the least over the next 15 years.

Mexico City and São Paulo, currently in second and third places respectively, will be overtaken in the population stakes by Mumbai, Lagos, Shanghai, Jakarta, Karachi and Beijing, all of which will virtually double in size by 2015.
Those for whom the idea of city life is anathema, however, will take heart from the poor performance of Europe in the megacities premier league. London will still be Europe’s biggest city in 2015 - with 7.3m - but in global terms it will remain a strictly Nationwide Conference player.




The death penalty
The case of Timothy McVeigh has, as such cases must, reopened the debate about state-sponsored execution. By the end of 2000, according to Amnesty International, 75 countries and territories had abolished the death penalty for all crimes. A further 13 countries had abolished it for all but exceptional offences such as war crimes and at least 20 more had abolished the death penalty in practice, though execution by the state remains on their statute books.

However, at least 1,457 people were executed in 2000 and at least 3,058 sentenced to death in 65 countries. These figures include only actual cases known to Amnesty International, which says the true figures are likely to be much higher.

Eighty-eight per cent of all known executions were carried out by China, the US, Saudi Arabia and Iran, with hundreds of executions reported, but not confirmed, in Iraq. In Texas alone, 40 people were executed, a record for any single year.

One major concern is the number of people executed for crimes committed when they were juveniles. In 2000, the US executed four men who were under 17 at the time of their offences.