LONDON: It used to be the stuff of 2000AD, the comic that introduced the world to Judge Dredd and two vast crime-filled cities, Mega City One and East Meg One.

In its dystopian vision, the first mega city around New York began construction in 2030, intended to house three to four million people.

In a sign of how quickly future dystopias age, the new Times Atlas of the World lists the growing club of real mega cities, all of them with predicted populations of more than 10 million — not by 2030, but by 2005.

According to these estimates, Tokyo — the world’s largest city — will hit nearly 27m. Sao Paolo in Brazil will reach just under 20m and Mexico City 19m. Sixteen other cities are expected to exceed the 10m mark, including Mumbai 18m and Dhaka 15m.

Two cities in Africa are expected to go mega — Lagos in Nigeria and Cairo in Egypt. According to the atlas — the 11th edition since it was first published in 1895 — the phenomenon is a mark of a global population in the grips of rapid urbanization, where close to 50 per cent of the population now lives in cities.

Indeed, the latest estimates predict that urban dwellers will outnumber the rural population for the first time by 2007.

And Tokyo is leading the way. A Landsat 7 image of the city, included in the atlas, shows the city’s growth, a spreading grey cancer whose spiralling tendrils can be seen sucking in neighbouring cities and towns and even reclaimed sea.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.