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People and places change together

Part I describes systems and their couplings. It ranks no country or operator and assesses no authority.

6 min read2 figures1 table10 notesNR-STRATEGIC-HUMANSYSTEMS-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE

Contents
  1. ·Edition home
  2. ·Executive summary
  3. 1People and places change together
    1. 1.1 The questions this part answers
    2. 1.2 The argument
    3. 1.3 Twenty couplings between five systems
  4. 2Key findings
  5. 3Systems and sectors at baseline
  6. 4Risks and capability
  7. 5A heatwave that meets an ageing, dense and informally housed district
  8. 6Readings from the other desks
  9. 7The 2027 agenda
  10. 8Systems in depth
  11. AMethodology
  12. BData appendix
  13. CReferences and record
  14. ·Complete edition, for print

1.1The questions this part answers

Key questions

  • Where is human systems risk concentrated?
  • Which couplings carry human systems shocks into other systems?
  • Which human systems capabilities hold under compound stress?
  • What must 2027 evidence measure first?

In this part

  • Narrative
  • Headline finding
  • Lead figure
  • Five mechanism chapters
  • Twelve-domain reading
  • Sector screens
  • Dependency matrix
  • Risk objects
  • Capability ladder
  • Scenario
  • Three lenses
  • Portfolio

1.2The argument

Demography is usually reported by country and urbanisation by city. The 2024 and 2025 evidence reads them as one moving system. People are fewer in some places and more in others, older almost everywhere, and more of them live in cities and towns12.

The causes repeat. Fertility has fallen from 3.31 to 2.25 births per woman since 19901. Life expectancy reached 73.3 years in 20241. Cities are projected to add 986 million residents by 2050, while more than 3,000 cities lost population from 2015 to 20252. China recorded fewer births than deaths in 202511, and so did Japan in 202412.

The physical and social base is uneven. About 1.12 billion people live in slums or informal settlements5. About two billion people worked informally in 20169. Cities receive less than 20 per cent of the finance they need for climate action8.

The edition therefore asks the same four questions of every change: what was the common cause, how did it spread, what was shared, and what threshold was crossed. It forecasts no outcome and ranks no place.

Figure 1.1Where do people live? Share of world population, 2025, per cent

Cities hold the largest share of people, towns more than a third and rural areas under a fifth. National definitions of urban give 58 per cent, so the measure matters2.

ItemBar, scaled to the largest valueValue
Cities45
Towns36
Rural areas19

Source: as cited in the note to this figure. Year 2025.

Figure ID FIG-STRATEGIC-HUMANSYSTEMS-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-01-003

45per cent

in cities, up from 20 per cent in 19502

36per cent

in towns2

19per cent

in rural areas2

58per cent

urban on national definitions2

1.3Twenty couplings between five systems

The human systems-centred matrix types the twenty couplings between the five core systems, read for their human systems content. Strengths are Nexus estimates (ESTIMATED) from the cited evidence and analogue events; they set the graph that 2027 evidence will test.

Figure 1.2Couplings between the five systems

Each line is one coupling from one system to another, drawn by the strength the edition assigns. Strengths are Nexus estimates from the cited evidence and analogue events.

  • Strong
  • Moderate
  • Weak

Source: this edition’s coupling matrix (Table 1.1); status Estimated.

Table 1.1Coupling matrix: from the row system to the column system
From, toWATENEFOOHLTBIO
WAT Water·MODERATE
cooling · pumping		MODERATE
irrigation · processing		STRONG
safe supply · sanitation		WEAK
flows
ENE EnergySTRONG
pumping · treatment		·STRONG
cold chain · processing		STRONG
cooling · hospitals · care		WEAK
land use
FOO FoodWEAK
withdrawals		WEAK
bioenergy		·MODERATE
nutrition · food safety		WEAK
land conversion
HLT HealthWEAK
workforce		WEAK
workforce		WEAK
labour		·WEAK
residues
BIO BiodiversityMODERATE
green space and drainage		WEAK
shade and cooling		WEAK
pollination		WEAK
heat relief		·
Strength: strong, moderate or weak; a Nexus estimate (status Estimated) from cited evidence and analogue events. The scale is defined in Annex A.

Transmission paths

  1. 01

    CLI → HLT ← ENE

    A heatwave and a power loss reach older residents and hospitals together.

    Reported heat deaths1621

  2. 02

    URB → DEV

    Fast city growth outpaces services and adds informal housing.

    Reported UN DESA2 · SDG Report5

  3. 03

    DEM → FIN

    A falling birth count and an ageing structure change the tax and care base.

    Inferred China and Japan1112

  4. 04

    CLI → FIN

    Climate risk meets a city finance gap.

    Reported UN-Habitat8

  5. 05

    MIG → URB

    Displaced people move into cities and towns.

    Inferred IDMC15

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

  1. 1UN DESA Population Division (ed.), World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results (advance unedited version, July 2024). United Nations, New York. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  2. 2UN DESA Population Division (ed.), World Urbanization Prospects 2025: Summary of Results, ten key messages (November 2025). United Nations, New York. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  3. 11National Bureau of Statistics of China (ed.), Statistical Communique on the 2025 National Economic and Social Development, 28 February 2026 (year-end population 1,404.89 million; births 7.92 million; deaths 11.31 million; urbanisation 67.89 per cent; 65 and over 15.9 per cent). NBS, Beijing. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  4. 12Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, vital statistics for 2024 (686,061 births; total fertility rate 1.15; 1,605,298 deaths; Tokyo 0.96), read in a news summary of 5 June 2025; the ministry release was not opened. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  5. 5United Nations (ed.), The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2025, Goal 11 (1.12 billion in slums or informal settlements; urban green space 19.5 per cent in 1990 and 13.9 per cent in 2020; one billion in riverine flood-prone areas, half in cities). United Nations Statistics Division, New York. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  6. 9ILO (ed.), Women and men in the informal economy: a statistical picture, third edition (news release of 30 April 2018; about 2 billion workers, more than 61 per cent of the employed; Africa 85.8 per cent). International Labour Organization, Geneva. Observation year 2016. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  7. 8UN-Habitat (ed.), World Cities Report 2024: Cities and Climate Action (cities receive less than 20 per cent of the finance they need for effective climate action; page read, not the full report). UN-Habitat, Nairobi. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  8. 16WHO (ed.), news release on the 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change, 29 October 2025 (about 546,000 heat-related deaths a year; up 23 per cent since the 1990s; USD 261 billion cost among older adults). World Health Organization, Geneva. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  9. 21WHO (ed.), Climate change, heat and health, fact sheet (page dated 31 July 2026; 489,000 heat-related deaths a year in 2000 to 2019, 45 per cent in Asia; over-65 mortality up about 85 per cent from 2000 to 2004 to 2017 to 2021). World Health Organization, Geneva. Observation year 2019. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
  10. 15IDMC (ed.), 2025 Global Report on Internal Displacement (report page: sub-Saharan Africa a record 38.8 million internally displaced, around 46 per cent of the global total; the global counter showed no value). Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, Geneva. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

Cite this chapter

Valadbaygi, S. (Ed.). (2026). Chapter 1: People and places change together. In Strategic Systems Report 2026: Cities, Demography and Human Systems (Baseline Edition 2026, Report No. NR-STRATEGIC-HUMANSYSTEMS-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE) [Draft under review]. The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI).

Every citation form of the whole report, BibTeX and RIS included, is on the edition home. Cite this report

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