• Every second, the urban population grows by 2 people.
• 95% of the urban expansion in the next decades will take place in the developing world.
• In Africa and Asia, the urban population is expected to double between 2000 and 2030.
• Between 1998 and 2008, 1052 million urban dwellers gained access to improved drinking water and 813 million to improved sanitation. However, the urban population in that period grew by 1089 million people and thus undermined the progress.
• One out of four city residents worldwide, 789 million in total, lives without access to improved sanitation facilities.
• 497 million people in cities rely on shared sanitation. In 1990, this number was 249 million.
  27% of the urban dwellers in the developing world do not have access to piped water at home.

The section “Did You Know…?” is taken from the UN-Water Decade Programme on Advocacy and Communication (UNW-DPAC) publication “Water and Cities: Facts and Figures“.