Over the next decade, a massive wave of urbanisation across the emerging world will quadruple the size of the global “consumer class” and result in emerging markets driving as much as three-quarters of world economic growth.

在未来十年，新兴世界大规模的城市化浪潮将让全球“消费阶层”规模增长3倍，新兴市场因此将贡献四分之三的全球经济增长。

This is clearly an exciting prospect for business leaders searching for new growth opportunities. However, as businesses allocate resources and develop strategies, the concept of “emerging markets”, or even groups of high potential countries such as Brics (Brazil, Russia, India and China), is no longer particularly helpful. Executives need to develop a more granular view of the world, one that goes beyond broad groupings — or even individual countries — to focus on cities.

对于寻求新的增长机遇的商界领导人来说，这种前景显然令人兴奋。然而，在企业部署资源和发展战略时，“新兴市场”、乃至“金砖四国”（Bric，指巴西、俄罗斯、印度和中国）等高潜力国家集团的概念，却不再有特别大的帮助。公司高管们需要从更细微的角度看世界，他们要越过广泛的集团乃至单个国家，聚焦于城市。

Cities are where the growth is occurring. By 2025, urban consumers could spend an additional $20tn a year — not counting an extra $10tn of physical capital investment to meet the needs of expanding urban populations.

城市是增长的源头。到2025年，城市消费者每年的支出可能比现在增加20万亿美元，这还不包括为满足不断增长的城市人口的需求而额外增加的10万亿美元有形资本投资。

The pace and scale is historic: China and India, with a combined population of more than 2.5bn, doubled their GDP per capita in 12 and 16 years respectively. By comparison, Britain started its industrial revolution in the 18th century with less than 10m people and took more than 150 years to double its GDP per capita. While it is true that emerging markets is where the growth is, the term emerging markets is not a helpful unit for resource allocation strategies.

这样的速度和规模是历史性的：中国和印度两国人口总数超过25亿，它们分别在12年和16年的时间里使人均GDP翻倍。相比之下，英国在18世纪开始工业革命时的人口不足1000万，用了逾150年才实现人均GDP翻倍。尽管新兴市场确实是增长源头，但新兴市场概念对于资源配置战略不再是有用的单元。

Research by the McKinsey Global Institute indicates that 440 emerging market cities — very few of them “megacities” — will account for close to half of expected global GDP growth between now and 2025.

麦肯锡全球研究所(McKinsey Global Institute)的研究显示，在从现在到2025年预期的全球GDP增长中，440个新兴市场城市（其中很少是“特大型城市”）所占比例将接近一半。

Many of them may be unfamiliar. Take Foshan, Porto Alegre and Surat — cities that are unlikely to be high on the priority lists of many western executives, though each has more than 4m inhabitants and a vibrant base of consumers. Surat, 180 miles north of Mumbai, accounts for about two-fifths of India’s textile production. Foshan, on the Pearl River in Guangdong Province, is China’s seventh largest city in terms of GDP. Porto Alegre is capital of the fourth largest state in Brazil.

其中许多城市可能不为人熟悉。以佛山、阿雷格里港(Porto Alegre)和苏拉特(Surat)为例，这3个城市在众多西方公司高管的重点关注清单上不太可能排在前列，尽管每个城市都有逾400万居民和富有活力的消费者基础。苏拉特位于孟买北部180英里处，大约占到印度纺织业生产的五分之二。按GDP计算，位于广东省珠江三角洲的佛山是中国第七大城市。阿雷格里港是巴西第四大州的首府。

Over the next decade, each of these cities will contribute more to global growth than Madrid, Milan or Zurich.

在未来十年，这些城市中的每座城市对全球增长的贡献都将超过马德里、米兰或者苏黎世。

Resources are likely to be allocated incorrectly if urbanisation-driven growth is pursued through the lens of emerging markets or a grouping of countries, such as Brics. Bangkok and Jakarta have greater growth potential than Delhi. Ho Chi Minh and Lagos offer more opportunity than Mangalore and Urumqi. S漀 Paulo, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro and Shanghai rank highest in a targeted analysis for market growth for laundry products but Lagos, Dar es Salaam and Dhaka have the highest numbers of young entry-level consumers. In China, household consumption of yoghurt is significantly higher in Wuhan than in Jinhua or Hefei.

如果透过新兴市场或者金砖国家等国家集团的棱镜来追求城市化驱动的增长，资源就有可能被错误配置。曼谷和雅加达的增长潜力超过德里。胡志明市和拉各斯(Lagos)提供的机遇超过芒格洛尔(Mangalore)和乌鲁木齐。在对洗衣产品市场增长的定向研究中，圣保罗、北京、里约热内卢和上海排名最高，但拉各斯、达累斯萨拉姆(Dar es Salaam)和达卡(Dhaka)的入门级年轻消费者人数最多。在中国，就酸奶的家庭消费量来说，武汉远高于金华或者合肥。

Until quite recently, most executives did not pay sufficient heed to cities; indeed, a 2012 McKinsey survey showed that more than 60 per cent regarded cities as an irrelevant unit of strategic planning. That is now starting to change. Companies that adopt a strategic city-focused approach may gain early-mover benefits. For some, developing better insights into demographic and income trends — such as an understanding of the urban areas where the population of older, wealthier consumers is growing most rapidly — will be sufficient. Others may need to dig deeper, learning the market dynamics of specific products in target cities.

大多数高管直到不久前还没有足够重视城市。实际上，麦肯锡在2012年的一份调查显示，逾60%的高管认为城市在战略规划中不是重要的单元。现在这种状况开始发生改变。战略上以城市为重点的公司可能赢得先行优势。对一些公司来说，更好地洞察人口和收入趋势——比如城市区域中哪里较年长、较富裕的消费者人口增长最为迅速——就足够了。其他公司可能需要更深入地挖掘，了解目标城市中具体产品的市场动态。

As the locus of global economic activity shifts, and as the western world ages, companies should be aware of the growth dynamic that is playing out in cities in what we still refer to as “emerging markets”. Business leaders who give their strategies and their resource allocation a granular city dimension could find themselves in a better position to allocate investments effectively and to seize more readily the growth opportunities at hand.

随着全球经济活动轨迹转移和西方世界步入老龄化，公司应该意识到在仍被我们统称为“新兴市场”的城市中出现的增长动力。在细微的城市维度规划战略和配置资源的商界领袖可能发现，他们能更好地有效部署投资，而且更容易抓住增长机遇。