The economic rise of the developing world is emphatically under way and driving a wave of global urban expansion. At the heart of this story is the spectacular renaissance that we are seeing in Asia, with China and India at its vanguard in returning to the global prominence they played before the European and North American industrial revolutions (Figure 1). Underpinning this economic renaissance is a wave of global urban expansion. In both economies, urbanization is unfolding on a huge scale and with unprecedented pace. The scale benefits, network effects and superior productivity of dense population centres mean that urbanization has very significant economic consequences for both nations. In this article, we take a comparative look at urbanization trends in both countries, drawing out both similarities and differences.