RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Almost a quarter of a billion people moved out of slum conditions in the past decade, driven by rapid economic growth in emerging giants India and China, but the number of people living in them continues to rise, the United Nations housing agency said yesterday.

The number of people living in shantytowns increased by 55 million to 827.6 million as population growth and migration from the countryside outstripped the effect of upward mobility in cities, the UN’s biennial report on cities found.

“The situation has improved over 10 years, but alas over the same period, the net increase of the urban poor is 55 million,” Anna Tibaijuka, the executive director of the UN Habitat programme, said in Rio de Janeiro.

The Brazilian city will next week host the World Urban Forum, a five-day UN conference on the state of the world’s cities, where more than half the global population now lives.