megacity

Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities

by Vaclav Smil  · 23 Sep 2019

(new edition) Energy: A Beginner’s Guide (new edition) Energy and Civilization: A History Oil: A Beginner’s Guide (new edition) Growth From Microorganisms to Megacities Vaclav Smil The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced

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human societies. This assignment will take us from bacterial invasions and viral infections through forest and animal metabolism to the growth of energy conversions and megacities to the essentials of the global economy—while excluding both the largest and the smallest scales. There will be nothing about the growth (the inflationary

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their sizes is greater than for any common structural artifacts, from flimsy corrugated metal, plywood, and plastic sheet shacks of the poorest slums in the megacities of Africa and Asia to obscenely sized mansions (many in excess of 1,000 m2) built in assorted pseudo-styles, particularly in California and Texas

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fed the city’s numerous samurai and temple gardens and it was in use until 1965, when it was replaced by the Tonegawa system. Modern megacities (with more than 10 million inhabitants) have the most elaborate water supply systems and New York’s Delaware aqueduct, completed in 1945, is not only

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2016). About 85% of them (436 cities) had populations between 1 and 5 million, 45 were between 5 and 10 million, and there were 31 megacities of more than 10 million people (more about them later in this section). In addition, there were also 551 cities with populations between 500,000

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depopulation still affect much smaller populations than do the benefits and downsides resulting from the continuing expansion of smaller cities and from the rise of megacities. Urban growth has many quantifiable consequences and (using the term not in the strict physical sense) some of them have become known as laws (Batty

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unequaled multiplication of primary energy use lowered the difference, urbanites still averaged 50% more energy in 2010 (Chu et al. 2016). But the diversity of megacities makes generalizations concerning energy and material flows elusive: Kennedy et al. (2015) found that in terms of per capita use the difference between the lowest

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- and highest-consuming megacities in 2010 was 35-fold for steel, 28-fold for energy, 23-fold for water, and sixfold for cement, while the greatest difference in per

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,000 people/km2. And high concentrations on the order of 50,000 people/km2 are commonly found in the most densely populated parts of Asian megacities, while Los Angeles, the most densely populated metropolitan area in the US, averages just over 1,000 people/km2. Assuming an age- and sex-weighted

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advantages of such locations have been only strengthened with the rise of modern inexpensive mass-scale marine transportation. In 2017, 14 of the 20 largest megacities were in coastal lowlands, and McGranahan et al. (2005) calculated that at the beginning of the 21st century cities in coastal ecosystems housed nearly 15

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acute in Africa’s growing cities with their extensive slums) and lack of affordable housing for lower-income families—will only increase in many new megacities. The most likely outcome is that by 2050 there will be 2.5 billion people added to the world’s urban population, with just three

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equivalent to, or larger than, many small countries and with populations larger than those of most EU countries. These aggregations of humanity are known as megacities, while the extended urban area whose growth has eventually resulted in several merging cities is best described as an agglomeration or, pace Geddes (1915), as

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first, and is still perhaps the most famous, example of a megalopolis (Gottmann 1961). Megacities The usual dividing line between a large city and a megacity is put at 10 million inhabitants. But wherever that divide might be, megacities must be studied as functional units, not according to any official administrative delimitations. The

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distinction is illustrated by focusing on New York and Tokyo, the two original megacities. New York City (encompassing five boroughs centered on Manhattan) has a total area of 789 km2 and in 2016 it had a population of 8

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Hong Kong, where some 65 million people lived in 2015 spread across an area of about 56,000 km2 (HKTDC 2017). Before the rise of megacities, most of the world’s largest cities during the preindustrial era were in Asia: eight out of ten in 1500 and still six out of

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US, and only one (New York) remained by 2010. When using an extended functional definition, New York and Tokyo were the world’s only two megacities in 1950, and a quarter of a century later they were joined by Mexico City. The next 25 years saw the fastest additions to the

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global list, with 18 megacities by the year 2000, 29 by the end of 2015, and 31 in 2016 (UN 2016). Tokyo remained in the lead, and its exceptional size

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and recycling. But, fortunately, Tokyo is exceptional in that it has avoided or solved other problems common in megacities, some in truly exceptional ways: its criminal rate is lower than in any other megacity, its air (significantly polluted until the late 1970s) is relatively clean thanks to highly efficient vehicles, imports of

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. In the global ranking, the city is followed by New Delhi, Shanghai, Mumbai, São Paulo, Beijing, and Mexico City. In 2015, 24 of the 31 megacities were in low-income countries (the global “South,” as the UN calls it), with Asia having 18, China six, and India five. New York, the

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25th, another clear indicator of Europe’s diminishing global importance. Given their size, it is not at all surprising that the annual growth of most megacities was slower than that of the whole urban population, which slowed down to about 2% between 2010 and 2015 (from more than 3% in the

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just 0.76% in affluent countries to almost 4% in the poorest nations. Karachi, New Delhi, Dhaka, Guangzhou, and Lagos have been the fastest growing megacities since the 1990s, all in excess of 3%/year, followed by Mumbai, Istanbul, Beijing, and Manila (Canton 2011). The UN expects 10 additional

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megacities by 2030, six in Asia (including Pakistani Lahore, and Hyderabad and Ahmedabad in India), three in Africa (Johannesburg, Dar es Salaam, Luanda), and Colombia’s

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, Hong Kong’s most densely populated district in Kowloon (east of the former airport’s runway), houses more than 57,000 people/km2 (ISD 2015). Megacities span a wide range of developmental stages, from such mature metropolitan areas as London and New York to rapidly expanding agglomerations of housing and economic

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activity as New Delhi, Karachi, or Lagos. All megacities, regardless of their developmental stage, face the challenges of worrisome income inequality, poor living conditions for their low-income families, and inadequate and decaying infrastructures

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(most often evident in the state of public transportation). In addition, emerging megacities in low-income countries share serious to severe environmental problems (including crowding, air pollution, water pollution, and solid waste disposal), high unemployment levels (alleviated by

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extensive black economy sectors), and public safety concerns. And megacities also face what Munich Re, one of the world’s leading reinsurance companies, calls megarisks, as the unprecedented accumulations of population, infrastructures, economic activities, and

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-rises, subways, industries, and extensive real estate devoted to services. But they must consider the risks arising from loss potentials that are far higher in megacities than in any other settings, because even a single and time-limited failure (a serious accident closing down major subway lines, a high-rise fire

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insured losses covered only about $3 billion. Moreover, as Munich Re (2004, 4) also notes, long-term risks are much more serious due to “many megacities being virtually predestined to suffer major natural disasters.” Earthquakes and cyclones (hurricanes, typhoons) are the most widespread risks, but in some

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megacities a considerable number of fatalities could be also caused by heat waves and by storm surges (aggravated by the rising sea level) and volcanic eruptions.

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of the modern global economy (be it in terms of goods, travel, information, or financial flows), there can no longer be any just strictly local megacity failure. A major earthquake in Tokyo or in Beijing (cities relatively prone to such events) may trigger a global recession. The necessity to minimize the

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spread of a potentially pandemic infection (leading to severed air links) may cripple the everyday life and economic performance of closely linked megacities on different continents. And it now appears to be only a matter of time before the world sees its first gigacity with more than 50

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the world of mass material demands. There has not been (because there cannot be) any Moore’s law-like progression in building essential infrastructures, expanding megacities, and manufacturing vehicles, airplanes or household appliances where even reductions of an order of magnitude (that is maintaining the performance with only a tenth of

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of nitrogenous fertilizers causing eutrophication of aquatic environments; the health effects and material damage caused by the photochemical smog that is now common in all megacities; and the rapid loss of biodiversity caused by such diverse actions as mass-scale monocropping and tropical deforestation. The largest externality that remains unaccounted for

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. Frankfurt am Main: Allianz. https://www.allianz.com/content/dam/onemarketing/azcom/Allianz_com/migration/media/press/document/other/kondratieff_en.pdf. Allianz. 2015. The Megacity State: The World’s Biggest Cities Shaping Our Future. Munich: Allianz. Alroy, J. 1998. Cope’s rule and the dynamics of body mass evolution in

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/r2007024.pdf. Canning, D., et al. 2015. Africa’s Demographic Transition: Dividend or Disaster? Washington, DC: World Bank. Canton, J. 2011. The extreme future of megacities. Significance (June):53–56. CARC (Canadian Agri-Food Research Council). 2003. Recommended Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Farm Animals: Chickens, Turkeys

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, J. W. 1961. Productivity Trends in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kennedy, C. A., et al. 2015. Energy and material flows of megacities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 112:5985–5990. Kentucky Derby. 2017. Kentucky Derby winners. https://www.kentuckyderby.com/history/kentucky

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. Mumby, H. S., et al. 2015. Distinguishing between determinate and indeterminate growth in a long-lived mammal. BMC Evolutionary Biology 15:214. Munich Re. 2004. Megacities—megarisks: Trends and challenges for insurance and risk management. http://www.preventionweb.net/files/646_10363.pdf. Murphy, G. I. 1968. Patterns in life history

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Meat, 73, 77, 113, 149–151, 154, 168, 343, 376, 413, 458 consumption of, 113, 118, 120, 391 production of, 4, 145–148, 151, 391 Megacities, 246, 254, 339–340, 343–344, 347–353, 393, 403 Mesopotamia, 28, 304, 332–333, 357, 361, 370–372, 440 Microbiome, 72, 168, 226 Milk

Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity

by Paul Kingsnorth  · 23 Sep 2025  · 388pp  · 110,920 words

bet that the smartphone you gave your child will unmoor them more effectively than any bulldozer could. The majority of humanity is now living in megacities, cut off from non-human nature, plugged into the Machine, controlled by it, reduced to it. This process accelerates under its own steam because, as

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, and the uncategorisable Simone Weil with her reflections on the consequences of rootlessness. All are in agreement that the creation of vast populations in industrial megacities is the precursor to turmoil. What kind—and whether the turmoil is to be welcomed or feared—is another question. Spengler’s prediction on this

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for 99 percent of their history; and, maybe more importantly, a collective assault on other forms of life. This is especially true of the modern megacity, with its tens of millions of inhabitants, which bears about as much resemblance to an ancient city as a Reaper drone does to a longbow

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in the hinterlands of their respective nations, and who promote and represent the ideology of Progress that keeps the metropolis humming. This global network of megacities represents the Machine’s core. The villages, small towns and wild places beyond the city’s boundaries are its periphery, to be milked for the

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living cultures in ‘advanced’ countries (i.e. the countries most under its sway) is impossible. The direction of modernity is away from land and towards megacities, away from both folk and high culture and into mass online anticulture, and away from any manifestation of God and towards the rule of Mammon

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have become. ‘Industrial biotechnology’ is the latest tech-fix joining the growing list of other ‘green’ innovations which are set to cut our world of megacities and glowing screens off even further from the real world. The pioneering Finnish ‘solar food’ company championed[5] by Monbiot as part of the future

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–68, 271–72, 310–11 McLuhan, Marshall, 253–54, 259 meaning greatness relation to, 16–17 modernity relation to, 134 mechanistic revolution, 70 media, 186 megacities, 85, 132 the megamachine, 35–36, 38–39 Men Like Gods (Wells), 212 mercantile class, 44 merchant class, 95 metaphysics of AI, 255–56 of

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Man in, 172 enclosure and, 288 forms and, 232 home relation to, 184 human empire and, 73 meaning relation to, 134 mechanistic revolution of, 70 megacities relation to, 132 metaphysics of, 156 monarchy relation to, 193 nature relation to, 175 reason relation to, 63 Reign of Quantity and, 164 revolution relation

The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us

by Joel Kotkin  · 11 Apr 2016  · 565pp  · 122,605 words

found the human city CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 What Is a City For? CHAPTER 2 The Importance of Everyday Life CHAPTER 3 The Problem with Megacities CHAPTER 4 Inside the “Glamour Zone” CHAPTER 5 Post-Familial Places CHAPTER 6 The Case for Dispersion CHAPTER 7 How Should We Live? ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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Sciences found that New York City—despite its mass transit system and high density—was the most environmentally wasteful of the world’s roughly 30 megacities, well ahead of more dispersed, car-dominated Los Angeles.30 In one of the most comprehensive national reviews of GHG emissions, the Australian Conservation

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over 48 percent over the past decade; the Thai capital of Bangkok and Dhaka, Bangladesh, both grew some 45 percent. The world’s second-largest megacity, Jakarta, expanded 34 percent and now exceeds 30 million. Rapid urbanization has also spread to Latin America, although, unlike Africa and India, these countries

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90 percent, and Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Suriname will exhibit urbanization rates above 80 percent.18 These numbers suggest that the future of megacities will be in the developing world. This will be most marked in those countries that still have large rural hinterlands that can export surplus populations

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. This may be most likely in places like China that have developed powerful industrial and technological sectors and enjoy an expanding domestic market. But most megacities, as presently constituted, have little chance of gaining international economic prominence. For one thing, they generally lack the characteristics—such as ethnic diversity, legal

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structures, technology, or manufacturing prowess—necessary to create the kind of economy that underpins successful global cities. These megacities are often very important to their countries, in large part due to political centralization, but none has come close to collecting the critical assets—in

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terms of infrastructure, education, health care, and even basic sanitation—necessary for becoming a competitive global city.25 In reality, megacities are plagued by inefficiencies and inherent problems that may keep most people from achieving prosperity and securing a powerful international role. For example, global management

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hypermetropoli which, with virtually no planning whatsoever, have expanded to accommodate monstrously multiplying populations.32 These realities suggest that perhaps the enthusiasm about the emerging megacities expressed in some accounts may be misplaced.33 Sometimes, it appears, observers conflate the street-level vibrancy of these cities with economic progress. “Bombay

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from “megapolitan elephantiasis,” a kind of collective dysfunction that left it with “pathological cells” that multiplied out of control. Eventually Rome, perhaps presaging the current megacity, became too large, bloated, and congested to sustain its role as the center of the empire. The emperors eventually moved their capital, first to Milan

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of their position, arrogance, and predatory behavior, while the middle class suffers from both.”68 This sense of disappointment is common in other developing-world megacities. In cities such as Cairo, Jakarta, Manila, Lagos, Mumbai, and Kolkata, the vast majority continue to live in “informal” housing that is often unhygienic,

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of disasters, natural or man-made. In India’s three largest cities, over 16 million people live in slums.69 Moreover, many of these unmanageable megacities—most notably Karachi70—offer ideal conditions for gang-led rule and unceasing ethnic conflict,71 which further threaten their economic development.72 National security experts

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Peter Liotta and James Miskel detail how megacity residents are highly subject to security challenges, including “anarchy, governmental collapse, ethnic rivalry, cultural grievances, religious-ideological extremism, environmental degradation, natural resource depletion, competition for

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much of the middle class has to “endure inhuman conditions” of congested, cratered roads, unreliable energy, and undrinkable water.79 Clearly many of the emerging megacities are ill prepared to handle rapid growth. Dhaka grows largely in its slums, which are mostly filled with former rural residents. These rural populations likely

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a host of health challenges that recall the degradations of Dickensian London. As Dr. Marc Riedl, a specialist in respiratory disease at UCLA, puts it, “megacity life is an unprecedented insult to the immune system.”81 In Africa, according to one researcher, the environmental and economic conditions are essentially diminishing the

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example, was made far worse by the extreme crowding in that affluent but heavily congested city.87 These dangers are, if anything, greater in developing megacities, many of which are located on polluted marshlands and brownfields.88 But perhaps the most physically evident result from intensified urbanization can be seen outside

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toward the countryside or to cleaner, less congested regions in Australia, New Zealand, and North America.98 THE INFRASTRUCTURE CHALLENGE To address these issues, emerging megacities are racing to manage their population growth by building sufficient infrastructure to maintain, and ideally improve, the lives of their citizens. Throughout the history of

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with their population. In the past, European, American, and Japanese cities grew their infrastructure to keep up with their growth and expansion. But in most megacities today, traffic congestion, for example, is worsening. Traffic, as anyone who has spent time in these cities easily notices, poses particular threats to riders and

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worse. At this stage of development, most industrial countries throughout history have more or less solved this issue, but residents of China’s relatively rich megacities still endure some of the same water-related challenges experienced in poorer Asian or African cities. There are even indications that toxicity levels in the

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make them any more healthful, or even more economically beneficial, for the vast majority of their residents.121 Still, some experts praise the rise of megacities and see them as naturally occurring phenomena tied to “globalization and technological change.”122 Other Western pundits assert that “the inexorable logic of the mega

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urban growth around the world.127 But given the high degree of poverty, low education levels, and dysfunction in these slums and in most developing megacities, this writer and other Western pundits might reconsider their celebration of such places. A 2014 National Geographic article, for example, feted the intrepid entrepreneurial

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to urbanization. An impressive 2014 study by the McKinsey Global Institute, called “Mapping the Economic Power of Cities,”133 found that “contrary to common perception, megacities have not been driving global growth for the past 15 years.” Many, the report concludes, have not grown faster than their host economies.134 This

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In the coming decade, McKinsey predicts that growth will shift to 577 “fast-growing middleweights,” many of them in China and India, while, in contrast, megacities will underperform economically and demographically. The rapid rise of agricultural productivity—the “green revolution”—may depress the demand for labor in more rural villages, but

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, notes Singapore-based scholar Kris Hartley, also reflects a growing shift of industrial and even service businesses to more rural locales, particularly in Asia. As megacities become more crowded, congested, and difficult to manage, Hartley suggests, companies are finding it more convenient, less costly, and—critically—better for the families

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as we have seen, with little effect. High prices in these congested, crowded cities make upward mobility, even with growth, difficult and housing prohibitive. “All megacities,” Sharma writes, “are therefore a ‘costly affair’ beyond sustainable resources and beyond the priority needs of the majority of Indians.”148 This is made worse

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Kanti Bajpai, but better cities that can better reward entrepreneurship and hard work. Improvements could include not only the expansion of the urban periphery around megacities but also the construction of a host of “completely new cities”—as occurred in the United States and the United Kingdom following their periods of

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unprecedented number of villages had transitioned from rural to urban (predominantly non-agricultural employment).153 This move is likely to impact firms now located in megacities. “We are inevitably getting more competition from elsewhere,” notes R. Suresh Kumar, human resource manager at Mumbai-based Associated Capsules. “2,000 rupees a

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widespread, instantaneous communications and quick travel—global influence among regions will depend upon these regions’ specialization in particular critical industries. As we saw with the megacity, it is not size that matters but competence and efficiency. This allows Singapore, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, and the San

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a high degree of cleanliness, and excellent cultural and recreational facilities. They generally lack the extreme congestion, high crime, and sanitation challenges common to poorer megacities of the developing world. In large part, it is these characteristics that attract foreign capital and talent to these particular cities. One indication can be

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foreign subsidiaries; efficient, globally focused Singapore now has more than twice as many regional headquarters than farlarger Tokyo, not to mention Asia’s less affluent megacities.24 Global hubs often are helped by their populace’s facility with English—the world’s primary language of finance, culture, and most critically, technology

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is most pronounced in the hearts of the most vibrant urban cores—from small North American global cities to European metropolises to Asia’s biggest megacities. The notion that height is a symbol of modernity, efficiency, and even aesthetics is common among urbanists. Today’s physically developing city has become

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bifurcation, conditions similar to those seen during the centuries leading to the eventual dissolution of the Roman Empire. Enforced densification, heralded by the rise of megacities, will also negatively impact urban areas in the developing world, where the vast majority of urban growth is taking place. People leave the countryside to

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July 1). “Economic Crisis Curbs Migration of Workers,” Wall Street Journal, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124636924020073241. BARTA, Patrick and Krishna POKHAREL. (2009, May 13). “Megacities Threaten to Choke India,” Wall Street Journal, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124216531392512435. BARTLETT, Dana. (1907). The Better City: A Sociological Study of a Modern

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section/czech-life/a-look-behind-the-thin-walls-of-czech-panelak-apartment-buildings. BOSELEY, Sarah. (2014, March). “Sanitation, swift action when battling pandemics in megacities,” Taipai Times, http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2014/03/02/2003584664. BOSKER, Biana. (2014, August 20). “Why haven’t China’s cities learned

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of India, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Incredible-India-Indeed/articleshow/5232986.cms. DESOUZA, Kevin C. (2014, February 18). “Our Fragile Emerging Megacities: A Focus on Resilience,” Planetizen: The Urban Planning, Design, and Development Network, http://www.planetizen.com/node/67338. DEWAN, Shaila. (2013, December 4). “Home

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GIMBLETT, Barbara. (2008). “Performing the City: Reflections on the Urban Vernacular,” Everyday Urbanism, New York: The Monacelli Press. KLEEMAN, Jenny. (2010, October 15). “Manila: A megacity where the living must share with the dead,” The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/15/philippines-overpopulation-crisis. KLINENBERG, Eric. (2012). Going

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Jan. (2006). “Mumbai’s Mysterious Middle Class,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 30, no. 4. NIJMAN, Jan and SHIN, Michael. (2014). “The Megacity,” Atlas of Cities, Princeton: Princeton University Press. NIR, Sarah Maslin. (2013, November 22). “The End of Willets Point,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com

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can-never-buy-8844198.html. TOFFLER, Alvin. (1980). The Third Wave, New York: Bantam Books. TORTAJADA, Cecilia. (2008). “Challenges and Realities of Water Management of Megacities.” Journal of International Affairs, vol. 61, no. 2, http://www.thirdworldcentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/challengesmexicocity.pdf. TOULMIN, Steven. (1990). Cosmopolis: The Hidden

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pp. 20–37; Bruegmann, 2005, p. 25; and Francis M. Jones, 1973, p. 259, 2716. 42Cox, “Southeast England Population.” Calculated from census data. 43Cox, “World Megacities.” Calculated from census data. 44Peterson, 1977, pp. 62–65. 45See Clapson, 2000, pp. 151–174. 46Howard, 1902, p. 38. 47See Peterson, 1977, pp. 62–65

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; http://www.economist.com/news/business/21565244-chinese-firms-are-new-challengers-global-construction-business-great-wall-builders; and http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/05/megacities-economic-growth-ecological-crisis/. 126http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/13/in_praise_of_slums. See Kenny, 2014. 127Sharma, Khan, and Warwick., 2000,

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separate demography for the rich, 57 on suburbs, 170 Brave New world (Huxley), 139 Brazil aging population in, 124–125 declining growth rate in, 55 megacity growth in, 73 protests against development priorities in, 13 urbanization in, 53 Bridgeport, 183 Britain. See Great Britain Broadacre City, 45 Bronx, 96–97 Brookhaven

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in, 66 housing affordability in, 133, 196 housing investors from, 100 housing shortage in, 175 inequality in, 102–103 infrastructure lack in, 69 megacities in, 51, 53, 54 megacity growth in, 73–74 migration in, 62–63, 76, 77 millennial living preferences in, 173 multigenerational households in, 183 post-familialism in, 119

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–120 quality of life protests in, 67 secularism in, 126 Singaporean immigrants from, 99 slowing of megacity growth in, 73 tech employment in, 185 telecommuters in, 188 walled cities in, 57–58 Choices, respecting, 167 Cincinnati, 28, 144 Cinco Ranch, 141–

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86 glamour zones in, 81 housing affordability in, 133, 160 immigrants to, 98 improved sanitation in, 116 inequality in cities of, 95 infrastructure of, 67 megacities in, 52 middle class move to periphery, 116 migration to, 137–138 millennial living preferences in, 172 post-familialism in, 117–119, 133 renovation of

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in, 179 high-income metropolitan areas in, 183 house size in, 179 housing affordability in, 133–134, 160 immigrants to, 98 improved sanitation in, 116 megacities in, 52 Mexican immigration to, 139 migration to, 137 millennials in, 170–171 movement of city center populations in, 165 multigenerational households in, 182–183

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization

by Parag Khanna  · 18 Apr 2016  · 497pp  · 144,283 words

: Lagos: Africa’s Global City CHAPTER 12 GETTING ON THE MAP Pop-Up Cities From Exclave to Enclave China’s Supersize SEZs Master Planning for Megacities City Building as State Building Leapfrogging to Hybrid Governance CHAPTER 13 SUPPLY CHAINS AS SALVATION Who Runs the Supply Chain? Beyond the Law? To Move

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functional infrastructure tells us more about how the world works than political borders. The true map of the world should feature not just states but megacities, highways, railways, pipelines, Internet cables, and other symbols of our emerging global network civilization. Second, devolution is the most powerful political force of our age

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human settlement along fertile river plains and oceanic coasts is an ancient pattern, the demographic concentration, economic weight, and political power of today’s coastal megacities makes them—more than most states—the key units of human organization. If we are an urban species, then producing data-driven cityscapes—mapping cities

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China and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt are rather difficult to discern without high-performance zoom lenses, but more modern engineering such as megacities, ultra-long bridges, and straight desert highways are easy to spot. The Kennecott copper mine in Utah and the Mir diamond mine in Siberia stretch

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infrastructure; they are the human technology most visible from space, growing from villages to towns to counties to megacities to super-corridors stretching hundreds of kilometers. In 1950, the world had only two megacities of populations larger than 10 million: Tokyo and New York City. By 2025, there will be at least

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forty such megacities. The population of the greater Mexico City region is larger than that of Australia, as is that of Chongqing, a collection of connected urban enclaves

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São Paulo, and Mumbai-Pune are also becoming more integrated through infrastructure. At least a dozen such megacity corridors have emerged already. China is in the process of reorganizing itself around two dozen giant megacity clusters of up to 100 million citizens each.*3 And yet by 2030, the second-largest city

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, drawing talent from around the world and amassing capital to spend on themselves while they compete on the same circuit. The rise of emerging market megacities as magnets for regional wealth and talent has been the most significant contributor to shifting the world’s focal point of economic activity. McKinsey Global

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Institute research suggests that from now until 2025 one-third of world growth will come from the key Western capitals and emerging market megacities, one-third from the heavily populous middleweight cities of emerging markets, and one-third from small cities and rural areas in developing countries. Because prices

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in their regions, the more regions become collective forces rather than tectonic coincidences. Per the U.S. National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2030 report, “Megacities and regional groupings [such as the EU, the North American Union, and Greater China] will assume increasing powers whereas national governments and global multilateral institutions

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. Beijing is the captain of China’s urban tug-of-war team: It promotes experimentation but backstops failure. The country is becoming a confederation of megacities that compete with each other for investment, industries, talent, and visibility, generating a dynamism the country needs to ensure broad-based stability. Even Beijing, Shanghai

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fifty thousand to over three million) jockeys to find a place for itself in Beijing’s five-year plans, whether as a district of a megacity or in piloting subsidized schemes to reduce factory emissions. With as much as 70 percent of China’s budget consumed by local government expenses, many

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with Emirates) 75 percent of Iran’s international flight market. Lufthansa’s share will take off as more Western passengers arrive. Tehran today is a megacity left off the lists of enticing Asian destinations such as Istanbul and Cairo, but that too will change. The overland route is already restoring historical

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the present (and future) before they can become reflections of the past. CHINA’S SUPERSIZE SEZS No country has as many SEZs, new cities, and megacities as China. While SEZs have powered China’s export sector and growth, many were designed as single-industry clusters that proved vulnerable to global economic

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. Over the next two decades, however, as China moves an estimated 300 million more people (especially non-hukou*2 registered migrants) into new districts of megacities (and entirely new cities) in interior areas, it wants to make sure that none are either too congested or too sprawling and all are large

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to 44 percent. A tour around the Pearl River delta reveals some of the most novel strategies in combining urbanization, SEZs, and innovation to breed megacities that become pillars of innovation and growth. As capital of Guangdong province, Guangzhou has been the administrative nerve center presiding over the delta’s manufacturing

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Macau and Hong Kong all make the delta’s cities feel like nodes of a much larger megacity corridor expected to grow to 80 million people with a $2 trillion GDP by 2030. Another Chinese megacity cluster in the making is the Bohai Economic Rim, which links Beijing, Hebei, Liaoning, Shandong, and

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-focused Taobao University. If China ultimately succeeds in overcoming the middle-income trap, strategic urbanization will have been a big reason why. MASTER PLANNING FOR MEGACITIES The more advanced SEZs China builds, the more even rich countries are picking up on what was once considered a poor state’s model—both

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’s Royal Albert Dock near the City Airport as a tax-free bridgehead for Chinese and Asian businesses. Beyond wealthy countries, far more countries have megacities that need Chinese-style thinking. Population growth and urbanization have taken cities to a scale never imagined. The largest cities of the West—New York

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, London, Moscow—have less than half the population of the developing world’s megacities such as Mumbai and Jakarta. And with the exception of Mexico City and São Paulo in Latin America and Lagos and Cairo in Africa, all

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of the world’s most populous metropolises are in Asia. Megacities are metabolic ecosystems constantly circulating demographic flows; daytime populations can be millions more than in the evenings. They are so large that major new infrastructures

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order to capitalize on the revenue from such utilities as urban populations swell. The willful construction of new cities from scratch or upgraded districts of megacities to accommodate burgeoning populations can make the difference between sustainable and inclusive societies and total social disorder. CITY BUILDING AS STATE BUILDING There is no

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launched a consortium called the Global Resilience Partnership that uses satellite monitoring and big data to identify the capacity gaps of vulnerable geographies—whether teeming megacities or isolated rural communities—and design conservation policies for the former and micro-finance to boost output for the latter. When seed technology and big

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the time comes. Economists might call this “excess capacity,” but in an unpredictable world it seems more like common sense. A planetary civilization of coastal megacities should be more interested in supply chain continuity than imperial hegemony. Trading cities want coast guards and counterterrorism more than foreign occupations and nuclear weapons

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’s Story Map apps can be customized to produce thematic visual stories such as how rapid urban migration has given rise to a world of megacities. ESRI MAPPING CENTER http://mappingcenter.​esri.​com/​index.​cfm?​fa=​resources.​cartoFavorites Esri’s Mapping Center provides access to various resources that are used regularly

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Europe has a substantial number of separatist movements, but even as it devolves, new nations can become members of the collective European Union (EU). 13. MEGACITIES AS THE NEW ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY Credit pai1.13 Urban archipelagos represent a growing share of national economies. Moscow, São Paulo, Lagos, and Johannesburg are representative

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its arbitrary postcolonial map into one where African societies are better connected to one another. 20. CHINA: EMPIRE OF MEGACITIES Credit pai1.20 China is functionally reorganizing itself around approximately two dozen megacity clusters, each internally integrated through dense transportation networks, while high-speed rail connects the entire country. 21. BEYOND THE

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, will become the only reliable food-producing geographies, and potentially home to billions of climate refugees. 33. ONE MEGACITY, MANY SYSTEMS Credit pai1.33 From Guangzhou to Hong Kong, the Pearl River Delta megacity is becoming one integrated economic corridor covering a dozen cities. By 2030 its population could reach 80 million

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Brook, A History of Future Cities (W. W. Norton, 2014). 6. Speech at Cityquest KAEC Forum, Nov. 25, 2013. 7. Gabriel Kuris, “Remaking a Neglected Megacity: A Civic Transformation in Lagos State, 1999–2012” (Princeton Project on Innovations for Successful Societies, July 2014). CHAPTER 12: GETTING ON THE MAP 1. National

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for New York City have been developed and are under consideration. See Jeroen C. J. H. Aerts et al., “Evaluating Flood Resilience Strategies for Coastal Megacities,” Science, May 2, 2014, 473–75. CONCLUSION: FROM CONNECTIVITY TO RESILIENCE 1. “Our Big Bet for the Future,” 2015 Gates Annual Letter, available at: http

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. Adler-Nissen, Rebecca. Opting out of the European Union. Cambridge University Press, 2015. Aerts, C.J.H., et al. “Evaluating Flood Resilience Strategies for Coastal Megacities.” Science, May 22, 2014, 473–75. Alesina, Alberto, and Byrony Reich. “Nation-Building.” National Bureau of Economic Research working paper 18839, Feb. 2013. Alesina, Alberto

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in the United States.” NBER Working Paper 19843, Jan. 2014. Chief of Staff of the Army’s Strategic Studies Group. “A Proposed Framework for Appreciating Megacities: A US Army Perspective.” Small Wars Journal (April 2014). Chinese Military Science Academy. History of the War to Resist America and Aid Korea. Military Science

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Democracy Survive When We Don’t Trust Our Leaders? TED Conferences, 2013. Krugman, Paul. Geography and Trade. MIT Press, 1991. Kuris, Gabriel. “Remaking a Neglected Megacity: A Civic Transformation in Lagos State, 1999–2012.” Princeton Project on Innovations for Successful Societies, July 2014. Kurlantzick, Joshua. Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of

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.12 Europe Fragments as It Grows Together. Created by University of Wisconsin–Madison Cartography Laboratory. Business Insider; European Free Alliance; Natural Earth; Wikipedia. pai1.13 Megacities as the New Economic Geography. Created by University of Wisconsin–Madison Cartography Laboratory. Brookings Institution; International Monetary Fund; Lagos Bureau of Statistics; Natural Earth; Oak

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Blossom. Africa Energy; African Development Bank; African Union; Natural Earth; Theodora; United Nations Economic Commission for Africa; World Resources Institute. pai1.20 China: Empire of Megacities. Created by University of Wisconsin–Madison Cartography Laboratory. Brookings Institution; Harvard World Map; Kashgar Prefecture Economic and Social Development Report 2011; Lhasa Economic and Social

If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities

by Benjamin R. Barber  · 5 Nov 2013  · 501pp  · 145,943 words

(Not Quite) Indestructible YURY LUZHKOV OF MOSCOW II. HOW IT CAN BE DONE CHAPTER 7. “PLANET OF SLUMS” The Challenge of Urban Inequality Profile 7. Megacity Headaches AYODELE ADEWALE OF LAGOS CHAPTER 8. CITY, CURE THYSELF! Mitigating Inequality Profile 8. Her Honor the Mayor SHEILA DIKSHIT OF DELHI CHAPTER 9. SMART

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League, the European Union’s Secretariat of Cities, the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, the Association of (U.S.) Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the Megacities Foundation, CityNet, and City Protocol—among many others. These clumsily named and seemingly dull bureaucratic constructions are in fact birthing an exciting new cosmopolis whose

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as Stuttgart’s Wolfgang Schuster, Barcelona’s Xavier Trias, and New York City’s hyperactive Michael Bloomberg. With or without authoritative underwriting, networked cities and megacities are likely to determine whether democracy—perhaps even civilization itself—survives in the coming decades, when the primary challenge will remain how to overcome the

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and everywhere, picking up the garbage. Indeed, as we will explore in wrestling with the challenge of urban inequality (Chapter 8), in many developing-world megacities, picking up the garbage has become a key to the informal economy and to the employment of the poor. The city’s defining association with

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half century since the eminent sociologist wrote, the city has taken still another leap forward: capital cities underwritten by megarhetoric have been morphing into networked megacities of tens of millions, intersecting with other cities to comprise today’s burgeoning megalopolises and megaregions in which an increasing majority of the earth’s

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population now dwells. Tribes still dominate certain cultures, but even in Africa megacity conurbations have emerged, representing territorially immense urban juggernauts that encompass populations of twenty million or more. Typical is Africa’s Lagos-Ibadan-Cotonou region, where

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a million—all of them growing rapidly.18 Then there is Kinshasa-Brazzaville, two interconnected cities separated by a river in rival “Congo” states. Other megacities have appeared in the Indo-Gangetic Plain, in China’s Pearl River Delta, as well as in the Northeast Corridor in the United States, Japan

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moon as staples of their political campaign patter. For some time, idealists and dreamers have looked even further—beyond our known urban behemoths and linked megacities—in search of Marshall McLuhan’s global village, a mote in his prescient eye sixty years ago, but today an abstraction being realized not only

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Calvinism, that freedom is itself part of the parable about man’s fall. Inasmuch as the city portends freedom, our destiny in capital cities (the megacities of the eighteenth century) can only be a descent from grace, however much it feels like progress. To see in the Fall a happy ascent

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the City: Some Preliminaries The city’s compass extends from settlements and small towns (if not quite village sized) of several thousand to imposing modern megacities with tens of millions. References to the “urban population” turn out to refer to entities of radically varying size, which is why announcing that more

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in any case undergoing constant change, as Daniel Brook’s fascinating “history of future cities” makes evident.5 Smaller “middleweight” cities are today outperforming many megacities in terms of overall household growth (see Table 2). According to McKinsey, Jakarta does better in this department than London, Jinan better than New York

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, and Taipei better than Los Angeles. Lagos actually outperforms twenty considerably larger megacities. Table 2: Top Cities in Terms of Absolute Household Growth, 2011–2025 (projected in terms of million households) Historically, too, the only constant has been

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a half-million and a million than for larger cities. Stuttgart cannot be called a town, but neither is it a capital city or a megacity. It typifies urban living in an urbanized Europe that is a model for the world. Economic inequality and unemployment often seem beyond the pale of

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rich and poor in so prosperous a nation makes inequality more egregious. The second slum planet comprises the third world, where the largest and newest megacities, growing at a lightning pace, account for the great preponderance of slum dwellers.10 As the Kerner Commission in the late 1960s once called America

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rapid growth of sprawling conurbations in nations on the Indian subcontinent, where Karachi, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Dhaka present themselves as much as megaslums as megacities.18 The danger is that in reading Davis and Harvey and the grim prophecies of Jeremy Seabrook in his alarming Cities of the South, we

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distorting that the city becomes indistinguishable from the latrine, drowning in its own excrement, literally as well as metaphorically.19 To Davis, “today’s poor megacities—Nairobi, Lagos, Bombay, Dhaka . . . are stinking mountains of shit that would appall even the most hardened Victorians.”20 That Davis’s stinking mountains of shit

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that used to be routine and widespread.”35 Slums in the developing world, on the other hand, much more encompassing and seemingly endemic to new megacities, often define urban life. Amelioration is hard to effect. Over a dozen years ago, David Harvey warned that the “problems of the advanced capitalist world

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economic opportunity and the seductive excitement of fresh lives of possibility (see Chapter 2), much of the rapid population growth in the developing world’s megacities has been the result of people pushed off the land by unemployment and the kind of global market competition local agriculture can’t combat. It

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northern states,” above all, Muslims.38 There is something to fight over. These pale but seductive opportunities have led to astonishing growth in third-world megacities in the absence of either mobility or genuine hope. In China, for example, construction worker colonies drawn from inland village China (where more than two

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, remains the one between “the West and the rest,” the developed world’s modest planet of slums and the developing world’s limitless, revolution-inciting megacity megaslums. As segregation fades on the first planet, it explodes on the other. In the developed world, local agricultural markets (green markets) serve the city

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to which rural peoples flee do not necessarily offer the possibilities of manufacturing that the developed world’s cities once did. The result: massive new megacity slums embodying a new segregation, with nothing like the possibilities of the towns of an earlier era. James K. Galbraith sees speculative markets as a

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in all its forms can be addressed are we likely to instigate mitigation successfully. Profile 7. Megacity Headaches AYODELE ADEWALE OF LAGOS Being mayor anywhere is a tough job. Running the show in an African megacity with burgeoning megaslums in what is nonetheless a relatively wealthy city in a mineral- and oil

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is “the youngest elected Chairman [ever, who has made] his local community which used to be slum . . . into a cosmopolitan city within the fastest growing megacity in Africa. He has created an economic growth hub for the state. He has brought free healthcare, good roads, fuller citizen participation, security to the

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operating locally while engaging globally to solve real problems with real fixes. That would be a boon to any global metropolis. In a developing world megacity in Africa like Lagos, it is—let’s not be patronizing and call it a miracle—a genuine blessing. CHAPTER 8. CITY, CURE THYSELF! Mitigating

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government, as much about the invisible economy as about public jobs or formal corporate institutions. As Katherine Boo poignantly shows, the reality in third-world megacities in Africa, Latin America, and Asia is an informal economy that offers employment to the technically “jobless,” lodging to the technically “homeless,” and hope, however

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gifts of Robert Wilson are what make the arts sticky, connecting people around the world in ways culture may not always contemplate. In Kinshasa, a megacity in the sometimes anarchic Republic of the Congo, a symphony orchestra was conceived and made real as a musical rebuke to third-world stereotypes.18

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that cities already pursue.”3 My proposal for a parliament of mayors is no grandiose scheme, however, no mandate for top-down suzerainty by omnipotent megacities exercising executive authority over a supine world. It is rather a brief for cities to lend impetus to informal practices they already have in place

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, Wrocław, Gdansk, Tijuana, and others like them to the planning table, honoring the reality that to speak of cities is not just to speak of megacities, and that towns with anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 citizens must be part of a viable global order of cities. The makeup and

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delegates of the special interests of particular cities (Hong Kong as a port city, London as a financial capital, Kinshasa as a land-locked African megacity), mayors convened in a global parliament must also see themselves as deliberative judges of global public goods, embodying the Burkean common spirit. Such a spirit

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more cities than seats in the parliament, even when multiplied by three sessions a year over several decades. One might also ask whether certain global megacities must be regularly represented because of their size, geography, and demographics (emulating the U.N. Security Council, on which the major post–World War II

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every size are included in each session, the parliament could offer seats to each of three tranches of cities based on population: 50 seats to megacities over 10 million whose participation is crucial; 125 seats to cities between 500,000 and 10 million in population that stand for the great majority

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to population and be counted in a second supplementary accounting in weighted terms—each 500,000 citizens represented comprising one vote. The mayor of a megacity of 20 million would cast one “city vote,” but also be counted in the supplementary balloting as casting 40 demographic votes worth 500,000 citizens

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the parliament by their mayors; to pursue representation, they would have to elect to join the group from which cities are chosen by lot: 1. Megacities with populations of 10 million or more (50 seats); 2. Cities with 500,000 to 10 million population (125 seats); 3. Cities of 50,000

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percent in 1950. Today 90 percent of urbanization is occurring in developing nations, much of it in midsize towns and cities rather than just in megacities. There is, to be sure, some controversy over these figures because what counts as urban varies from region to region and can include people living

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than a million to 8 million, Kinshasa/Brazzaville from 200,000 people to nine million. Now factor in the percentage of people in these burgeoning megacities living in slums, and it becomes apparent that Davis’s Planet of Slums is really a third-world planet. 11. The Kerner Commission, Report of

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had slums for a long time (the first favela there was established in the 1880s), most of today’s megaslums are new excrescences of emerging megacities. 19. Jeremy Seabrook, Cities of the South: Scenes from a Developing World, New York: Verso, 1996. 20. Davis, Planet of Slums, p. 138. 21. Katherine

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(according to Peter Edelman, in the same American Prospect Roundtable.) 36. David Harvey, “Possible Urban Worlds” in Steef Buijs, Wendy Tan, and Devisari Tunas eds., Megacities: Exploring a Sustainable Future, Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2010, p. 168. 37. Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Preface, p. xx. 38. Ibid., p. 12. 39. Carl

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habitats, and they are the first and most immediate level of government and public service that citizens experience. 18. David Harvey, “Possible Urban Worlds,” in Megacities: Exploring a Sustainable Future, ed. Steef Buijs, Wendy Tan, and Devisari Tunas, Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2010, p. 278. 19. Harrington, The Other America, conclusion. 20

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; imagined, 16–18; innovations in, 7–8; instant, 16; interdependent, 106–140, 164–165; jurisdictional disputes, 9–11, 148–150; as marketplace, 14–15, 16; megacities, 15–16; networks of, 6–7, 8, 11–12; new, 55–58, 384n17; normative idea of, 40–41; and not-city, 63–66; older, 58

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Against Illegal Guns, 6, 113, 122–123, 129, 317 Mayors for Peace, 122–123, 128, 317 McCarthy, Kathleen, 117 McWorld, 143, 180 MedCities, 132–133 Megacities, 15–16 Menon, Anil, 106 Mer-Khamis, Juliano, 287 Metropolis, 16, 164, 316 Mexico, crime, 202, 381–382n66 Mexico City business revival, 223 Mexico City

City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age

by P. D. Smith  · 19 Jun 2012

of his vision for the Modernist city of the future was a station with a landing platform on its roof.67 In the age of megacities, an efficient transport system is indeed essential and urban railway stations must be designed to cope with vast numbers of passengers. The busiest is Tokyo

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from others (TB, measles). However, new viruses – such as SARS or the H5N1 influenza virus – continue to pose a real threat to the densely populated megacities of the twenty-first century. The Berlin Wall, photographed in 1986 by French artist Thierry Noir at Bethaniendamm in Berlin-Kreuzberg. In 1984, Noir and

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as the Harlem Renaissance. Slum City Twenty-first-century Mumbai, the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra, is one of the world’s great megacities, with a total population of some nineteen million and rising. In the next few decades, Mumbai is expected to grow into a hypercity of more

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Urbanisation has been increasing dramatically in the developing world for decades. Lagos, the commercial heart of Nigeria, is one of the world’s fastest growing megacities. Its population is expanding at 8 per cent a year. Every day some six thousand people move to this city of nine million and the

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a billion slum dwellers in the world today – nearly one in six of the population.69 The age of the megacities is also that of the megaslum. Out of the top twenty megacities, fifteen are in developing countries. Today, one in three city dwellers is living in a slum.70 Of course

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are now the fastest growing cities, a phenomenon that is being repeated around the world.132 In the last thirty years, cities have grown into megacities and continued expanding to form ‘huge urban galaxies’ – sprawling, polycentric cities that spread across whole regions, forming continental conurbations, or megaregions.133 Metropolis has become

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walk to work.14 But for commuters in Mumbai, the walk from the railway station to the office has become increasingly difficult. As this vast megacity of some nineteen million people has grown ever larger and more successful, its roads have become choked with a motley assortment of three-wheeled auto

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the ancient world, no one built better roads than the Romans. And as all roads led to Rome, it’s not surprising that this archetypal megacity experienced some of the first urban traffic jams. Indeed, Julius Caesar was so frustrated by the city’s congested roads that he banned carts during

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-snipes’, ‘street rats’ or ‘Arabs’, street kids were a common sight in nineteenth-century cities, as they are today in many Asian and Latin American megacities. Most of them lived, slept and ate in the alleys and hallways of the slum tenements, scraping a very meagre existence by blacking boots, sweeping

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bought from a street stall and eaten while travelling to work or school. The most vibrant street food cultures are found in the vast, sprawling megacities of the developing world. The street food of such cities, which are full of rural migrants, reflects local cultures and is a vital part of

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as little as twenty years. The same danger faces many cities that lie on or near the coast, including fifteen of the world’s twenty megacities and two-fifths of cities with populations of between one and ten million. The number of extreme weather events has increased more than fivefold since

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. It is estimated that some three and a half million people were killed in natural disasters in the previous century. In the century of the megacity and global warming we may begin to see the first mega-disasters, catastrophes that claim the lives of more than a million people. The San

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the first cities were date palms. In a world that is now predominantly urban, most people on the planet are experiencing city climates. Today’s megacities are the largest artificial structures ever built. They are awe-inspiring examples of humankind’s ability to control and transform its habitat. As well as

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be modest in the coming years and almost entirely due to migration from poorer countries. Europe is the only region without a megacity. There are now some twenty-two megacities – those with populations of more than ten million people. These unprecedented concentrations of humanity are home to 5 per cent of the

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cities of the developing world. By 2030, the urban population of Africa will exceed the population of Europe. By then it is also predicted that megacities such as Shanghai will have to manage fourteen square miles of new growth each and every year. As they grow, some

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megacities are joining together to form ‘super-urban regions’, areas such as the Chengdu-Chongqing corridor city in China. This ‘urban goliath’ has been created in

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that it is possible to be more successful economically than bigger cities, such as Bangkok (eleven million), whilst avoiding many of the problems associated with megacities. Similarly, Near Eastern cities such as Cairo and Tehran have been outstripped by younger, much smaller cities, like Abu Dhabi and Dubai. In India, government

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in James Blish’s Cities in Flight, and urban spaceships (the subject of Heinlein’s Universe). We live today in an age of rapidly expanding megacities, and it is therefore not difficult to imagine a future in which the world itself has become a continuous city, such as Trantor in Isaac

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to Wells’s novel The Sleeper Awakes, based on a story written as early as 1899, which describes a future London that has become a megacity of ‘Titanic buildings’ and thirty-three million inhabitants.41 For all its awesome architecture and technology, London was now a ‘gigantic glass hive’ whose existence

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City. Afterword In the middle of the twentieth century, New York became the world’s first megacity, a metropolitan area with ten million or more inhabitants. By 2007, according to the UN, there were nineteen megacities, a figure that is expected to rise to at least twenty-six by 2025. Today’s

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cities and megacities are spreading out to form even larger urban systems. The term ‘Megalopolis’ was first used in

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(16 June 2008), 6. 58. Demographia World Urban Areas (World Agglomerations): Population and Projections (Demographia: Belleville, 2009). Figures for the populations of today’s sprawling megacities vary, sometimes widely. This is partly due to the problem of defining the extent of a city but also due to inadequate statistics in the

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al. (2008), 79, 88. 133. Soja and Kanai (2007) refer to three types of urban areas: a city region, with more than a million inhabitants; megacity regions, with more than ten million inhabitants; and megalopolitan city regions which are quasi-continental metropolitan areas. ‘The urbanization of the world’, in Burdett and

Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made

by Vaclav Smil  · 2 Mar 2021  · 1,324pp  · 159,290 words

shifts tolerably low but have also been able to reduce many of them to marginal rates: risks of transmitting infectious diseases among people living in megacities or the dangers inherent in mass commercial aviation are excellent examples of such achievements. We have been similarly inventive in keeping many environmental impacts of

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century in Europe and North America, after World War II it had reached high rates in Asia, and its culmination has been the emergence of megacities with more than 10 million people. Cities are the dominant centers of innovation and prosperity (albeit accompanied by an often high degree of inequality)—and

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modernizing economies have to deal with longer life expectancies and some are already seeing population declines. And unprecedented urban expansion, culminating in the rise of megacities, could not have been accomplished without mass-scale migrations. Consequently, the remainder of this chapter will look at the challenges of aging, population decline, urbanization

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, is remarkably safe, and New York, written off as irreparably violent during the 1980s, has shown how crime rates can decline even in a multicultural megacity that has accommodated millions of immigrants (Zimring 2013). The economic importance of cities is obvious. Large-scale urbanization drove modern industrialization and, in a deviation

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urbanization is adding almost 70 million new city residents a year, an equivalent of nearly two Tokyos, four New Yorks, or six Rios. By 2025 megacities will house about 2 billion people (25% of the global total) and account for 60% of the world economic product. Intranational comparisons tell the same

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has come up with a satisfactory solution for the growing challenge of solid waste disposal. All of these problems reach their most intractable impacts in megacities. Megacities These exceptionally large agglomerations are defined as cities with more than 10 million people, but their actual areas and population totals vary widely, depending on

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municipal government had nearly 39 million, and the National Capital Region had almost 44 million people in 2015. In 1950 the world had only two megacities, New York and Tokyo, and while only Mexico City was added by 1975, the list grew to 18 cities by the year 2000. By 2016

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the UN’s global listing had 31 megacities, with 18 of them in Asia (UN 2016). Tokyo continues to lead and its nearly 39 million people would make it the world’s 36th

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by 2050 there will be no Western city among the top 20, as urbanization will be an overwhelmingly Asian phenomenon with an increasing share of megacities in sub-Saharan Africa, the region whose population will increase faster than anywhere else. The potential for substantial additions to this list is best indicated

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by the fact that in 2016 the world also had 45 cities with populations between five and ten million people. All megacities—be they such old metropolitan areas as London or Tokyo or such new agglomerations as Karachi or Lagos—share all the usual urban challenges but

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on more daunting scales. This scale also means that megacities face megarisks when the cities are subject to such natural hazards as earthquakes, hurricanes (typhoons), floods, tsunami, and volcanic eruption or to terrorist attacks, and

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that insurers would face unprecedented payouts in the aftermath of such catastrophes (Allianz 2015). A leading reinsurance company concluded that many megacities are “virtually predestined to suffer major natural disasters” (Munich Re 2004). In addition, there are emerging concerns about protracted heat waves and about fires in

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skyscrapers. Moreover, natural catastrophes that would severely affect or temporarily disable those megacities that have critical roles in the integrated global economy would have worldwide consequences for economic growth, as would the necessity of cutting off some

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megacities from mass-scale air travel in order to minimize the risks of spreading a new potentially pandemic infection. But such concerns do not seem to matter: megacities continue to grow even in countries with below-replacement fertilities. Consequently, in

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the not too distant future there will be the world’s first megacity of more than 50 million people, larger than Spain and about as large as South Korea. Remarkably, some urbanization enthusiasts applaud this trend, claiming that

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, including energies that were used to build, and continue to be used to maintain, extensive urban infrastructures. Moving from a traditional village to a modern megacity is commonly associated with the doubling or tripling of per capita claims on the biosphere’s resources. The most important reason for much higher per

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electricity use is nearly double the rural rate (Woodbridge et al. 2016), as is average tap water use in Chinese cities (Yu et al. 2015). Megacities also create extreme urban sprawl and strong heat islands. By fragmenting habitats and destroying natural plant cover (particularly in coastal areas, above all in mangrove

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air circulation. This combination produces heat islands with temperatures a few degrees and up to 8°C higher than the surrounding countryside. And, of course, megacities are also the most extreme examples of large-scale crowding. There is nothing new about very crowded urban living, as many premodern towns and cities

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had extreme population densities, but in megacities such conditions reach unprecedented rates. Densities (all in people/km2) go above 20,000 in Paris, 30,000 in Mumbai, and 40,000 in Manila

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, China). Growth of the cities could be seen both as radiative expansions of old centers and as gradual fusion of adjacent settlements and formation of megacities, often along the coasts. By far the best way to map changing urban, industrial, and transportation land uses is to look at nighttime observations, and

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(Hasan and Halwart 2009). Aquaculture thus eases as well as intensifies the pressure on wild marine species. On land the new world of cities and megacities has created large areas where animal zoomass is dominated by dogs and cats and where the only thriving wild mammals and birds are mostly such

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major respiratory and eye irritant, while NO2 is largely responsible for the brownish coloration of smoggy air that is now encountered in summer in all megacities, and that is nearly a chronic occurrence in sunny climates. Industrializing cities first got underground sewers (returning to designs pioneered by the Romans), and then

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–25. Allen, R.C. 2012. Technology and the great divergence: Global economic development since 1820. Explorations in Economic History 49:1–16. Allianz. 2015. The Megacity State: The World’s Biggest Cities Shaping Our Future. Munich: Allianz. Allison, A. 2013. Precarious Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Alouki, K. et al

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://www.msc.com/maf/about-us/new-ships Muir, J.F. 2015. Fuel and Energy Use in the Fisheries Sector. Rome: FAO. Munich Re. 2004. Megacities—Megarisks: Trends and challenges for insurance and risk management. http://www.preventionweb.net/files/646_10363.pdf Muramatsu, N. and H. Akiyama. 2011. Japan: Super

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burning, 216 phosphate deficiencies, 235 population increases, 268–69 primary energy consumption, 273 sugar exports, 96 water usage, 189 agglomeration, 64–65. See also cities; megacities aging societies, 8, 45, 46–47, 51–53, 264–65, 269 agricultural and dietary transitions, 70–113 agrochemicals and machinery, 77–80 animal feeding, 82

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rates, 32, 39, 263, 264 food variety, 103 healthcare, 48 hydrocarbon energy sources for, 145–46 industrialization of, 179 material consumption, 282–83, 286, 287 megacities in, 67 multicropping, 215–16 pastures, 214–15 primary energy consumption, 273 slum crowding, 58 staple grains, 89 urbanization, 60 water usage, 189 Asian-Mediterranean

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Center), 81 circular economy, impossibility of, 284–85 cities. See also urbanization energy needs, 275 environmental improvements to, 66 large cities, eastward shift in, 62 megacities, 8–9, 46, 64, 66–69, 209–10 urban inequalities, 66 civilizational diseases, 107–9 Civil War, impact on industrial expansion, 174 Clark, Colin, 170

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use, 74–75, 144–46, 147–51 in food production systems, 179 future energy supply, decarbonization of, 271–79 influence on economic activity, 155, 158 megacities, energy use by, 68 modern primary energy supply, fossil fuels in, 277–78 non-carbon system, characteristics of possible transition to, 279 production in premodern

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information age, key patents of, 200f information sector employment, 181 introduction to, 197 long-term multiples for, 249–50, 250f innovation, 18–20, 162 insurance, megacities and, 67 integrated circuits, 199, 200f interdisciplinarity, vii intergenerational wealth flows, 41 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 241 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity

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, 209–22 Landry, Michel August Adolphe, 31, 34 LANDSAT, 209 lard, US supply of, 96–97 large cities, environmental impact of, 8–9. See also megacities Latin America. See also specific countries arable land in, 266–67 croplands, 214 deforestation, 109–10, 212–13 demographic dividend, 45 dietary transition, 88 fertility

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Mediterranean diet, 107 Mediterranean region demographic transitions in, 36 meat supply, 92 per capita energy use, 146 wilderness area, 221 Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), 123 megacities, 8–9, 46, 64, 66–69, 209–10 megafauna, 205–6, 236 mega-ship cruising, 197 Meiji restoration, 16–17 Mellars, P., 205 men elderly

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-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), 230–31 Mexico fertility rates, 38 obesity in, 106 residential space cooling, 144 wilderness area, 221 Mexico City inequalities, 66 as megacity, 67 micronutrient malnutrition, 101 microplastics, 230, 232–33 Middle East immigration from, 29–30 impact of climate change on, 14 material consumption, 286 mortality-natality

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migration from Africa, 58–59 Brazil, domestic migration, 59–60 China, intranational migrations, 58–59 to European Union, 61 international migrations, 28–30, 29f, 266 megacities and, 46 urbanization and, 57–69 milk, 86, 94–95, 98–99 Millet, Jean-François, 4f minerals, 13, 99 mobile phones. See personal mobile devices

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to fertility declines, 39–40 infant and childhood mortality, 7–8, 15, 42, 252 infectious disease mortality, 47–48 in premodern world, 8 Moscow as megacity, 67 Mosk, Carl, 32–33 mothers and sons (generational transitions), 3–7 motor vehicles, structural shifts in production of, 173 movies, information bandwidth used by

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–38, 242 Neuville, George, 91 New York City business concentrations, 64 crime, 63 electrical generating plants, 135, 136f gas lighting, 138 immigration, 60–61 as megacity, 66–67 population of, 57, 59 smog episodes, 228–29 New Zealand, meat exports from, 92 Nielsen, R. W., 25–26 Niger children, desired number

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of, 245–46, 259–60 international migration and, 266 introduction to, 7–9, 25–30, 26f, 31–34 lifespan, 47–50 markers of, 152–53 megacities, 66–69 migrations and urbanization, 57–69 national differences in timing of, 16 population declines, 8, 34, 53–56, 54f population growth rates, 8, 27

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, electric, 142, 143f tobacco plants, transgenic, 267 Tōhoku earthquake, 53 Tōkyō (Edo) benefits and drawbacks, 66 crime and, 63 economic importance, 64 inequalities, 66 as megacity, 66–67 population, 57 tomato cultivation, 74 total dependency ratio, 8, 44–45 total factor productivity (TFP), 157, 160 total fertility rate (TFR), 32, 38

Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World

by Vaclav Smil  · 4 May 2021  · 252pp  · 60,959 words

people did it take to build the Great Pyramid? Why unemployment figures do not tell the whole story What makes people happy? The rise of megacities COUNTRIES Nations in the Age of Globalization The First World War’s extended tragedies Is the US really exceptional? Why Europe should be more pleased

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the top 10 (not being Nordic, Dutch, Swiss, Kiwi, or Canadian), convert to Catholicism and start learning castellano. ¡Buena suerte con eso! The rise of megacities Modernity means many things—rising affluence and mobility; inexpensive and instant communication; an abundance of affordable food; longer life expectancy—but an extraterrestrial observer sending

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population greater than 1 million, with 45 of them larger than 5 million and 31 surpassing 10 million. This largest group has a special name: “megacities.” This continued concentration of humanity in ever-larger cities has been driven by advantages arising from the agglomeration of people, knowledge, and activities, often due

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investment opportunities, and they offer superior educations and rewarding careers. This is why many smaller cities—much like the surrounding countryside—are losing population, but megacities keep growing. Ranking them by size is not straightforward, because assorted administrative boundaries yield different numbers than when the

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megacities are considered as functional units. Tokyo, the world’s largest megacity, has eight different jurisdictional or statistical definitions, from the 23 wards of the old city, with fewer than 10 million people, to

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of the city’s massive twin-tower Metropolitan Government Building (Tōkyō tochō) in Shinjuku: the region now has some 39 million people. The growth of megacities offers a perfect illustration of receding Western influence and the rise of Asia. In 1900, 9 of the world’s 10 largest cities were in

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Europe and the United States. In 1950 New York and Tokyo were the only megacities, and the third, Mexico City, was added in 1975. But by the century’s end the list had grown to 18

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megacities, and by 2020 it reached 35 with a total of more than half a billion inhabitants. Tokyo (with more people than Canada, and generating economic

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product equal to about half of the German total) remains at the top, and 20 out of the 35 megacities (nearly 60 percent) are in Asia. There are six in Latin America, two in Europe (Moscow and Paris), three in Africa (Cairo, Lagos, Kinshasa), and

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remarkably quiet, public transportation is exemplary, and the crime rate is very low; but housing is cramped and daily commutes are long and taxing. Chinese megacities—all built by migrants from rural areas who (until recently) were denied the right to live there—have become displays of new architecture and shiny

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have poor air and water quality and their inhabitants are now incessantly monitored for the slightest social infractions. In contrast, few rules prevail in African megacities, and Lagos and Kinshasa are the very embodiments of disorganization, squalor, and environmental decay. But all that makes little difference; each

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megacity—no matter if it is Tokyo (with the largest number of starred restaurants), New York (with the highest share of population born abroad), or Rio

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Janeiro (with a murder rate approaching 40 per 100,000)—continues to attract people. And the United Nations has forecast the emergence of 10 additional megacities by 2030: six in Asia (including India’s Ahmedabad and Hyderabad), three in Africa (Johannesburg, Dar es Salaam, Luanda), and Colombia’s Bogotá. countries Nations

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.3 billion people will live in cities, accounting for two-thirds of the global population, with a rising share in megacities of more than 10 million people (see the rise of megacities, this page). Most of those people will live in high-rises, so there will be only a limited possibility of

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local generation, but they’ll need an unceasing supply of electricity to power their homes, services, industries, and transportation. Think about an Asian megacity hit by a typhoon for a day or two. Even if long-distance lines could supply more than half of the city’s demand, it

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in excess of 1 gigawatt—the largest one is about 3 gigawatts—and more than one would be needed for a megacity completely dependent on solar and wind generation. But most megacities are nowhere near the steep escarpments or deep-cut mountain valleys you’d need for pumped storage. Many—including Shanghai

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.amazonaws.com/happiness-report/2019/WHR19.pdf. Layard, R. Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. London: Penguin Books, 2005. The rise of megacities Canton, J. 2011. “The extreme future of megacities.” Significance 8, no. 2 (June 2011): 53–6. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2011.00485.x. Munich Re

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. Megacities—Megarisks: Trends and challenges for insurance and risk management. Munich: MünchenerRückversicherungs-Gesellschaft, 2004. http://www.preventionweb.net/files/646_10363.pdf. Countries—Nations in the

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-spans of empires.” Historical Methods 44, no. 3 (2011): 127–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2011.577733. Smil, V. Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019. Machines, Designs, Devices—Inventions That Made Our Modern World How the 1880s created our modern world Smil, V. Creating the

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, C.C.M. The Long Arm of Moore’s Law: Microelectronics and American Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. Smil, V. Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019. The rise of data: Too much too fast Hilbert, M., and P. López. “The world’s technological capacity to store

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yield and yield stability in wheat during the 20th century.” Field Crops Research 57, no. 3 (1998): 335–47. Smil, V. Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019. The inexcusable magnitude of global food waste Gustavsson, J., et al. Global Food Losses and Food Waste. Rome: Food and

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carbon emissions, 303 electricity generation, 144 elephants, 274, 275–8, 276 fertility rate, 4, 5, 7 food waste, 230, 231 infant mortality rate, xiii, 11 megacities, 46–7, 48, 49 nuclear energy, 144 obesity, 273 percentage of children in population, 273 see also individual countries by name agriculture crops for animal

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, 74 Armstrong, Neil, 88 Arrhenius, Svante, 303 artifacts, author’s taxonomy, 267–70 Asia electricity generation, 144, 146 fertility rate, 4, 7 food waste, 231 megacities, 45–8, 46–7, 49 nuclear energy, 144, 146 wheat yields, 228 see also individual countries by name Aspdin, Joseph, 283 asteroids, 281 the atmosphere

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historical fuels used, 174 human height, 21–2, 23 hydroelectric dams, 285 insulation, 297 ivory trade, 277–8 Japanese occupation, 93 manufacturing, 67, 83, 84 megacities, 44–5, 47, 48 milk adulteration case, 262 nuclear industry, 134, 146 old-age dependency ratio, 73, 76, 80 population, 73, 74, 76, 77 quality

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Europe diet, 246 electricity generation, 144 fertility rate, 7 food waste, 231 human height, 22 infant mortality rate, 10 LEDs, 160 life expectancy, 24–5 megacities, 45–8 nuclear energy, 144 percentage of children in population, 273 unemployment and quality of life, 37 see also individual countries by name European Union

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use, xii–xiii fertility rate, 5, 7 GDP, 66 happiness, 40, 42, 66 human height, 20 infant mortality rate, 59 life expectancy, 25, 66, 255 megacities, 46, 48 nuclear energy, 133–4, 143, 146 old-age dependency ratio, 68 postwar living standards, 248 trains, 217 transmitter development, 54–5 unemployment, 66

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, 146, 172 food self-sufficiency, 80, 81 freedom, 79–80 high-tech industry, 80 human height, 22, 23 independence, 92 insulation, 297 life expectancy, 24 megacities, 47, 49 nuclear energy, 134, 146 population, 77, 81 religious problems, 81 sex ratio, 77–9 vs. China, 77–81 wheat yields, 229 Indonesia, 47

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human height, 21, 22–3 infant mortality rate, 9, 10–11, 59 life expectancy, 24–5, 24, 59, 255–8, 256 manufacturing, 67, 83, 84 megacities, 45, 47, 48–9 nuclear energy and accidents, 71, 133–4, 145 obesity, 256 population, 69, 71 rise and fall, 69–72 and Second World

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, 263 and life expectancy, 253, 254 rational consumption, 251–4 shares of dominant meats, 253–4 waste, 230 medical imaging, 131 Mediterranean diet, 235–8 megacities, 44–9, 46–7, 162–5 Mendelssohn, Kurt, 32 meningitis, 13 Menkaure, pharaoh of Egypt, 34 menopause, age of onset, 3 menstruation, age of first

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, 3 Mesopotamia, 91, 129 Mexico car industry, 195–6 electricity cost, 172 happiness, 40, 42–3 indigenous peoples and running, 30 megacities, 46, 48 Mexico City, 46, 48 Mia (container ship), 167 Michaux, Pierre, 187 Michelin, André, 191 Michelin, Édouard, 191 Michelin tire company, 191 microbes, 271

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Zealand, 39, 40, 289 Niger, 5 Nigeria energy use, xii–xiii fertility rate, 4 happiness, 43 human height, 23 independence, 92 infant mortality rate, 9 megacities, 46, 48 polio cases, 14 nitrates, 55–6 nitrogen, 221–5, 229 nitrous oxide, 224 Nokia, 269 North Africa, 231, 275 see also Egypt; Morocco

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also environment population children as percentage of, 273 China, 73, 74, 76, 77 EU, 63 fertility rate, 3–7, 4 India, 77 Japan, 69, 71 megacities, 44–8, 46–7 percentage in cities, 44 population size and infant mortality rate, 10–11 twentieth-century growth, 225 world, xv pork, 243, 245

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, 58 China, 75 economic measures of, 8–9, 39–41, 135–6 EU, 63 Germany, 58 infant mortality as measure of, 8–11, 9 and megacities, 48–9 UK, 58 and unemployment, 37–8 USA compared to other countries, 57–60, 58 see also happiness Quetelet, Adolphe, 20 radio waves, 97

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, SS, 181 running, 28–30 Russia education, 60 electricity generation, 134, 144 First World War’s legacy, 53–4 happiness, 40 infant mortality rate, 9 megacities, 47, 48 nuclear energy, 134, 144 relations with USA, 86–9 Second World War’s legacy, 53–4 winter temperatures, 296–7 see also Soviet

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, recording and reproducing, 117, 118–20 sources, xi–xii South Africa, 24, 30, 49, 172 South America diet, 246 electricity generation, 144 food waste, 231 megacities, 46, 48, 49 nuclear energy, 144 see also individual countries by name South China Sea, 94 South Korea diet, 262 electricity generation, 143 fertility rate

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–17, 18 Japanese car imports, 70 and Japanese yen devaluation, 70 LEDs, 160 life expectancy, 24–5, 58, 59, 255, 256 manufacturing, 67, 84, 85 megacities, 46, 48–9 nuclear energy and accidents, 133–4, 143, 145 obesity, 58, 232–3, 256, 273 oil supply, 75 old-age dependency ratio, 73

Autonomous Driving: How the Driverless Revolution Will Change the World

by Andreas Herrmann, Walter Brenner and Rupert Stadler  · 25 Mar 2018

Driving 20 this technology be? How will legal and regulatory conditions have to be changed? How can traffic be organised with this technology, especially in megacities? Can autonomous driving improve a nation’s prosperity and competitiveness? These questions and others have to be answered so that autonomous mobility can be used

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. Driving a car can also be tedious and boring, when one considers the frequency and duration of traffic jams that occur every day, especially in megacities such as São Paulo, Cairo, Delhi, Beijing or Mumbai. People have had to adapt their lives to the traffic situation and many hundreds of kilometres

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spaces due to wide roads and enormous parking areas. The solution to this and other traffic problems is the key challenge in the development of megacities; if it is not solved, the result will be constant gridlock and all of its economic and social consequences. This is where autonomous vehicles come

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y s Cars are valued possessions for many people, also because they represent social status. Nonetheless, driving can be tedious and boring, especially in the megacities of the world. The social costs of mobility (accidents, fuel consumption, emissions, land use, etc.) are enormous, as shown by the alarmingly low seat-mile

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and the vehicles could drive themselves to the charging stations. SUSTAINABILITY Air pollution caused by traffic has increased enormously in recent years, especially in the megacities of Asia and Latin America. On many days each year, particulate-matter pollution is so high that roads have to be temporarily closed and the

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vehicles are connected with the infrastructure, the Internet, one’s home and workplace, a large variety of information and communication services can be developed. Many megacities are facing total gridlock, which is why new traffic concepts such as autonomous driving are needed in order to improve traffic flows. Autonomous vehicles for

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. TIME Autonomous driving is connected with the improved use of time and saving time, while commuting to and from work, for example. In the populous megacities such as São Paulo, Mexico City, Beijing or Cairo, it takes a long time to drive from home to work and back again. These cities

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a penetration rate of 6 per cent worldwide. Acceptable pricing is likely to be crucial also for the spread of autonomous vehicles, especially in the megacities of emerging markets, where this technology is urgently needed. According to initial estimates, the price of an autonomous vehicle could be about $10,000 above

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countries. So from this perspective, there are great possibilities worldwide for connected and autonomous trucks to protect the environment, improve traffic flows especially in the megacities and reduce transport costs. Fields 163 Meanwhile, a self-driving truck from Daimler equipped with radar, sensors and cameras is on the roads in Germany

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mobility platform Lyft, announcing plans to set up an on-demand network of self-driving cars. John Zimmer, president of Lyft, expects car ownership in megacities to be of little importance in 10 years. In 2016, Lyft already organised about 14.6 million rides per month, three times as many as

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has recently joined Beijing and Shenzhen as one of the centres of the Chinese automobile industry. Numerous startups have been established in and around this megacity that are developing autonomous electric vehicles. There are about 20 companies working on self-driving cars, one of which is especially prominent. Jia Yueting, billionaire

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example, it is advisable for a pedestrian to wait until several others want to cross as well, because drivers will not notice individuals. In some megacities in Brazil, people often drive right through red lights since the high crime rates make it far too dangerous to stop. For an illustration of

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number and duration of traffic jams. In the eyes of commuters around the world, this is a particularly critical argument for driverless cars, especially in megacities [64]. It is also linked to the hope of reducing fuel consumption and emissions of carbon dioxide and particulate matter. Amidst all of the euphoria

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must first be resolved. There is also major scepticism about whether it is possible to create the necessary infrastructure in such a large country, where megacities often have chaotic traffic situations. The dealers have observed their clients’ interest in and willingness to buy such cars, but the path towards autonomous driving

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a suitable interior lighting concept. The Luxe start-up in the United States has set up an on-demand valet parking service for customers in megacities where there is a permanent shortage of parking spaces. Using the Luxe app, car drivers in inner cities can order a valet who takes over

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to survive the technological disruption. (2) Google executives have repeatedly emphasised that their company would like to help to solve traffic problems, especially in the megacities, to improve safety on the roads and to conserve natural resources. By replacing fallible human operators with algorithms, software and computers, it seems quite feasible

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cars can be observed also 377 378 Autonomous Driving in Brazil and many other countries in the process of industrialisation. The result, especially in the megacities of Southeast Asia and Latin America, has been dramatic traffic situations with miles upon miles of traffic jams and catastrophic air quality. Rapidly implementing autonomous

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, which means nearly one million people will be killed on the roads in China every year. (2) Air pollution has become so bad, especially in megacities, that the threshold limits of the World Health Organisation are exceeded nearly every day. In Beijing for example, only a certain number of cars are

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are intended to pave the way for car manufacturers to implement self-driving cars. Emerging Societies 379 The roads and telecommunication networks in and around megacities are often newer and better than in many developed countries, although the same cannot be said of rural areas. Furthermore, many of these countries have

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thus take advantage of economies of scale. Autonomous driving, however, requires a wide variety of technical services that, at most, will be available in some megacities in emerging markets. These services include maintenance and repair of automated and self-driving vehicles, which calls for well-equipped garages and very well-trained

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, given their accident statistics and air pollution. There are many dramatic traffic conditions with miles of traffic jams and poor air quality, especially in the megacities of Southeast Asia and Latin America. Rapidly implementing autonomous and electric cars in emerging countries could improve road safety and protect the environment. People in

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markets are very open to new technologies. China and India now have a higher market penetration of smartphones than western Europe. In and around the megacities, roads and telecommunication networks are often newer and better than in developed countries. A service network also has to be created, however, which is a

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particular challenge in emerging countries. CHAPTER 37 URBAN DEVELOPMENT MEGACITIES The year 2007 served as a historic marker in the history of human settlement. For the first time, more of the world’s population lived

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the meantime, at least 37 further cities have crossed this line as well, and by 2025 it is anticipated that there will be some 40 megacities. Especially strong growth is forecast for particular cities including Mexico City (from 16.4 million in 1995 to an anticipated 24.6 million in 2025

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cities, population growth is 1.6 times as fast as in the world as 381 382 Autonomous Driving Figure 37.1. Road Networks in Chinese Megacities. Source: Sean Pavone/123RF.com (left), chuyu/123RF.com (right). a whole. It is thus foreseeable that 25 per cent of the world’s population

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number of smart-city challenges, all intended to improve the flow of traffic, reduce CO2 emissions and improve the quality of life in dramatically growing megacities. By the year 2030, some 50 per cent of the population of India will live in urban areas, with all of the challenges that entails

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FUTURE INITIATIVE There is no single entity and no single approach capable of implementing any of the traffic-management options discussed so far, especially in megacities. Solving this problem calls for interdisciplinary approaches, involving new ways to manage traffic problems from a variety of perspectives. The Audi Urban Future Initiative was

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cities but the reverse will be true by 2050: 70 per cent in cities and 30 per cent in the country. By 2025, some 40 megacities will have developed; the metropolises with the greatest growth will include Mexico City, Mumbai and Beijing. Functioning mobility creates the foundation for the world’s

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Manufacturers, 17, 21, 45, 55, 84, 179 181, 263, 331 Mapping, 94, 101 104 Index Mars Rover Curiosity, 153 Mass motorisation, 39 McKinsey & Company, 320 Megacities, 58, 381 383 Megatrends in mobility, 25 connectivity, 25 26 electrification, 26 27 sustainability, 27 28 urbanisation, 26 Melody of speech, 292 Mercedes, 137, 179

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, 22, 184, 206, 302 companies, 404 models, 343 services, 344, 384, 397 439 RIO platform, 167 Road(s), 103 experience management, 94 networks in Chinese megacities, 382 road-safety legislation, 192 and telecommunication networks, 379 traffic, 195 users, 108 Roadmap assistance systems, 71 77 categories of first autonomous vehicles, 82 development

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371 roads in, 86 traffic in, 195 University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, 120 Urban Challenge, 42 Urban development Audi urban future initiative, 384 386 megacities, 381 383 Shenzhen, 386 389 smart-city challenges, 383 Somerville, 386 389 traffic and art, 389 390 “Urban Parangolé” project, 384 385 Urban traffic, 17

Vertical: The City From Satellites to Bunkers

by Stephen Graham  · 8 Nov 2016  · 519pp  · 136,708 words

kill off helicopter urbanism completely, however. Instead, urban helicopter mobility and ‘direct arrival’ were progressively reinvented as privileges of hyper-individualised super-elites within sprawling megacities. Indeed, elite helicopter travel has emerged to be perhaps the ultimate symbol of the secession of the tiny numbers of überwealthy from the constraints, limits

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, the subsurface (through subway trains), or the higher atmosphere (through air travel). While elites radically speed their journeys through the air, the mass of the megacity population below can only look up while their own movement often slows to a snail’s pace because of worsening congestion. The Brazilian commercial capital

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corporate office towers, fortified residential enclaves, elite shopping malls, five-star hotels, exurban country clubs, beach resorts and airports across a sprawling 1,500 km2 megacity, personal helicopter and helipad use has become the ultimate status symbol for super-rich Paulistas. It is the perfect response to their concerns about the

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of flyovers, air travel, skyscrapers, cable cars, elevators and Google Earth, helicopter-based urban lifestyles in turn work to produce powerful new aesthetic sensibilities of megacity life. Along with the proliferation of TV news helicopters and paramilitary police helicopters, elites now consume the city as an aestheticised landscape from above. The

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urban neighbourhoods ready to penetrate the labyrinthine landscapes of cities to bring criminals to heel. ‘The most sought-after provision that will open up the megacity to state scrutiny’, British geographer Pete Adey stresses, ‘is the police helicopter’.22 Some ads for military and police helicopters hint at what French philosopher

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of helicopters to support its expanded efforts at US borders.’25 The allure of helicopter-based policing is such that police forces in Global South megacities such as Lagos and Mumbai have announced their ambitions to imitate the Hollywood-style police operations of the LAPD that have been featured – along with

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reality TV and pulp documentary industry. Such systems and deployments fit perfectly into a world where the enemy is deemed to be ‘within’ the domestic megacity; mobilisation is permanent within boundless ‘wars’ against drugs, terrorism, insurgency or political disruption; and the labyrinthine worlds of urbanised terrain sprawls toward, and beyond, the

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welfare state. It therefore presides over what architecture critic Owen Hatherley calls ‘the literal destruction of the thing it claims to love.’82 Global South Megacities: ‘Heavenly Enclaves Surrounded by Slums’ Further startling examples of the elite domination of contemporary high-rise housing can be drawn from

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megacities in the Global South. The marketing of such towers is especially striking in Mumbai. ‘Reach for it!’ shouts the real estate billboard surrounding the new

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summit from the south, but only by climbing a narrow, heavily patrolled stair “plaza”, studded with video cameras and clearly marked as private property.’ 28 Megacity Skytrains and Skywalks Outside the United States, the elevation of elite pedestrian spaces across urban centres has also sometimes been accompanied by their interconnection with

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’s Forbidden City drop by 75 per cent. To bolster bookings, Chinese insurance companies even introduced travel insurance packages covering smog events.37 In Asian megacities such as Shanghai, the combination of rising vertical towers and the worsening state of city air creates its own aesthetic connection: the view of the

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personal machines as consumer durables or increasingly taken for granted add-ons to personal vehicles. Such transformations are reflected strikingly in urban landscapes in many megacities where large buildings gradually become strewn with walls of individual air conditioners. This trend is especially noticeable in China, where mass individual air-con units

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– will be air-conditioned. Just down the coast in the UAE, bonded South Asian labourers are also dying in great numbers to construct air-con megacities for locals, expats and tourists. ‘During the summer, temperatures soar above 45°C (113°F), and visitors are advised to walk outdoors only in the

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surface in the 1950s and 1960s,31 the manufacturing of large amounts of new ‘reclaimed’ land is now as central to the extension of coastal megacities as is their more celebrated vertical extension through skyscraper and other high-rise construction.32 The port of Rotterdam was a key laboratory of mass

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milk,’ trash researcher Edward Humes said of Puente Hills in 2012. ‘And now it’s a geological feature made out of trash.’56 In the megacities of the Global South landfills have an even greater significance: they are places of mass inhabitation by the poor and marginalised. India alone is home

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people were killed when construction waste accumulated over two years on a hillside slipped after heavy rain to bury thirty-three buildings in the sprawling megacity of Shenzen, China. One of the first such examples recorded by landslide experts, the Shenzen case demonstrates the risks involved in vertically shifting vast chunks

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and pit has taken on new implications. – Lucy Lippard Disasters like landfill slides involving the movement of waste ground in and around the world’s megacities are obscured by an almost complete absence of media coverage; by contrast other movements of waste and rubble spark long periods of total media saturation

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Collins have apparently opposed the building plans of Robbie Williams and Andrew Lloyd Webber. And yet, like manufactured ‘reclaimed’ land on the coasts of booming megacities discussed in chapter 12, the newly created space is a relative snip. In London’s overheated property market, costs in 2012 for newly excavated space

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structured ideas of the uncanny work also to support bourgeois and conservative ideas about the huge challenges of democratizing sewers and sanitation in Global South megacities, where often only the elites have access to frequently inadequate systems. In filling the ‘lower’ city with an endless array of demons, monsters and urban

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partially or poorly maintained, much larger workforces face extremely perilous lives continually moving the city’s shit. This is the case in many Global South megacities where the legacy of colonial systems of sewerage still persist only in elite enclaves. The provision of piped sanitation and water supply remain minimal for

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, roadsides or creeks is thus now criminalised in many Indian cities, even though millions of people have little choice but to practice it. Within neoliberal megacities with utterly inadequate sanitation, rather than a matter of public politics or municipal action, the act of shitting is all too easily reconstructed as an

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Face Backlash over Air Travel’, NPR.Org, 19 July 2013, available at npr.org. 21Cited in Garcia-Navarro, ibid. 22Peter Adey, ‘Vertical Security in the Megacity: Legibility, Mobility and Aerial Politics’, Theory, Culture and Society 27:6, 2010, pp. 51–67. 23It is these infrared sensors that provide the ghostly white

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Postmodern War’s Pacemaker’, Public Culture, 15:1, 2003, p. 98, available at publicculture.org. 52Blackmore, ‘Rotor Hearts’, p. 98. 53Adey, ‘Vertical Security in the Megacity’. 54Stephen Pope, ‘Air Ambulance Safety: A Closer Look’, FlyingMag.Com, 26 July 2013, available at flyingmag.com. 55At 7.5 per 100,000 hours versus

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Biological Transformation’, paper presented at Ambiances in Action / Ambiances en Acte(s)/International Congress on Ambiances, Montreal, September 2012. 39Peter Adey, ‘Air/Atmospheres of the Megacity’, Theory, Culture and Society 30:7, December 2013. 40Cited in Suzanne Goldenberg, ‘CO2 Emissions Are Being “Outsourced” by Rich Countries to Rising Economies’, Guardian, 19

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The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

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Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier

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No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends

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Straphanger

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Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World

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Smart Cities, Digital Nations

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Pandora's Star

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The Ghost Map: A Street, an Epidemic and the Hidden Power of Urban Networks.

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Energy and Civilization: A History

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Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia

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On the Future: Prospects for Humanity

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The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance

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Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi

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The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900

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Judas Unchained

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The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World

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Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities

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Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City

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Stealth of Nations

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Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made

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The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

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The Future Is Asian

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The Future of War

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World Cities and Nation States

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Extreme Economies: Survival, Failure, Future – Lessons From the World’s Limits

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Age of the City: Why Our Future Will Be Won or Lost Together

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50 Future Ideas You Really Need to Know

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The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-First Century

by Alex Prud'Homme  · 6 Jun 2011  · 692pp  · 167,950 words

The Plundered Planet: Why We Must--And How We Can--Manage Nature for Global Prosperity

by Paul Collier  · 10 May 2010  · 288pp  · 76,343 words

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet

by Klaus Schwab and Peter Vanham  · 27 Jan 2021  · 460pp  · 107,454 words

Empire of Ants: The Hidden Worlds and Extraordinary Lives of Earth's Tiny Conquerors

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Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It

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The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today

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How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World

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The Survival of the City: Human Flourishing in an Age of Isolation

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Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

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The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century

by Robert D. Kaplan  · 6 Mar 2018  · 247pp  · 78,961 words

The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans

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Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet

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Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity From Politicians

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Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet

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The Long Boom: A Vision for the Coming Age of Prosperity

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Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

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Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership

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The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us

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The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World

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The Life and Death of Ancient Cities: A Natural History

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Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

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The Weather of the Future

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Imagine a City: A Pilot's Journey Across the Urban World

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Not the End of the World

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The Making of a World City: London 1991 to 2021

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Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life

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Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy

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Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World (Politics of Place)

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Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism

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The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be

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Meat: A Benign Extravagance

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Melting Pot or Civil War?: A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders

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Chinese Spies: From Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping

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Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It

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The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class

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Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline

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The New Gold Rush: The Riches of Space Beckon!

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Southeast Asia on a Shoestring Travel Guide

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The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as if the Future Matters

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Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

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Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life

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The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World

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Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?

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Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence

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Humankind: Solidarity With Non-Human People

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The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

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The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future

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Fortune's Bazaar: the Making of Hong Kong: The Making of Hong Kong

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Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong

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The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel

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The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire

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Red Flags: Why Xi's China Is in Jeopardy

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Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking

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Why geography matters: three challenges facing America : climate change, the rise of China, and global terrorism

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Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

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Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization

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Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane

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Life as a Passenger: How Driverless Cars Will Change the World

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A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies

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The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions

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Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis

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Explore Everything

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The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives

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How to Survive a Pandemic

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The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations

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Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead

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The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans

by Eben Kirksey  · 10 Nov 2020  · 599pp  · 98,564 words

Lonely Planet Turkey (Travel Guide)

by Lonely Planet, James Bainbridge, Brett Atkinson, Steve Fallon, Jessica Lee, Virginia Maxwell, Hugh McNaughtan and John Noble  · 31 Jan 2017  · 2,313pp  · 330,238 words

The Great Race: The Global Quest for the Car of the Future

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Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World

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The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World

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Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age

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Nuclear War: A Scenario

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Sunfall

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Capitalism: A Ghost Story

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The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy

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The Temporal Void

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Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity

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Abundance

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The Day the World Stops Shopping

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Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers

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The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

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Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car

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Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America

by Angie Schmitt  · 26 Aug 2020  · 274pp  · 63,679 words

World Travel: An Irreverent Guide

by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever  · 19 Apr 2021  · 366pp  · 110,374 words

The Ministry for the Future: A Novel

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Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

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In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India

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PostGIS in Action, 2nd Edition

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Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life

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The Rough Guide to Toronto

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Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol

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The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport: Second Edition

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Underland: A Deep Time Journey

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China's Great Wall of Debt: Shadow Banks, Ghost Cities, Massive Loans, and the End of the Chinese Miracle

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Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order

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China into Africa: trade, aid, and influence

by Robert I. Rotberg  · 15 Nov 2008  · 651pp  · 135,818 words

MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World

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The Locavore's Dilemma

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Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization

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Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources

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Civilization: The West and the Rest

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What Technology Wants

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The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

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The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You

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Arrival City

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Understanding Sponsored Search: Core Elements of Keyword Advertising

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Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations

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The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World

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Red Moon

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Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures That Turn Our World Upside Down

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The Story of Crossrail

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Viruses: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

by Crawford, Dorothy H.  · 27 Jul 2011  · 161pp  · 37,042 words

Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One

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A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Carbon Emissions

by Muhammad Yunus  · 25 Sep 2017  · 278pp  · 74,880 words

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us)

by Tom Vanderbilt  · 28 Jul 2008  · 512pp  · 165,704 words

Amazing Train Journeys

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Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century

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The Power

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The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty

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The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company

by William Dalrymple  · 9 Sep 2019  · 812pp  · 205,147 words

Never Bet Against Occam: Mast Cell Activation Disease and the Modern Epidemics of Chronic Illness and Medical Complexity

by Lawrence B. Afrin M. D., Kendra Neilsen Myles and Kristi Posival  · 15 Jan 2016

The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future

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The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?

by Ian Bremmer  · 12 May 2010  · 247pp  · 68,918 words

A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet

by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore  · 16 Oct 2017  · 335pp  · 89,924 words

China's Superbank

by Henry Sanderson and Michael Forsythe  · 26 Sep 2012

Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green

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Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

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The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future

by Noreena Hertz  · 13 May 2020  · 506pp  · 133,134 words

Lessons from the Titans: What Companies in the New Economy Can Learn from the Great Industrial Giants to Drive Sustainable Success

by Scott Davis, Carter Copeland and Rob Wertheimer  · 13 Jul 2020  · 372pp  · 101,678 words

City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

by Catie Marron  · 11 Apr 2016  · 195pp  · 58,462 words

The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future

by Andrew Yang  · 2 Apr 2018  · 300pp  · 76,638 words

In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer's

by Joseph Jebelli  · 30 Oct 2017  · 294pp  · 87,429 words

Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality

by Melissa Bruntlett and Chris Bruntlett  · 27 Aug 2018  · 230pp  · 71,834 words

Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World

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The Fourth Industrial Revolution

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Mobility: A New Urban Design and Transport Planning Philosophy for a Sustainable Future

by John Whitelegg  · 1 Sep 2015  · 224pp  · 69,494 words

The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa's Wealth

by Tom Burgis  · 24 Mar 2015  · 413pp  · 119,379 words

The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse

by Mohamed A. El-Erian  · 26 Jan 2016  · 318pp  · 77,223 words

Spin

by Robert Charles Wilson  · 2 Jan 2005  · 541pp  · 146,445 words

Reamde

by Neal Stephenson  · 19 Sep 2011  · 1,318pp  · 403,894 words

Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution

by Beth Gardiner  · 18 Apr 2019  · 353pp  · 106,704 words

The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future

by Julia Hobsbawm  · 11 Apr 2022  · 172pp  · 50,777 words

Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media

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After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul

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Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

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The Children of the Sky

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Dead in the Water: A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy

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Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science

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Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy

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Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

by Siddharth Kara  · 30 Jan 2023  · 302pp  · 96,609 words

Deadly Quiet City: True Stories From Wuhan

by Murong Xuecun  · 7 Mar 2023  · 236pp  · 73,008 words

Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age

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The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power

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Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion

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NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity

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A Burglar's Guide to the City

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Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order

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Frugal Innovation: How to Do Better With Less

by Jaideep Prabhu Navi Radjou  · 15 Feb 2015  · 400pp  · 88,647 words

The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society

by Charles Handy  · 12 Mar 2015  · 164pp  · 57,068 words

Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars

by Samuel I. Schwartz  · 17 Aug 2015  · 340pp  · 92,904 words

Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-Hour Workweek

by Rutger Bregman  · 13 Sep 2014  · 235pp  · 62,862 words

Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles

by Ruchir Sharma  · 8 Apr 2012  · 411pp  · 114,717 words

Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance

by Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna  · 23 May 2016  · 437pp  · 113,173 words

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

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The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism

by Arun Sundararajan  · 12 May 2016  · 375pp  · 88,306 words

China's Future

by David Shambaugh  · 11 Mar 2016  · 261pp  · 57,595 words

Divided: Why We're Living in an Age of Walls

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The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning

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The Telomere Effect: A Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer

by Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and Dr. Elissa Epel  · 3 Jan 2017  · 381pp  · 111,629 words

The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age

by James Crabtree  · 2 Jul 2018  · 442pp  · 130,526 words

Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History

by Lewis Dartnell  · 13 May 2019  · 424pp  · 108,768 words

Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags

by Tim Marshall  · 21 Sep 2016  · 276pp  · 78,061 words

The Great Firewall of China

by James Griffiths;  · 15 Jan 2018  · 453pp  · 114,250 words

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need

by Bill Gates  · 16 Feb 2021  · 314pp  · 75,678 words

Cathedrals of Steam: How London’s Great Stations Were Built – and How They Transformed the City

by Christian Wolmar  · 5 Nov 2020  · 352pp  · 98,424 words

The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

by Ross Douthat  · 25 Feb 2020  · 324pp  · 80,217 words

Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech

by Geoffrey Cain  · 15 Mar 2020  · 540pp  · 119,731 words

Tech Titans of China: How China's Tech Sector Is Challenging the World by Innovating Faster, Working Harder, and Going Global

by Rebecca Fannin  · 2 Sep 2019  · 269pp  · 70,543 words

Mbs: The Rise to Power of Mohammed Bin Salman

by Ben Hubbard  · 10 Mar 2020

The Nation City: Why Mayors Are Now Running the World

by Rahm Emanuel  · 25 Feb 2020  · 212pp  · 69,846 words

Why the Dutch Are Different: A Journey Into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to Zwarte Piet, the Acclaimed Guide to Travel in Holland

by Ben Coates  · 23 Sep 2015  · 300pp  · 99,410 words

Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming

by Mckenzie Funk  · 22 Jan 2014  · 337pp  · 101,281 words

Small Men on the Wrong Side of History: The Decline, Fall and Unlikely Return of Conservatism

by Ed West  · 19 Mar 2020  · 530pp  · 147,851 words

Lonely Planet Turkey

by Lonely Planet  · 1,236pp  · 320,184 words

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning With the Myth of the Good Billionaire

by Tim Schwab  · 13 Nov 2023  · 618pp  · 179,407 words

Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future

by Ed Conway  · 15 Jun 2023  · 515pp  · 152,128 words

Fall of Civilizations: Stories of Greatness and Decline

by Paul Cooper  · 31 Mar 2024  · 583pp  · 174,033 words

The Dark Cloud: How the Digital World Is Costing the Earth

by Guillaume Pitron  · 14 Jun 2023  · 271pp  · 79,355 words

Lonely Planet Mongolia (Travel Guide)

by Lonely Planet, Trent Holden, Adam Karlin, Michael Kohn, Adam Skolnick and Thomas O'Malley  · 1 Jul 2018

How to Spend a Trillion Dollars

by Rowan Hooper  · 15 Jan 2020  · 285pp  · 86,858 words

Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit From Global Chaos

by Sarah Lacy  · 6 Jan 2011  · 269pp  · 77,876 words

The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth

by Jeremy Rifkin  · 9 Sep 2019  · 327pp  · 84,627 words

Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up

by Philip N. Howard  · 27 Apr 2015  · 322pp  · 84,752 words

The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism

by David Harvey  · 1 Jan 2010  · 369pp  · 94,588 words

The Land Grabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth

by Fred Pearce  · 28 May 2012  · 379pp  · 114,807 words

24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep

by Jonathan Crary  · 3 Jun 2013  · 102pp  · 33,345 words

Sixty Days and Counting

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 27 Feb 2007  · 526pp  · 155,174 words

Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination

by Adam Lashinsky  · 31 Mar 2017  · 190pp  · 62,941 words

The Evolutionary Void

by Peter F. Hamilton  · 18 Aug 2010  · 857pp  · 232,302 words

God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World

by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge  · 31 Mar 2009  · 518pp  · 143,914 words

A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity and a Shared Earth

by Chris Smaje  · 14 Aug 2020  · 375pp  · 105,586 words

The Key Man: The True Story of How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale

by Simon Clark and Will Louch  · 14 Jul 2021  · 403pp  · 105,550 words

Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future

by Alan Weisman  · 21 Apr 2025  · 599pp  · 149,014 words

Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity

by Yoni Appelbaum  · 17 Feb 2025  · 412pp  · 115,534 words

House of Huawei: The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company

by Eva Dou  · 14 Jan 2025  · 394pp  · 110,159 words

Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters

by Joanna Walsh  · 22 Sep 2025  · 255pp  · 80,203 words

How the Railways Will Fix the Future: Rediscovering the Essential Brilliance of the Iron Road

by Gareth Dennis  · 12 Nov 2024  · 261pp  · 76,645 words