Global Culture

The world goes to town is The Economist report on the important milestone that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago in slums of hope: our urban obsession would’ve finally conquered the majority of the world population. A must-read, the special report touches on all the important themes related to the evolution of cities in the age of globalization and migration. Since some of the themes have been recurring in this space, I created a brief summary of the special report with links to my own posts on cities:

• The world goes to town: urbanization as the defining process shaping our lives will finally touch at least half of the world population; and most of this frenetic race towards the cities took place in the last 100 years. However, what we have seen is just a preview of things to come
  

  [urbanization] mostly consists of poor people migrating in unprecedented numbers, and the producing babies on a similarly unprecedented scale. It is thus largely a phenomenon of poor and middle-income countries [...] urban population of 3.2 billion will rise to nearly 5 billion by 2030. [...] Within ten years the world will have nearly 500 cities of more than 1m people.

  Check out the top 10 biggest cities and the formula to make them the hubs of transformation

• The strange allure of the slums: if walking is controlling a fall, slums are controlled chaos meant to mobilize people out of their unproductive existence in rural areas. The formula was hardly planned, but has powered the massive migrations from rural to urban and given hope to millions, even if only a few will succeed. In slums of hope I wrote about them as places where humanity takes precedence over the riches of the material world. Also, check the strong correlation between urbanization and preferred destinations for migrants in a brighter future.
• A cul-de-sac of poverty: presents us with a fundamental question. Can all the migrants to the urban centers expect a dramatic improvement to their life styles similar to what the working class experienced with the advent of the industrial revolution and the legislation of the work day? It would seem rather impossible to serve such big crowds no matter how much activism or legislation is exercised. But a simple fact remains, nations depend in great measure on the prosperity of their largest cities, and in turn they depend on a healthy, educated workforce. Should we not be able to figure out how to incorporate all these migrants into the economic cycle, cities may loose their ability to grow. Check out the global population density map to visualize the magnitude of the problem.
• Thronged, creaking and filthy: talks about the price that must be paid for urban development, often in terms of poor health, environment degradation and decaying infrastructure. The growing debate around sustainability is finally making its way into most political speeches and it won’t take long before real solutions permeate the layers of legislation. Cities are slowly realizing that their policies are outdated, specially when considering the aggressive pace at which migrants are arriving. Canada in 2020 presents this very issue for the country with one of the most aggressive quotas of immigration but a reputation for slow infrastructure development.

to be continued…