The Future Of Megacities

25 January 2005 - 8:00am

A new generation of "megacity urbanists" is emerging.

The new urban future, in full bloom, may be nearly unfathomable to us in the old-fashioned North. The future doesn't think like Americans do: the future is unfolding in places which have mobile phones but still rely on the arrival of the caravans, which sell computer chips in souks and bazaars, where the sandalwood incense burns in five hundred year old temples but videogame championships are broadcast on TV...

We don't know -- we can't know -- how the next global generation of megacity urbanists will best use the possibilities unfolding in front of us. I suspect that the best research and development won't be done by established professionals in developed world think-tanks, corporate labs or universities. It'll be done on the streets of developing world cities, by a younger generation just now coming into it's own.

Source: WorldChanging, January 22, 2005
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At a much larger economic scale, however, one mustn’t avoid calculating the tremendous and exceptional externalities of automobile dependency.