Bruce Sterling on Cities

Boing Boing interviews author and futurist Bruce Sterling about global cities and how vastly expanding urban scale is not necessarily a problem.

1 minute read

June 15, 2010, 10:00 AM PDT

By Nate Berg


"Boing Boing: Do you think governance can scale with the increasing size of megacities like Jakarta, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, & New York? Or are such cities doomed to increasing ferality?

Bruce Sterling: I don't think urban scale is a truly serious problem. Tokyo and Jakarta share the same scale, but not the same problems. There are plenty of cities that are getting *smaller* and have some awful problems, viz Detroit.

There are many cities that have outgrown their old infrastructure and become huge squatter camps, but that's not inherently a scaling problem, it's a management problem."

This discussion also touches on the pros and cons of urbanization and which are some of the most exciting cities today.

Monday, June 14, 2010 in Boing Boing

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