Kotkin Decries "Cramming and Concentration"

Kotkin reinforces his usual battle cry against planners and thinkers forcing "a density agenda on a largely unwilling population" with arguments stating that throughout the world the benefits of megacities and their infrastructure are overrated:

"The greatest urban centers of history-Babylon, Rome, Constantinople, Paris, London, Kaifeng, Baghdad, New York, Tokyo-grew in part because concentration provided the best, and sometimes only, way to support the basic infrastructure for commerce, cultural development, state religion or the exercise of power. But increasingly size not only matters less, but actually can be seen as a detriment to efficient, sustainable urbanism. This is particularly evident in the developing world where urbanization is spreading most rapidly."