Megacities Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

A megacity is a large urban agglomeration with ten million or more inhabitants, according to the United Nations (UN) definition. The term was first coined by the UN in the 1970s to designate agglomerations with eight million or more inhabitants, a threshold raised to ten million in the 1990s. Megalopolis and mega polis are two other terms often used to describe this same urban form. Despite the increase in the number of megacities over the past several decades, the proportion of the world’s population living in these urban agglomerations continues to be small: In 2007, megacities accounted for only about 4 percent of the total world population and for 9 percent of the world urban population; for 2025, the UN predicts that they will account for around 10 percent of the world urban population (see Table 1).

Table 2. Population Living And Projected To Live In Megacities, Showing Total Numbers As Well As Numbers In Developed And In

Megacities Essay

Table 3. Population In Megacities: 1950, 1975, 2007

Megacities Essay

Megacities have high population densities but are not presently among the fastest growing cities in the world, and in the future, the UN prospects point to a slowdown in the growth of the major megacities, both in developed and less-developed world regions. They have a spatial pattern defined, in the case of metropolitan areas, by a highly dense core surrounded by external and sprawling suburbs, or by several highly dense centers in the case of conurbations. In developing countries, megacities also have extensive informal structures (e.g., infrastructures, housing) with the corresponding high levels of poverty and social fragmentation.

Besides this demographic and spatial quantitative dimension—responsible for new social, economic, and environmental challenges and different from city to city and from country to country—a megacity is also a new form of urban socialization in the twenty-first century and an important economic engine in both developed and developing countries. These challenges are associated with physical degradation, social problems, economic decline, environmental risks, lack of appropriate legal instruments to control the rapid urbanization process, and a huge demand for housing and urban public services—which, in many cases, national and local governments are unable to provide. Megacities require, from national and local governments, new approaches and new instruments in the field of urban planning and in urban politics more generally.

Table 2 shows the two UN-identified megacities that existed in 1950 (New York and Tokyo) as well as the three in 1975 (Tokyo, New York, and Mexico City), eighteen in 2000, and nineteen in 2007, of which eleven are capitals of their countries. Asia has eleven megacities, Latin America four, North America two, and Africa and Europe one each. For 2025, besides these nineteen, the UN listed, in its 2008 World Urbanization Prospects, eight new megacities: five in Asia, two in Africa, and one in Europe (Jakarta, Guangzhou, Lahore, Shenzhen, Chennai, Kinshasa, Lagos, and Paris).

Bibliography:

Gurjar, B. R.,T. M. Butler, M. G. Lawrence, and J. Lelieveld. “Evaluation of Emissions and Air Quality in Megacities.” Atmospheric Environment 42 (2008): 1593–1606.
Joseph, Jaime. “Sustainable Development and Democracy in the Megacities.” Development in Practice 11, nos. 2 and 3 (2001): 218–231.
Thornley, Andy. Planning World Cities: Globalization and Urban Politics. Basings UN-HABITAT. State of the World’s Cities 2008/2009— Harmonious Cities. New York: United Nations, 2009.
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. World Urbanization Prospects:The 2007 Revision. New York: United Nations, 2008.
Varis, Olli, Asit K. Biswas, Cecilia Tortajada, and Jan Lundqvist. “Megacities and Water Management.” Water Resources Development 22, no. 2 (2006): 377–394.

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