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Use Google Maps to find a satellite image of your Megacity

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Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

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Use Luminocity to find population data for your Megacity

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World City Populations Interactive Map 1950-2030

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Explore the global urban transformation with an interactive map of city populations from 1950-2030. Identify the world's fastest growing cities and regions, and urbanisation cycles of growth and decline. Data is from the UN World Urbanization Prospects 2014.

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a country for details.

Choose Year to Display Below:

Overall, however, the rate of population growth has been slowing for several decades. This slowdown is expected to continue until the rate of population growth reaches zero (an equal number of births and deaths) around 2080-2100, at a population of approximately 10.4 billion people. After this time, the population growth rate is expected to turn negative, resulting in global population decline.

Countries with more than 1 billion people

China is currently the most populous country in the world, with a population estimated at more than 1.42 billion as of September 2022. Only one other country in the world boasts a population of more than 1 billion people: India, whose population is estimated to be 1.41 billion people-and rising.

While India's population is projected to continue to grow until at least the year 2050, China's population is currently contracting slightly. This contraction, coupled with India's continued growth, is expected to result in India replacing China as the most populous country in the world by the year 2030.

Countries with more than 100 million people

Another 12 countries each have populations that exceeded 100 million people as of September 2022:

Country

Population

Country

Population

While Russia and Japan will see their populations decline significantly by 2050, the rest of these nations are expected to continue growing until at least 2050. Additionally, two additional countries, DR Congo and Vietnam, have more than 99 million people and should soon reach the 100 million mark.

Countries with fewer than 100 million people

As shown in the live-updating population table below, the overwhelming majority of the world's countries have fewer than 100 million people-substantially fewer, in some cases. The smallest country in the world in terms of both population and total area is Vatican City, where barely 500 people reside.

Population range

# of countries

1 billion or more

2

100 million to 999.9 million

12

10 million to 99.9 million

80

1 million to 9.9 million

66

less than 1 million

74

Rates of population growth around the world

The world's population continues to increase, with approximately 140 million babies born every year. According to the United Nations' 2022 World Population Prospects report, the global population is projected to reach 8.5 billion people by the year 2030, 9.7 billion people by 2050, and 10.4 billion people by 2080, where it will remain until 2100.

While the world's total population is expected to continue to rise until roughly 2100, the rate at which the population is rising has been slowly decreasing for decades. In 2020, the global population growth rate fell below one percent for the first time since 1950. This decrease continues a trend begun in the 1970s, in which the population growth rate shows a consistent decrease when measured in five-year increments.

The rate of population growth varies greatly from one country or region to another. More than half of the world's expected population growth between now and 2050 is expected to come from just eight countries: DR Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Tanzania. Particularly of interest is India, which is on track to overtake China's position as the most populous country by the year 2030. Additionally, multiple nations within Africa are expected to double their populations in the coming decades as fertility rates and birth rates rise thanks in part to advancements in medical care and decreased infant mortality and malnutrition.

Life expectancy and its impact on world population

Global life expectancy has also improved in recent years, rising to 72.8 years in 2019-almost 9 years longer than in 1990. Global life expectancy is projected to continue to increase, reaching 77.2 years by the year 2050. Significant factors impacting the data on life expectancy include expectations regarding mankind's ability to reduce the impact of AIDS/HIV and other infectious and non-communicable diseases.

As a result of the increase in global life expectancy, the majority of the world's countries are undergoing considerable growth in the number of residents over the age of 65. The percentage of over-65 residents in the world's population is projected to rise from 10% in 2022 to 16% in 2050. This total will be roughly twice the number of children under age 5 and equal to the number of children under age 12. This imbalance can put considerable strain on a country's economy and infrastructure, as it can lead to a shortage of working-age individuals entering the workforce to take the place of those who are retiring.

Life expectancy has a significant impact on the ability of the population to maintain what is called a replacement rate, in which the country's death rate is balanced or exceeded by its birth rate. In countries whose birth rates are either deliberately low or unintentionally so, the death rate may be higher, resulting in overall population decline. Although population decline can be desirable in certain circumstances, it can also create economic challenges and is more often viewed as undesired.

Challenges inherent in population estimates

Although population projections such as the US Census Bureau's World Population Clock utilize the most accurate and up-to-date data available, they are nonetheless still estimates. Unforeseen events such as the COVID-19 pandemic or Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine can have a powerful, but impossible-to-anticipate impact on population trends.

Even in the absence of such disruptions, the process of tracking the exact number of births and deaths in every country and territory in the world in real time-and maintaining a precise tally of the number of people alive on the Earth at any given moment-is logistically infeasible. Instead, modern population scientists use sophisticated mathematical models to create detailed estimates and projections, which the world's countries can use to plan for future generations.

2024 World Population 8,005,176,000

Choose Year to Display Below:

How will the world's population change over the next eighty years? According to the United Nations' World Population Prospects 2022 report, the global population in 2050 is expected to reach around 9.7 billion people, nearly 2 billion more than the current population today. Current projections anticipate that this growth will continue until it reaches 10.4 million people sometime in the 2080s, at which time the population will hold steady until roughly 2100, then begin to decline.

In terms of population growth in individual countries, India is projected to surpass China as the most populated country in the world sometime during 2023, at which time China's annual growth rate will be between -0.1% and -0.3%, while India's growth rate will be between 0.69% and 0.92%. Given current trends in growth rates, UN projections predict that China's population will slide to 1.2 billion people by 2060, while India's will expand to almost 1.7 billion.

The United States is currently the third most populated country in the world, but is expected to drop to fourth most populated sometime in the early 2040s. Instead, the African country of Nigeria, whose 2022 growth rate is 2.39% (compared to 0.47% in the US) will become the third most populated country in the world. While UN predictions vary from those of the US Census Bureau, Nigeria takes the lead in both projections. Nigeria's population is expected to reach 377-410 million by 2050, while the US will have approximately 375-390 million people.

Vatican City / Holy See is expected to continue as the country with the smallest population in the world for the next several decades. In 2022, the famous Catholic city-state had a population of 510 people as well as a negative population growth rate. However, if global warming and the concurrent sea level rise continue unabated, certain Pacific Island nations such as Kiribati, the Maldives, and Vanuatu may be flooded under the rising oceans, which would force their populations to migrate and reduce their populations to zero.

Population growth from now to the year 2100

The Earth's population is expected to continue growing for the next 60-80 years. Improvements in health care technology, shared by developed countries with still developing and least-developed countries, have increased life expectancy and reduced infant mortality rates-which, in turn, have helped drive a boom in population growth. In fact, ten countries are expected to gain more in population by 2050 than the rest of the world combined.

Top 10 Countries Whose Populations Will Grow the Most by 2050:

Country

Population 2022

Population 2050

Growth

India

1,417,170,000

1,670,490,000

253,320,000

Nigeria

218,540,000

377,460,000

158,920,000

The rise, peak, and decline of population growth

Although the world's population is currently increasing, trends indicate that the rate of growth in many countries, especially developed countries and those with high populations, is slowing down. By the end of this century, even the world's fastest-growing countries are expected to have reached peak population size and begun to display declining (or negative) growth rates.

Many factors contribute to population decline and related metrics such as fertility rates. These include increased access to birth control and family planning, an increase in overall quality of life and the human development index, and various other cultural, political, social, and economic factors These include some factors that may not initially seem related to birth rate, such as the population's general level of education and the government's per-capita health expenditure.

Whether population growth is good or bad depends heavily upon several factors, most notably the rate of growth, the country in which it is taking place, and that country's level of development. Countries that have mature economies and well-developed infrastructure are more likely to be able to absorb an increase in population. Conversely, developing countries are more likely to lack adequate jobs, health care, or other infrastructure to support a larger population.

Similarly, a gentle increase in population is typically considered healthy, but a high rate of growth can be undesirable. High growth can often overwhelm a country's infrastructure, strain systems ranging from the job market to the food supply, and constrain available resources. When this happens, technological advances may offer opportunities to overcome production shortages and/or environmental damage.

As of late 2022, the world's population was approximately 8 billion people. However, breaking down the global population by race is difficult-primarily because of the evolving meaning of the word "race."

Why the classic concept of race is fundamentally flawed

The modern understanding is that race is an outdated social construct based on certain biological features that society has deemed to be significant. For example, most racial groupings are determined by physical differences such as skin tone or hair color. However, these variations are largely dictated by geography rather than genetics. Put simply, race is an illusion.

To clarify, it is true that isolated populations tend to display certain defining characteristics, such as the dark skin color of Africans or the blonde hair of many Northern Europeans. But these traits are all interchangeable and compatible and do not in any way introduce genetic boundaries between one supposed race and another.

This fact is clearly evidenced in the modern global population. Thanks in large part to advances in transportation and international mobility over the past century, more and more people of various "races" have spread around the world, intermarried, and started families-and their children display a breathtaking array of mixed-race appearances, obfuscating any supposed boundaries between one race and another.

These emerging demographics have made it increasingly obvious to the world's geneticists, anthropologists, and sociologists that clear-cut races do not exist. The mapping of the entire human genome in recent years has solidified and confirmed this view.

Race, ethnicity, and the challenge of tracking global diversity

It is important not to confuse race with ethnicity, which stems from one's society and culture and which does in fact exist. The main difference between race and ethnicity is that race is based on genetic traits and physical appearance, while ethnicity is based upon customs, language, and practices that are learned and passed down from generation to generation.

While the difference between race and ethnicity may be widely understood and accepted in many countries, not every country views the topics through the same lens. Different countries divide race and ethnicity into different possible elements (such as the number of possible ethnicities), and each country has its own system for measuring, classifying, and tracking diversity, whether it be via variations in race, ethnicity, or both.

For instance, the United States still uses the term "race", but treats it as a social identity rather than a biological or anthropological classification. Citizens voluntarily self-identify as White, Black or African American, American Indian, Asian, or Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. Meanwhile, other countries may offer a different range of possible races, or may instead measure ethnicity or country of origin, such as English, German, East Indian, etc.

These incongruent approaches make it difficult to compare data between countries, and confound even the most ambitious attempts to create a universal set of constituent categories capable of containing the entirety of human diversity.

Throughout most of history, the world's population has been much smaller than it is now. Before the invention of agriculture, for example, the human population was estimated to be around 15 million people at most. For comparison, the world population in 2017 (~7 billion) was roughly equal to a full 6% of the estimated 110 billion people who have ever lived.

The introduction of agriculture and the gradual movement of humanity into settled communities enabled the global population to increase gradually to around 300 million by AD 0. While this is a substantial increase, it remains a tiny fraction of the current population. For example, the Roman Empire, which historians regard as one of the strongest empires the world has ever known, probably contained around 50 million people at its height-nearly 20 million less than the population of the UK today.

The world population would not reach its first major milestone-one billion people-until the early 19th century. Then, as the industrial revolution took hold and living standards improved, the rate of population growth increased considerably. Over the next hundred years, the population of the world doubled, reaching two billion in the late 1920s.

During the 20th century, however, population growth skyrocketed. Over the past 100 years, the planet's population has more than tripled in size. This massive increase in human population is largely due to improvements in diet, sanitation, and medicine, especially compulsory vaccination against many diseases, which have both improved life expectancy and decreased infant mortality rates all over the world.

A Timeline of World Population Growth Milestones (People):

Year 0001: 200 million

Year 1000: 275 million

Year 1500: 450 million

Year 1650: 500 million

Year 1750: 700 million

Year 1804: 1.0 billion

Year 1850: 1.2 billion

Year 1900: 1.6 billion

Year 1927: 2.0 billion

Year 1950: 2.55 billion

Year 1955: 2.8 billion

Year 1960: 3.0 billion

Year 1970: 3.7 billion

Year 1985: 4.85 billion

Year 1999: 6.0 billion

Year 2011: 7.0 billion

Year 2023: 8.0 billion (projected)

Population growth in the future

While past population trends are fairly well known (only the specific dates of certain milestones are occasionally disputed), future trends are less clear. Most population experts agree that population increases will continue, albeit at an ever-decreasing rate, until the Earth's population reaches its ceiling, pauses, and begins to contract. However, the particulars of that process, such as the rate of increase, when and at what number the population will plateau, and the rate of decrease that will follow, are still the subject of much debate.

Most population experts tag steadily improving global standards of living as the cause of decreasing rates of population increase. As wealth and quality of life increase, the average family size will shrink and population growth will steadily slow and eventually stop.

However, other experts maintain that poverty, inequality and continued urbanization will have the opposite effect and cause a growth increase, particularly in countries in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, where population growth is already much higher than the global average.

Still others predict a population decrease stemming from much bleaker causes. These experts speculate that the current world population is unsustainable in the long term and that humanity will reach a point at which we simply cannot produce enough food or utilize our natural resources efficiently enough to feed such a large population or sustain the global economy at its current scale.

2022 projections by the United Nations estimate that the global population could swell to 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050, and 10.4 billion by 2080. At that point, the population is expected to plateau before beginning to decline around the year 2100. Current population growth is driven in large part by advances in medicine, which are increasing life expectancy; and improved health care in developing and least-developed countries, which is decreasing infant mortality.

The rate of population growth is not equal in every country. According to the United Nations' 2022 World Population Prospects report, many of the world's 46 least-developed countries are expected to double in population from 2022 to 2050, placing them among the world's fastest-growing countries. Conversely, 61 of the world's countries are expected to decrease in population by at least 1% between 2022 and 2050. The largest contractions are expected to occur in Eastern Europe, while the largest growth will come from the countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

Although the population of the world currently grows daily, the overall rate of that growth has been slowing for decades. The rate of population growth peaked in 1970 at 2.06% growth per year, but had dropped to 1.78% by 1980. Rates remained relatively flat throughout the '80s, with a minimal rise to 1.80% by 1990. From there, however, the rate of population growth began to drop precipitously, falling to 1.37% in 2000, 1.27% in 2010, and 0.87% in 2020-the first time since 1950 that the growth rate had fallen below 1%. The United Nations predicts the global population growth rate will continue to decrease over the next several decades, until it dips into negative population growth around the year 2100.

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a country for details. Choose Year to Display Below: Overall, however, the rate of population growth has been slowing for several decades. This slowdown is expected to continue until the rate of population growth reaches zero (an equal number of births and deaths) around 2080-2100, at a population of approximately 10.4 billion people.

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Use these words and phrases to describe the process of Urbanisation in your Megacity

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Try to use these words in your Poster!

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The New York metropolitan area gobbles up more energy than any other major city in the world, according to a new study that aims to calculate the resources consumed in the world's largest cities.

The sprawling region that spreads into surrounding states including Connecticut and New Jersey is part of a growing number of so-called "megacities" sprouting up around the world and consuming more resources as they get larger and richer.

Now an international team of 28 researchers has partnered with the Enel Foundation, a nonprofit arm of Italian energy company Enel Group, to figure out how much electricity, fuel and water these huge cities consume, with an eye toward figuring out how some of them can cut back.

Read More at CNBC: N. Korea's terrorist $$$ machine

Chris Kennedy and his colleagues compiled a list of the world's megacities, defined as metropolitan areas with more than 10 million people, most of which extend beyond official city limits.

"I like to call it a 'commutershed,' " Kennedy told CNBC. "It is the region that people will travel around in their daily lives. It is also a common labor market and housing market."

The New York "megacity" is not simply the city of 8.1 million people; it includes the 22 million people who live around the city. That jump makes a huge difference, but Kennedy says it's a more accurate representation of reality.

"What you see in Manhattan is the center, that is the piece you perceive, but the real city is the 22 million," Kennedy said.

Read More at CNBC: A millionaire, a Swiss account, and a secret flight

There were eight such megacities on earth in the 1970s. As of 2010, there were 27, and that number is growing. Megacities are popping up in China and India, and toward the end of the century, the researchers expect many African megacities to rise and perhaps even surpass Tokyo in population and resource use.

Economists have already observed that larger cities tend to produce more wealth, measured in gross domestic product per person. But research has not focused as much on how urbanization and rising wealth affect resource use, Kennedy said.

Big-and gluttonous-New York City

The team found that cities not only produce more wealth, they also produce more waste. The world's megacities hold only 6.7 percent of the global population, but produce 12.6 percent of global solid waste, and consume 9.9 percent of global gasoline and 9.3 percent of global electricity.

"Some people have written books about New York as a kind of 'green metropolis' because there are subways and it is high density," Kennedy said. "But what we are finding is when you look at the whole megacity, we are getting a higher-than-average amount of gasoline used and electricity used, and waste produced. We think that is driven by GDP. If these cities are richer and wealthier, they are buying more, and throwing away more."

The New York City metropolitan area uses more resources than Tokyo, even though Tokyo has 12 million more people. For example, New York uses the equivalent of a supertanker of oil more than Tokyo does, every day and a half.

What's working for Tokyo

Much of that stems from the fact that New York is less dense than the Tokyo region and uses more fuel for transportation-both cities actually consume roughly the same amount of electricity. But the Japanese megacity has also taken some measures to improve efficiency. It aggressively worked to limit leakage from its water system-Tokyo leaks only 3 percent of its water, when most large cities leak about 20 percent.

By way of comparison, both Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro leak more than half of their water out of their public water system-even as both are in the midst of tremendous water shortages.

Read More at CNBC: Left-of-Hillary hopeful rips her on foreign policy

Other large cities have certain features that enable them to reduce consumption: Seoul, South Korea, has a large wastewater recycling system, and Moscow has the world's largest central heating system, which serves millions of people. London managed to reduce its per-capita electricity use from 2001 to 2010, even though its economy grew. Paris has mild weather, little heavy industry and an excellent regional rail system.

But reducing consumption or waste while maintaining economic growth is tricky, Kennedy said. In fact, megacities that consume fewer resources overall are often places where substantial portions of the population lack a basic standard of living.

Researchers already knew that as cities' economies grow, they tend to spread out, and thus they tend to consume more fuel for transportation, per person, Kennedy said.

Read More at CNBC: How millennials could damage the US economy

But Kennedy's team also found that growing cities even tend to use more electricity per person. Buildings actually get bigger, because there is more space to build on, and those larger buildings use more electricity.

The team expects its list of large cities to grow longer. The Chicago area, with its 9.9 million people, fell just shy of making the cut, but it will probably be among megacities by 2020, Kennedy said.

The research, which was funded by the Enel Foundation, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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New York Area Tops World's Energy-Gobbling 'Megacities'

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The New York metropolitan area gobbles up more energy than any other major city in the world, according to a new study that aims to calculate the resources consumed in the world's largest cities.

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There is some information about Tokyo in here!

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The New York metropolitan area gobbles up more energy than any other major city in the world, according to a new study that aims to calculate the resources consumed in the world's largest cities.

The sprawling region that spreads into surrounding states including Connecticut and New Jersey is part of a growing number of so-called "megacities" sprouting up around the world and consuming more resources as they get larger and richer.

Now an international team of 28 researchers has partnered with the Enel Foundation, a nonprofit arm of Italian energy company Enel Group, to figure out how much electricity, fuel and water these huge cities consume, with an eye toward figuring out how some of them can cut back.

Read More at CNBC: N. Korea's terrorist $$$ machine

Chris Kennedy and his colleagues compiled a list of the world's megacities, defined as metropolitan areas with more than 10 million people, most of which extend beyond official city limits.

"I like to call it a 'commutershed,' " Kennedy told CNBC. "It is the region that people will travel around in their daily lives. It is also a common labor market and housing market."

The New York "megacity" is not simply the city of 8.1 million people; it includes the 22 million people who live around the city. That jump makes a huge difference, but Kennedy says it's a more accurate representation of reality.

"What you see in Manhattan is the center, that is the piece you perceive, but the real city is the 22 million," Kennedy said.

Read More at CNBC: A millionaire, a Swiss account, and a secret flight

There were eight such megacities on earth in the 1970s. As of 2010, there were 27, and that number is growing. Megacities are popping up in China and India, and toward the end of the century, the researchers expect many African megacities to rise and perhaps even surpass Tokyo in population and resource use.

Economists have already observed that larger cities tend to produce more wealth, measured in gross domestic product per person. But research has not focused as much on how urbanization and rising wealth affect resource use, Kennedy said.

Big-and gluttonous-New York City

The team found that cities not only produce more wealth, they also produce more waste. The world's megacities hold only 6.7 percent of the global population, but produce 12.6 percent of global solid waste, and consume 9.9 percent of global gasoline and 9.3 percent of global electricity.

"Some people have written books about New York as a kind of 'green metropolis' because there are subways and it is high density," Kennedy said. "But what we are finding is when you look at the whole megacity, we are getting a higher-than-average amount of gasoline used and electricity used, and waste produced. We think that is driven by GDP. If these cities are richer and wealthier, they are buying more, and throwing away more."

The New York City metropolitan area uses more resources than Tokyo, even though Tokyo has 12 million more people. For example, New York uses the equivalent of a supertanker of oil more than Tokyo does, every day and a half.

What's working for Tokyo

Much of that stems from the fact that New York is less dense than the Tokyo region and uses more fuel for transportation-both cities actually consume roughly the same amount of electricity. But the Japanese megacity has also taken some measures to improve efficiency. It aggressively worked to limit leakage from its water system-Tokyo leaks only 3 percent of its water, when most large cities leak about 20 percent.

By way of comparison, both Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro leak more than half of their water out of their public water system-even as both are in the midst of tremendous water shortages.

Read More at CNBC: Left-of-Hillary hopeful rips her on foreign policy

Other large cities have certain features that enable them to reduce consumption: Seoul, South Korea, has a large wastewater recycling system, and Moscow has the world's largest central heating system, which serves millions of people. London managed to reduce its per-capita electricity use from 2001 to 2010, even though its economy grew. Paris has mild weather, little heavy industry and an excellent regional rail system.

But reducing consumption or waste while maintaining economic growth is tricky, Kennedy said. In fact, megacities that consume fewer resources overall are often places where substantial portions of the population lack a basic standard of living.

Researchers already knew that as cities' economies grow, they tend to spread out, and thus they tend to consume more fuel for transportation, per person, Kennedy said.

Read More at CNBC: How millennials could damage the US economy

But Kennedy's team also found that growing cities even tend to use more electricity per person. Buildings actually get bigger, because there is more space to build on, and those larger buildings use more electricity.

The team expects its list of large cities to grow longer. The Chicago area, with its 9.9 million people, fell just shy of making the cut, but it will probably be among megacities by 2020, Kennedy said.

The research, which was funded by the Enel Foundation, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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New York Area Tops World's Energy-Gobbling 'Megacities'

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The New York metropolitan area gobbles up more energy than any other major city in the world, according to a new study that aims to calculate the resources consumed in the world's largest cities.

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urban area (geographical feature category)

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This video was created for a Geography Project on the topic Problems in Major Urban Cities. I decided to post it on Youtube bc I thought it might be educational (?) Hope it helps :) PS there are some typos bc it was rushed since the due date alr passed.

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On September 23 rd, leaders of the world are getting together for tea and cookies at the UN to talk about Climate Change.

The Peoples Climate March is forecast to be one of the largest Environmental Rallies in history and will take place onSunday, Sept 21 st, to raise awareness on climate issues and to make the voices of the people heard. While Climate Change is a big focus, so too are issues of Environmental Justice right here in New York City. We may often think of the Big Apple as a cultural and economic powerhouse, every twenty-somethings playground or muse, but another reality exists as well. New York City has been home to some of the largest environmental cleanup sites in the country, contributes significantly to the carbon footprint of the region, and produces more than 12,000 tons of trash per day. Moreover, one of the greatest predictors of a New Yorkers exposure to an unhealthy environment is their income and race. The disproportionate environmental burden that low-income communities of color bear in NYC is a tremendous focus of organizations that are part of our Environmental Justice Movement.

In honor of Climate Week (September 22-28 th, I have put together some of the most pressing issues for the New York City region and its environment, along with some gentle (or not so gentle) encouragement to take action to reduce the impact you have on all of the folks in our fair city.

Air & Emissions

The biggest contributors to poor air quality have historically been emissions from vehicles and industry. The decline of manufacturing generally means that tailpipes are the heavy hitters here. Bad air quality can contribute to illnesses like asthma, and the closer a person lives to a highway or truck route, the more likely they are to have asthma.

What can you do? Have you seen those 'no idling' signs? Those are directly related to bringing down the emissions of vehicles. If getting vocal about idling cars and trucks in your neighborhood at a community meeting isn't your jam, feel free to report repeat offenders using 311. If you drive, don't let your vehicle idle, and when you head to the polls check out if your candidates support using innovative policy and technology to create more efficient vehicle traffic systems to prevent congestion that can belch ton after ton of poison into your airways and lungs.

Soil & Land Use

Many former industrial sites are still full of contaminants from their previous occupants- these are designated Brownfields by the City and there is a length process to get this land cleaned up and ready for reuse. Chemicals can remain in soils for years to come, causing all serious effects if you happen to live, shop, or work near them.

What can you do? While tempting, it is recommended you don't grow food out of vacant lots in your neighborhood unless you get the soil tested, or build raised beds. Check out 596 acres to get involved with urban gardening in a safe way, and call 311 to get information about sites in your neighborhood that might be toxic to you and others. Be sure to dispose of all chemicals from household or other uses in a safe manner- the Department of Sanitation can advise anyone who is unsure.

Water & Ecology

You aren't going to believe this, but the NYC region used boast an abundance of seafood that would many anyone who enjoys $1 Oyster Happy Hour swoon with delight and jealousy. The quality of our aquatic habitats has been degraded in favor of the efficiency of our waterways and the convenience of more land (NYC has added countless football fields of land-area since long before the Revolutionary War). One of the biggest issues today is the Combined Sewer System, and the flow of raw sewage into our local waterways. This is why beaches are often closed after rainstorms- your poop is in the water!

What can you do? This is a wildly unpopular idea with many people but don't, just don't, use any water that isn't absolutely necessary when it's raining outside. That means don't flush your toilet, or shower, or do your entire sink full of dishes. Sometimes as little as ½ an inch of rainfall can cause an overflow of sewage, and the system cannot handle much excess water on a dry day much less a wet one. While I am not in favor of substituting axe-body spray for a shower 100% of the time, I would greatly prefer to forego my morning shower if it meant I was not literally swimming in shit the next time I hit the beach.

You can also support efforts to restore wetlands in the region, which function as natural filters for our water and help facilitate species diversity and restore some of our harbors original ecology. If you want to get really crazy start pushing your local elected officials to get more aggressive about green infrastructure projects that can capture storm-water before it contributes to our overburdened sewers.

Food & Public Health

If you live in a neighborhood where you can stop and get fresh fruit and vegetables that are affordable to you, congratulations. Unfortunately for many folks, food desert s have become a regular occurrence in New York City. Fresh produce is in essence, a luxury item instead of a human right. This has led to an extraordinary concentration of unhealthy, cheap and processed options as the main staples for many people living in food deserts, in turn generating a rise in public health problems such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

What can you do? There are tons of ways you can get active about food. For my foodie people instagramming that organic quiche you just made this weekend, consider joining a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) that also boasts sliding scale payments for various income groups.

If you aren't a huge foodie or food justice advocate, that is fine, but it makes sound economic sense to think about policy solutions to this issue that will cost a lot less than picking up the tab for obesity et. all in the future.

Waste & Resource Consumption

Last but definitely not least, think about your trash. This might be one of the biggest concerns for NYC, one of the biggest ways we export our problems, and also one of the easiest ways for individuals and households to really make an impact. NYC produces more than 12,000 tons of solid waste.. Trash is a foul thing, you know this all too well from the smell of Summer Garbage and the way that takeout made your fridge smell last week. Did you know that NYC also doesn't' really deal with its own garbage anymore? We stopped burning our trash (bad for the air) and closed our landfills (which we are turning into parks) a while ago, so our solution is to pay someone else to dump it in their community (Thanks, Pennsylvania).

What can you do? Practically speaking the best way to reduce your impact here is to reduce the amount of stuff you throw away. You can nip this in the bud by 1) buying less stuff or 2) buying less stuff in packaging. Carry reusable bottles and coffee-mugs, lots of places even give you a discount. Carry reusable grocery bags! You can deal with gluttonous consumption after the fact by recycling. If you want to be really cool on your block, start pushing the city for that composting program it keeps taking about- we could be using the eggshells from that quiche you made in compost that we spread on those community gardens to create affordable produce.

Sometimes it is hard to think about people and places we don't encounter regularly. We spend a lot of time worrying about rent, work, when Game of Thrones is coming back, or if the L train is too crowded. The fact of the matter is that Cities represent a great and compact way of life that is theoretically better for the planet because it can concentrate goods/services and cut down on things like deforestation and burning of fossil fuels, but they also harbor a significant amount of the wealth and consumption that changes our environment. Making even one small change- carrying that reusable mug with you or digging in at a community garden- goes a long way.

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The 5 Problems Facing NYC & What You Can Do About Them Today

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On September 23 rd, leaders of the world are getting together for tea and cookies at the UN to talk about Climate Change. The Peoples Climate March is forecast to be one of the largest Environmental Rallies in history and will take place onSunday, Sept 21 st, to raise awareness on climate issues and to make the voices of the people heard.

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Problem - Overpopulation Tokyo's has huge population of over 13 million people. making it one of japans largest cities. a large population can create issues such as over population. leaving the...

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Tokyo - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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It became the capital city of Japan in the middle of 19th century, when its name changed from " Edo" to "Tokyo". Before then, Kyoto was the capital of Japan. The Emperor of Japan, or Tenno, lived in Kyoto. Edo was the place where the Tokugawa Shoguns lived.

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New York - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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New York is one of the 50 states of the United States of America and one of the Thirteen Colonies, which were the first thirteen states to make up the US.

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Jakarta - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Jakarta (also Djakarta or DKI Jakarta) is the largest and the capital city of Indonesia. It is on the northwest coast of the island of Java, it has an area of 661.52 km² and a population of 10,187,595 as of November 2011.

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Jakarta at 30 million: my city is choking and sinking - it needs a new Plan B

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Imagining a more stable future for this thrilling but chaotic metropolis - with its 3.5 million daily commuters - is not easy for those who live and work here. One leading Jakarta architect offers his vision for a smaller-scale future

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Late in 2016, Human Cities Coalition commissioned a rapid scan of our two pilot cities in order to help frame and contextualise the specific urban challenges we work to address. To follow-up on this, and to begin making connections to foster the work of a lasting coalition, Directors Ronald Lenz and Fleur Henderson paid the pilot cities of Jakarta and Manila a visit. In this instalment we focus on Jakarta to offer further insight into the political context, living conditions, and urban challenges city residents face.
Indonesia - Jakarta's urban profile
Jakarta is the capital city of Indonesia and with a population of well-over 11 million, it's the world's second largest city. The official metropolitan area is known as Jabodetabek - a name formed by combining the initial syllables of Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Besaki areas. What many people do not realize is that wider Jakarta, or Jabodetabek, is sinking. While Jakarta owes its existence and growth to its waterfront location and geography - for centuries the natural harbour along North Jakarta has been an important port for Hindu, Muslim and then Dutch colonizers as well as local fishing communities - it is now threatened by the very water defines it.

The rapid pace of urbanization in Jakarta has given rise to multiple problems such as floods, traffic congestion, poverty and inequality. Yet Jakarta faces some unique water infrastructure challenges due to the 13 rivers that feed into it. Large swaths of the city sit below sea level, with some places sinking 25cm per year (on average 5-10cm). This means flooding and the ensuing pollution are a constant - if not life-threatening - challenge for the many low income inhabitants that currently call places like North Jakarta home. Floods are a perennial issue that occur yearly. Large floods, like the ones in 2007, caused billions of USD dollars in losses and claimed the lives of over 50 people. The 2007 floods served as a definitive wake-up call to both the local government and international community that action to save the city from water could no longer wait. Today urgent action is still needed.

Floods occur in Jakarta for various and overlapping reasons, such as: rivers brimming with garbage, waste-choked waterways, high levels of river sedimentation, and overflowing seawater. To tackle this, the government has issued various policies like the normalization of its 13 rivers and the construction of the Giant Sea Wall in an effort to prevent future flooding. The current Governor of Jakarta - Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (commonly referred to as Ahok) - organized groups to clean-up the entire water infrastructure and therefore reduce river flooding. Yet his tenure is not assured given the upcoming gubernatorial elections on February 15, 2017.
Directors' site visit - First impressions
Co-Director Fleur Henderson remarked that wider Jakarta shares many of the challenges other megacities in Africa and Asia face, namely the overabundance of traffic, congestion, pollution, inequality, and slums. What sets Jakarta apart, however, is that it is a Delta City and is continually struggling against the water. While visiting slums and interviewing locals in North Jakarta, water emerged as a clear theme. For example, the Directors Fleur Henderson noted that locals spent a significant portion of their earnings - up to 30% of their salaries - to access semi-safe water.

Why? Throngs of people are not connected to official water suppliers, which leads to a rash of other economic, political and social consequences. For instance, a major contributor to flooding is pollution and the mishandling of waste management. This, in turn, clogs waterways and contributes to flooding. Additionally, the status quo lends itself to the growth of black market suppliers and the unauthorized drilling of groundwater wells. Not only does the later cause the land to collapse around such wells, it also means there's no accurate way to measure water usage in Jakarta. Many people, predominately women, much fetch and carry water to their dwelling each day all against a backdrop where the price of accessing clean, safe water is continuously rising.

Human Cities Coalition was proud to join the Dutch trade mission on its November visit to Indonesia. With Prime Minister Rutte, hundreds of Dutch companies, VNO-NCW chairman Hans de Boer, and three ministers in tow, the group sought to uncover joint economic and social solutions to the myriad of issues, especially urban water challenges, Jakarta faces. When speaking to the NRC newspaper about Human Cities Coalition participation in the trade mission, Fleur Henderson commented: "It is useful to be able to speak many important players, from local officials to developers, at once." Acting in a coordinated way with a mix of government officials, businesses, and civil society organizations proved to a useful mix of multi-level, cross-sector stakeholders. "If we had to organize this on our own, it would have taken months to arrange for all these meetings." Overall, this served as a crucial step in gauging the situation on the ground while beginning to forge relationships with key local players.

In addition to visiting the slums areas of the city with the Dutch Trade Mission, Directors Fleur and Ronald also held meetings with World Bank officials, AkzoNobel in Jakarta, and with the Ministry of National Development and Planning (Bappenas).They also met with urban designers and researchers like the students at Pulse Lab Jakarta about uses for their innovative research and data collection projects. Pulse Lab Jakarta was established five years ago as a partnership between the UN and Development and Bappenas. As the first innovation lab of its kind in Asia, Pulse Lab Jakarta brings together experts from United Nations agencies, the Indonesian government, NGOs and the private sector to research and, most importantly, facilitate the adoption of new approaches for applying digital data sources and real-time analysis techniques to social development.
Jakarta's main urban challenges - rapid scan findings

Rapid urban growth: The Megacity of Jakarta increased from 11.91 million inhabitants in 1980, 17.14 million in 1990, and 20.63 million in 2000 to 28.01 million in 2010. In 2010, wider Jakarta accounted for 11.79 percent of Indonesia's total population, but with this population residing in less than 0.3 percent of the country's total area.

Flooding: Recurring floods, particularly during the rainy season, indicate problems in Jakarta's water management. During the wet season floods are commonplace, while in the dry season water scarcity becomes a major issue. Effective water management makes sure that excess water during the rainy season does not lead to disasters, while in the dry season, water especially potable water, remains adequately available.

Jakarta last suffered from massive flooding in 2007, which inundated over 23,000 hectares of Jakarta's land area. Some 422,300 people were displaced and 1,500 houses destroyed. Total losses caused by the devastating floods reached USD 695 million (World Bank, 2010). Moreover, in the post-flood period, the people of Jakarta were afflicted by many health problems such as diarrhoea, flue and skin diseases. The flood also had a serious impact on the property market.

Traffic & Congestion: Jakarta is regularly rated as having some of the world's worst traffic and congestion. The city is estimated to lose US$3 billion a year because of traffic congestion, which is linked to the high growth rate of private vehicle ownership, inadequate road development, and sprawl. Alternative modes of public transport such as the busway is currently being developed to ease traffic. Yet people who live in the outskirts of Jakarta can save as much as 30% of their transportation costs using motorcycles to work rather than public transport.

Poverty and Inequality: Based on statistical data released in 2014, at least 412.79 thousand people in Jakarta live in poverty, with the poverty line in Indonesia sitting at USD 25 per month per person (Asian Development Bank 2015). North Jakarta has the largest number of poor people, followed by East Jakarta. Edi Suadi from Urban Poor Consortium (UPC) highlights 5 key dynamics of Jakarta's poverty situation: (1) land tenure and the right to adequate housing (2) right to employment, (3) access to healthcare (4) access to education and (5) disaster resilience.

Not only do the poor have no permanent place to stay, which ultimately forces them to settle along riverbanks, but they are also denied access to vital healthcare, education, and other public services. Educational and health services are accessible only to residents with DKI Jakarta identity cards, but for settlers with little to no documentation it is extremely difficult to gain access to existing government social programmes. Government and development projects to address these issues include the construction of low-cost apartments for poor households, issue education cards for free education until high school, distribute health cards, and open more job centres.
Preliminary Jakarta Findings
First and foremost, it clear to us that further scoping and community assessments are needed before we proceed in Jakarta. Accessing funding for inclusive infrastructure projects is not necessarily the issue, instead the challenge remains the complexity of public institutions and their necessary mobilization to push to large-scale projects forward in an inclusive manner. The scoping exercise and site visit also laid bare that large water projects in Jakarta currently lack a human component in that they do not bring the working poor in as part of a lasting, inclusive and sustainable solution. There is both an opportunity and a real need to include the voices of local residents when investing and shaping infrastructure projects in Jakarta.

Many people living in slum-like conditions exhibited little faith in their current government and continued scepticism about the Dutch involvement. This lack of trust must be bridged given that residents fear eviction and displacement without proper and sufficient dialogue given that past river normalisation projects were accompanied by forced evictions. This is an unfortunate legacy that NCICD and future large-scale projects inherit and must strive to overcome. Together Human Cities Coalition will continue its research into how to address the challenges residents in Jakarta face in an inclusive manner - ensuring opportunities for the poor and the private sector alike.
>> Jump to the Manila - Urban Challenges Overview article

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Late in 2016, Human Cities Coalition commissioned a rapid scan of our two pilot cities in order to help frame and contextualise the specific urban challenges we work to address. To follow-up on this, and to begin making connections to foster the work of a lasting coalition, Directors Ronald Lenz and Fleur Henderson paid the pilot cities of Jakarta and Manila a visit.

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Deden Rukmana, Problems and Challenges in Jakarta Caused by Rapid Urbanization an Associate Professor and Coordinator of Urban Studies and Planning program at Savannah State University, Georgia, gives his opinion on the rapid growth of Jakarta. Population of the Megacity of Jakarta in 1980-2010
Not only is Jakarta the largest metropolitan area in Southeast Asia, it is also the most dynamic, though beset with most of the urban problems experienced in twentieth first century Southeast Asia. Jakarta has been the capital of Indonesia since the Dutch colonial era and the economic, commercial and transportation hub of the nation. The population of Jakarta in 1900 was about 115,000. After Independence, Jakarta increased by nearly three times to 1.43 million by 1950. It increased to 2.91 million in 1960 and 4.47 million in 1970. Table below shows the population of Jakarta and the inner and outer peripheries of Jakarta, from 1980 to 2010. The Megacity of Jakarta or popularly known as Jabodetabek increased from 11.91 million in 1980, 17.14 million in 1990, and 20.63 million in 2000 to 28.01 million in 2010. The megacity in 2010 was 11.79 percent of Indonesia's total population but this population resides in less than 0.3 percent of Indonesia's total area.

Sources: Indonesia Central Bureau of Statistics

Rapid urbanization in the megacity of Jakarta caused a wide range of urban problems in the last few decades. Two major problems are traffic congestions and floods. Jakarta is estimated to lose US$3 billion a year because of traffic congestion which can't be separated from the high growth rate of vehicle ownership. The daily jams in Jakarta are getting worse. Motorcycles are ubiquitous and can be acquired with a down payment of as little as $30. The motorcycle ownership grew from 1.62 million in 2000 to 7.52 million in 2010 and 13.08 million in 2014. People who live in the outskirts of Jakarta can save as much as 30% of their transportation costs using motorcycles to work rather than public transport.

Nearly two-thirds of the population live in the peripheral areas of Jakarta commute to the center for most of their needs including jobs, schools, medical, entertainments, etc. Unless there are a reliable, accessible, and affordable public transportation modes that connect the center and peripheral areas of the megacity of Jakarta, the traffic congestions in the megacity of Jakarta will not be resolved. Most metropolitan areas in the world with the population of over 10 million have operated metros or mass rapid transits for years. Jakarta is the largest city in the world without a metro. Jakarta just started the construction of MRT in September 2015. The completion of MRT in Jakarta in the next few more years is expected to reduce the traffic congestion in Jakarta.

Jakarta lies in a lowland area with 13 rivers. All tributaries and basin areas of these 13 rivers are located in the peripheries of the megacity, strongly associated with the floods in Jakarta. Industrial parks and new towns were built in the peripheries of Jakarta and many of them have converted water catchment areas, green areas and wetlands. Such land conversions have affected the severity of flooding in Jakarta. Floods have become a threat and bring increasing woes for Jakarta residents every year.

In 2007, the worst floods in memory inundated about 70% of Jakarta, killed at least 57 people and sent about 450,000 fleeing their houses. In 2012, floods inundated hundreds of homes along major Jakarta waterways and displaced 2,430 people. In 2013, many parts of Jakarta were inundated following heavy rain and killed at least 20 people and sent at least 33,502 fleeing their houses. In 2015, the flood inundated many parts of the Megacity of Jakarta and caused an estimated losses of $234 million. In August 2016, eight sub-districts in South Jakarta and East Jakarta were flooded affecting 10,538 households. Annual flooding in Jakarta is strong evidence that rapid urbanization in Jakarta must be reduced.

As long as Jakarta remains the primary growth machine of the nation, the economic growth of Jakarta will be strongly associated with the pace of Indonesia's economic growth, and will correspond to rapid urbanization in Jakarta. Indonesia will need to create more urban centers to reduce the burdens of Jakarta. In addition, rapid urbanization in Jakarta was generated by an influx of migrants from other parts of the nation, particularly from poor regions of Java Island. Poverty in rural areas of Java became a factor that pushed people from rural areas to urban ones. Alleviating rural poverty in Java will address not only the problems of the rural poor, but also reduce the pressures in and on Jakarta and its peripheries.

Words : Deden Rukmana
Photos : Isidro Ramirez from Jakarta : Modest Interventions and Minor Improvisations

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Problems and Challenges in Jakarta Caused by Rapid Urbanisation

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Deden Rukmana, Problems and Challenges in Jakarta Caused by Rapid Urbanization an Associate Professor and Coordinator of Urban Studies and Planning program at Savannah State University, Georgia, gives his opinion on the rapid growth of Jakarta.

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Since 2000, the world's second-largest megacity, Jakarta, has seen its population swell by a staggering 34 percent. Though the city proper is home to just 10 million, the urban zone is home to 30 million and experts expect another seven million to migrate to the city over the next 15 years. Although Jakarta is translating its newfound growth into economic growth, density has a downside. The infrastructure simply isn't in place to handle this much traffic. Also, the flooding is getting worse.

Deemed the world's most congested city by its hometown newspaper, Jakarta's traffic is a disaster. Drivers stop an average of 91 times per day. Public transit only serves 56 percent of trips made by commuters. The city is a parking lot.

Deden Rukmana, professor of urban studies and planning at Savannah State University in Georgia. who has studied and written extensively about what kinds of challenges Jakarta will be dealing with in the next several decades, thinks Jakarta needs to start taking cues from cities like New York or Beijing, and build an extensive subway train system that can get commuters to and from places faster and more efficiently. "Jakarta is the largest urban metropolitan area in the world without a metro," he says. "And a metro is the most crucial element of transportation for a megacity. There's no way it can exist otherwise."

And to the government's credit, it's already starting to roll out some plans. Construction on the Jakarta Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) - a rail-based transit system that will stretch 67 miles and connect communities to the central district of the city - will finish in 2017. Unfortunately, that only comprises two lines - one running north to south, and one running west to east. The city, according to Rukmana, should have begun building this 10 years ago so that it could be expanding the system now.

Paradoxically, the growing economy which has given life to a rising middle class is also hurting efforts to make public transportation more popular. Rukmana explains that middle class citizens are resistant to buses and trains, largely because cars and motorcycles are status symbols. Not having enough riders means a stagnation in much-needed expansion. "Public transit is not attractive for the middle and upper class," Rukmana says. "So the streets are flooded with cars and motorcycles." It doesn't help that some of the government's other transportation plans include projects like toll roads, which do nothing to really reduce the number of vehicles on the road.

Gloomier than Jakarta's traffic conditions, however, is its problem with flooding. Jakarta, with 40 percent of the city already sitting below sea level, is sinking into the ground at an average of three inches every year. The causes of increased flooding can be traced to a whole slew of factors, including increased sea levels due to climate change, land subsidies that lead to increased groundwater extraction, dwindling resources in water catchment areas, and poor water management on the part of the government. "With this new administration, I see that there's progress being made," says Rukmana. But still, they have a lot of work they need to do."

The solutions so far haven't helped much. Several different canals that run through the region have helped mitigate flooding during storm events, and the government conducts dredging all the time. But these won't help in the long term.

So Jakarta has greenlighted a more audacious project: a $40 billion wall that will sit off the coast and come out to 25 miles long and 80 feet high. The project, which will take 30 years to complete, will also create 17 artificial islands rife for developers to build luxury homes, corporate offices, and high-end malls.

It's also not a great idea. Nevermind the fact that we haven't really perfected the art of building artificial islands - the wall itself could be disastrous the environment and biodiversity that surrounds the city.

More importantly, the wall doesn't really solve the underlying issues that are causing increased flooding - namely groundwater extraction. Rukmana thinks much of this stems from the government's inability to work with residents living in flood-prone areas and come up with long-lasting solutions. "If you're not working with them, and educating and empower the people living by the riverbanks, whatever you do to reduce the floods won't work," he says.

Looking at a Jakarta through a broader lens, problems like traffic and flooding are really just the consequences of uncontrolled urbanization. Jakarta, as Rukmana likes to remind people, was really meant to house about 500,000 - not 10 million. To really resolve traffic, flooding, and other challenges, "you have to develop other cities as a counter magnet to Jakarta," he explains. "If you ask me what are the roots of problems like flooding and traffic, my answer is rapid urbanization."

The key, then, isn't to improve Jakarta and transform its infrastructure so that it can accomplish the insane task of keeping 30 million people glued together. Instead, Indonesia needs to invest in other urban areas and ease the pressure off the capital city. Plenty of other countries are investing heavily into planned cities - Indonesia ought to start doing the same.

Otherwise, it won't matter how many lines the city's metro system has, or how big its sea walls are.

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The Largest City Without a Subway Has More Than 10 Million People and a Rival Problem

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Since 2000, the world's second-largest megacity, Jakarta, has seen its population swell by a staggering 34 percent. Though the city proper is home to just 10 million, the urban zone is home to 30 million and experts expect another seven million to migrate to the city over the next 15 years.

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Causes and Patterns of Urbanisation in Jakarta

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Causes and Patterns of Urbanisation in Jakarta

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With the Middle East's martial concerns filling the news, it was a change of pace this month to visit the region's biggest city, Cairo, and examine more quotidian concerns, namely its urban planning policies and problems.

With approximately 18 million people (estimates vary), Cairo can be seen as both a problem and a solution to the challenges of a developing country. Cairo is, in one analyst's term, a "Mega-city" - a huge, expanding cloud of population, much of it poor, that by some estimates is adding 1.25 million people a year. Where all these people live, how to give them water, dispose of their waste, and allow them to travel, are the central questions. The challenges of Cairo are, in a word, infrastructure.

In that, it is perhaps similar to New York, a metropolitan area it will soon surpass in size. But as our region struggles to add trains to the airport and another Hudson River rail tunnel, Cairo is more akin to New York of the 19th century. It is struggling to add a sewer system, subway service and parks.

All these needs have meant enormous investments in infrastructure. They are funding it in part due to help from their past (and some might say present) Colonial masters, France, Britain and the United States. The French helped finance and build the new subway, while Britain and the United States have helped finance and build a new sewer system as well as various other infrastructure projects seen around town. (The peace settlement with Israel has provided enormous financial benefits for Egypt. Since the Camp David accords in 1979, Egypt has received about $25 billion in aid from the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID.) On the streets, Cairo is a bustling, lively place at all hours. Even at midnight, streets are full, with people sitting drinking tea and playing backgammon. About a third of the women wear the Hijab, the Islamic scarf or veil that wraps around the head, while a tiny percentage also wear the niqab, the veil that covers the face completely.

Long-time Cairo residents notice that the percentage of women wearing traditional Islamic dress has increased tremendously in the last decade. It is a statement now not only of religious faith, but of national identity.

Not only were the sidewalks crowded, but the streets themselves were jammed with cars, mostly tiny, box-like black and white Fiats that were usually decades old. Traveling a mile or two by car, often the only option, could take an hour.

The Metro: Tunnels Through Sand All this street congestion is one reason why the city's new Metro has caught on so quickly. Line 1, which connected two existing suburban railways through a four-stop, center-city subway, opened in 1987. It has 27 stations. Line 2 opened in 1999 and has 18 stops, 13 of which are underground. Line 1 cost $585 million, much of it from France. Egypt financed the $3 billion for Line 2 mostly by itself.

The two lines cut across the city in a rough Xpattern, with Line 2 running beneath the Nile River to Giza, where the Great Pyramids await. Despite its newness, already 1.8 million "Cairenes" use the Metro daily. By comparison, this is almost three times the 625,000 riders daily on the Washington, D.C. metro system. People use the Cairo Metro even though its price, 50 pilasters (about 10 cents), is considered high.

In its design, the Metro is clean and neat, with wide passageways and platforms. Designing the individual stations involved factors that were more common a century ago in New York. In Cairo, much of the population is illiterate (one estimate was only a third of the population could read and write), which is why the subway designers have given individual stations strong visual identities.

At the Opera station on Line Two, for example, images of Pharonic women in ancient Egyptian dress, inlaid in tile on the station walls, greet those who pull into the stations.

"This helps people figure out where they are," said Ezz Eldin Fahmy, a principal and architect with EHAF Consulting Engineers in Cairo, the firm that designed the stations. "When they see the triangles look like boats, they know they are in Rod El Farago station. We had the theme of boats because this used to be the only port on the River Nile." Under design is a third line, which will cut across the city to from east to west, and extend eventually out to the city's airport.

Waste In and, Hopefully, Out Until recently, the city's overburdened sewer system backed up more than 100 days a year, flooding the streets with raw waste. The city's only formal sewer system was one built by the British just before World War I for a city of about one million people. It was grossly inadequate.

Using US-AID and British money, the city over the last two decades has built an entirely new sewer system, including an enormous treatment plant north of the city. Because the old system was so overburdened, this did not mean simply expanding a new system, but building a new one from scratch.

"They had to rethink the whole network," said Mona Serageldin, professor of urban planning at Harvard Design School and a Cairo native who teaches a course on the city. "It was a major challenge in design." The core of the new system was a "trunk line" - the central line to which others attach. This trunk line is 5 meters in diameter, and extends in a sloping, gravity-fed descent from south to north through the city until it ends up by the new treatment plant at a depth of 25 meters. Now completed in its core phases, it is one of the largest sewer projects in the world.

But the city is still struggling to connect everyone to it. Millions of the city's residents live in illegally built concrete and brick apartments that scatter out across the desert in endless waves. One analyst estimated that 25 percent of the households in Cairo lack water and sewer connections.

As this mega-city struggles with sewers and subways, it's also fighting to direct overall growth patterns. To keep sprawl from gobbling up agricultural land up and down the Nile, the government is redirecting growth to the east and west, into the desert. This has meant the establishment of several "new cities." One of them, New Cairo, has a growth area of 43,000 acres - the equivalent of nine Manhattans in land area - and 2 to 3 million people are expected to live there.

It's difficult to love this new "city" blooming in the desert. One section of "New Cairo" looked like a Middle-eastern version of outer Houston, with mega-supermarkets, concrete apartment buildings and even a golf course blooming from the desert.

Still, directing growth there seemed better than by the Nile, and plans are to eventually have transit.

The city is also building parks. The biggest is the new 87-acre Al-Azhar park, planned as Cairo's "Central Park," built just outside the Medieval city walls on a 1000-year-old garbage dump. (City inhabitants essentially pitched their garbage over a wall, and the pile eventually grew higher than the city itself.) Now under construction, this park will include promenades, restaurants, orchards and ponds. Buried underneath this calm environment are more serious functions - three enormous water tanks, each 80 meters in diameter, the size of small stadiums.

"We have 16 million people and we have almost no open space - nothing," said Dr. Maher Stino, one of the park designers, as he led a visitor around the park site. Nearby, workers chiseled away at slabs of limestone for a park restaurant.

"We want to help the public understand what a park is and how to appreciate plants and nature.

We also want something unique to Cairo. We don't want a copy of Regent Park [in London]." As the New York region struggles with its own challenges, it can perhaps gain a bit of perspective in seeing a similar sized region struggle with far greater ones.

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First Published Feb. 20, 2003, in Spotlight on the Region, the newsletter of Regional Plan Association in New York City.

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In Cairo: A Mega City Confronts its Challenges - Alex Marshall

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With the Middle East's martial concerns filling the news, it was a change of pace this month to visit the region's biggest city, Cairo, and examine more quotidian concerns, namely its urban planning policies and problems. With approximately 18 million ... Continue reading →

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Introduction -This page describe the population change of Cairo and investigates the major reasons behind this rapid increase. Download and complete the activities on the Task Sheet - Urbanisation of...

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kainsaw/Shutterstock

The Tadamun project seeks to broaden the discussion about Cairo's future.

The government of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had a vision for Cairo's future. In 2007, it put forth a plan dubbed " Cairo 2050," and among its objectives was to create wide avenues, green spaces, and new or revamped tourist sites, such as near the Pyramids.

However attractive such a scene may sound, it would mean displacing hundreds of thousands-if not millions-of people from their neighborhoods, many of them Cairo's poorer residents who live in informal areas, or ashwa'iyyat. A whopping 70 percent of Cairenes live in these areas, where they build cheap housing illegally, often on agricultural land.

It is not a desire to cheat the system that drives such building. The Egyptian government's urban planning policies for the past 40 years have mainly been concerned with creating spaces and housing that cater to elites. As a result, low-income housing is difficult, if not impossible, to come by, and those with modest means must make do.

Cairo 2050 aimed to move these inhabitants from the city's more central areas to its desert outskirts and fill the emptied spaces with eye-pleasing features as well as businesses. The plan, according to Diane Singerman, a professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and an Egypt specialist, "would graft the skyline of Abu Dhabi or Dubai onto the Nile."

Yahia Shawkat, an Egyptian architect and activist, says that the plan stems from the government's "inexorable drive to create revenue from Cairo's prime real estate," adding that there is "no guarantee" that any revenue would be passed to the evicted residents.

Indeed, new cities have been built on the capital's fringes, but in the same way that the government seeks to benefit from Cairo's central spaces, it has sold this peripheral public land to private investors. As a result, most of the cities are unaffordable enclaves with names like "Beverly Hills" and "Dreamland."

Singerman, along with Cairo-based architect Kareem Ibrahim, founded the initiative Tadamun in 2010 to "turn the focus away from these new isolated, empty desert cities to serving the needs of the majority of Cairo's residents." As such, Tadamun's main purpose is to challenge the government's paradigm of urban development-illustrated by a plan like Cairo 2050-and to raise questions about social justice and the built environment.

When Mubarak was toppled in the mass uprisings of 2011's Arab Spring, many hoped that the calls for social justice by the protestors would be met-including in the realm of urban planning and housing.

But while Cairo 2050 has gone through a few iterations since then, and is now named the Cairo Strategic Urban Development Vision (CSUDV), "unfortunately it does not differ significantly from Cairo 2050," says Ibrahim. "Some of the interventions have been toned down in rhetoric, but not so much in intent."

Tadamun, which is principally funded by the Ford Foundation, aims to challenge such a plan by raising questions about it and making information about it more accessible to the public.

The initiative has published a series of articles critical of the CSUDV in both English and Arabic on its website. It also hosts public events, workshops, and seminars, and it collaborates with other urbanist and housing rights organizations in Egypt. Tadamun draws interest from a diverse audience, including government decision makers, the media, academic researchers, architects and urban planners, and everyday citizens.

Tadamun's more on-the-ground methods perhaps best illustrate its strategy for questioning an enterprise like the CSUDV. It documents neighborhood projects that can inform the government on how to better manage Cairo's spaces and residents, particularly by working to improve ashwa'iyyat instead of demolishing them.

Activist Sherief Gaber helped Tadamun with such projects, including a community-led trash collection program and the construction of a small library. He documented the cases in detail in order to "demonstrate the practicality of the initiatives to the government and expose how they could be supported fiscally or through changes to policy."

Ibrahim cites this approach as indicative of how Tadamun goes beyond an abstract treatment of urban issues by highlighting real solutions to Cairo's problems. The case studies show how collaborating with residents of ashwa'iyyat, rather than expelling them to remote locales, can improve Cairo's spaces and bring services to the underserved.

Yet to really empower Cairo's citizens, Tadamun calls for strengthening local governance so it can respond to neighborhood challenges and needs. Because Egypt has a centralized administrative system, most decisions about local issues are made at the national or governorate level. "State employees, unelected district heads, and unelected governors manage urban areas with very little citizen participation," says Singerman.

There is some hope in the new Ministry of State for Urban Renewal and Informal Settlements, established in July of last year. Ibrahim reports that Tadamun has been able to establish a relationship with the ministry's head, Laila Iskander, who seems "keen to collaborate with us and is open to many of our ideas." Iskander says that she "works closely with local groups" and that the ministry will develop slums in a section of downtown Cairo without evicting anyone. Upgrading the area will be a collaboration between the government and residents, she has said.

But whatever improvements may be made through change in the central government's approach to urban informality, real change may only come when more power is put in the hands of the residents themselves.

"More systematic reform of local government is needed," says Singerman. "Cairo needs more political spaces so that not everyone has to flood Tahrir Square to voice their demands."

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Improving Cairo for the Many, Not the Few

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The Tadamun project seeks to broaden the discussion about Cairo's future. The government of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had a vision for Cairo's future. In 2007, it put forth a plan dubbed " Cairo 2050," and among its objectives was to create wide avenues, green spaces, and new or revamped tourist sites, such as near the Pyramids.

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Cairo is one of the world's most rapidly growing cities, with nearly two percent annual population growth. This has prompted the Egyptian capital's inhabitants to seek solutions for an intensifying housing shortage.

Entire families have taken refuge in small huts on rooftops of apartment buildings, and some have even moved into family tombs in suburban Cairo. Meanwhile, wealthy Egyptians have seized the opportunity to illegally build skyscrapers for those urgently looking for a home; some of these units are sold unfinished, with no amenities, and the sellers then vanish.

Proper hygiene cannot be maintained in some of these accommodations, putting the health of many Egyptians at risk. Meanwhile, in an attempt to start controlling the city's urban planning, the government has decided to tear down all illegal settlements.

"Sixty percent of the population in Cairo lives in informal areas," said Yahia Shawkat, housing and land rights officer at EIPR. "These areas are not planned by the government and therefore the ownership is heavily contested."

Even before the uprising in 2011, the housing problem in Egypt became a hot topic. After the nationalisation of land in the late 1950s, owning land became almost impossible. Those who wanted to build a house or cultivate land would get a lease on the land, but would never become the actual owner of it.

"Since the [2011] revolution more and more private constructors have abused the current problems and instability in the country to build flats without permits," said Manal El-Tibe, a human rights activist and researcher on illegal housing in Egypt. "But for the people who have inherited land, or those living in informal areas for decades, the government needs to develop a proper plan."

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Cairo is one of the world's most rapidly growing cities, with nearly two percent annual population growth. This has prompted the Egyptian capital's inhabitants to seek solutions for an intensifying housing shortage. Entire families have taken refuge in small huts on rooftops of apartment buildings, and some have even moved into family tombs in suburban Cairo.

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The Moscow megalopolis, that includes Moscow and the Moscow Region, ranks among the ten largest mega-cities in the world and is the largest in Europe. The population exceeds 20 million. This megalopolis makes up about 14 percent of the entire Russian population and produces about 26 percent of the country's GDP.

" The city economy is growing faster than the national economy. Moscow is a major sales market for Russia's regions and consumes about three trillion roubles annually. It employs about 2.5 million people from other regions. Moscow is a driving force in economic growth with a growth rate about 15 percent higher than the Russian economy on the average, over the past 20 years," Sergei Sobyanin said at a plenary meeting of the Federation Council. Moscow owes its economic growth to innovation, the service sector, finance and other similar sectors.

Mega-city growth rates largely determine national and regional growth. "The Russian economy would simply lag behind other leading countries if local urbanisation rates and the development of big cities slow. Whether we agree or disagree with the concept, global development trends show this to be true," Mr. Sobyanin stressed.

In 2025, the world's 600 largest cities (megalopolises) will have a population of two billion or 25 percent of the entire global population, and these cities will account for 60 percent of the world's GDP.

In addition, the modern world faces new type of competition. Ancient cities vied for control over trade routes. During the Industrial Revolution, they tried hard to control manufacturing. Today, global mega-cities are struggling to attract human resources because an increasing number of educated and successful people can choose their place of residence among cities or by simply looking at a map of the world. "Over the past decade, inter-city migration volumes have increased three-fold. Today, expats from other regions account for 40 percent of the people living in big cities such as Singapore, Hong Kong and London. This highlights an intensive redistribution of the economically active population between the biggest mega-cities," Mr Sobyanin noted.

Instead of preventing Russian citizens from coming to Moscow, we need to discourage the economically active population from leaving the country, he added. "Moscow is a reliable partner to other regions, rather than a rival. Moscow is part of Russia, and open to cooperation with other Russian regions. We have signed long-term cooperation agreements with almost all of them; these documents stipulate industrial co-production arrangements, expanded agricultural trade, the provision of medical services and other aspects," Mr Sobyanin explained. In the past six years, the capital has increased its federal tax obligations by 62 percent, and this figure is growing by 50 billion annually.

The Moscow Government continues to implement comprehensive programmes to develop the infrastructure, to upgrade the social sector and to create a high-quality urban environment. These measures will help the city to remain people-friendly and win the global race for human capital. "A mega-city cannot develop by itself. We need to work on our infrastructure and people-friendly environment because, instead of generating synergy and economic development, we would otherwise face degradation, obsolescence, and social, economic and political problems," Mr Sobyanin added.

Moscow has changed and become more beautiful in the past few years, said Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko. "So many new public gardens, parks and pedestrian streets have appeared. Mr Sobyanin, no one believed it would be possible to make a dent in traffic congestion. You have accomplished this by expanding the road-and-street system. The Moscow Central Circle railway alone deserves every praise. This is the longest such project in the world. You are opening so many new metro stations each year. Many other improvements could be listed. Moscow has blossomed, has become more beautiful, clean and tidy, and we are proud of our country's capital," she noted.

From 2011 through 2020, the city is to build about 1,000 kilometres of new roads and about 100 new metro and MCC stations. Large-scale transport construction, upgraded rolling stock, the creation of a modern parking system and the introduction of the intelligent parking system will ensure quick and convenient traffic in the Moscow megalopolis. This programme has already been implemented by over 50 percent. Each year, the capital invests about 300 billion roubles in the development of transport infrastructure.

" People's economic potential and labour productivity tend to increase if they spend less time travelling to their place of work, schools or universities; this improves economic performance, and people themselves feel better, receiving more time for work and leisure," Mr Sobyanin said.

City residents and citizens from other Russian regions benefit from the expanding transport infrastructure, he noted. "Moscow is a major national transport hub transiting up to 50 percent of all passenger traffic in the country," he added.

New developments and other improvements

The Moscow Government is focused on well-balanced polycentric development, while implementing its urban development policy. The city also aims to create new centres of business activity in the newly incorporated territories and in redeveloped industrial zones. There are plans to build about eight million square metres of housing and commercial properties annually.

The creation of a people-friendly urban environment is another priority. Since 2011, the city has improved over 20,000 courtyards, 450 parks and nature areas. "Every rouble invested in the economy spurs economic development. The tourist industry alone nets the municipal economy about 400 billion roubles. The people-friendly environment attracts people to the city and helps it compete with other foreign mega-cities," Mr Sobyanin explained.

The city is now implementing the large My Street improvement programme and is working to create the world-class Zaryadye, Nagatino, Dream Island and other parks.

High-quality education and healthcare

The Moscow Government is working hard to provide high-quality education on par with the best foreign cities. This calls for the latest equipment in schools, a high professional level from teachers, modern education standards and a wide range of in-depth professional training projects.

In 2016, the city tested students under PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) standards. The results confirmed that Moscow is the tenth best city worldwide in terms of education levels. "150 Moscow schools are the best in the world in terms of these education services," Mr Sobyanin added.

Speaking of healthcare, the city mostly strives to provide high-quality treatment in a comfortable setting by using the most advanced methods and equipment. Since 2011, the average life expectancy of city residents has increased from 74 to 77 years. This shows that the city's healthcare system has improved considerably. "Moscow's healthcare system serves city residents and the entire country. Patients from all Russian regions account for over 50 percent of those at the city's federal clinics. In addition, Moscow clinics treat people from other regions whose share is 20-25 percent," Mr Sobyanin added.

New housing to replace obsolete five-storey buildings

In 2017, the Moscow Government will begin implementing the most ambitious national programme for housing renovation; this programme is also one of the largest worldwide.

Over the next 15 years, the city will relocate people now living in first-generation five-storey residential buildings. Theoretically, the programme could encompass up to 7,900 residential buildings with an area of 25.1 million square metres where about 1.6 million people live. This is a particularly sensitive city-level programme. "Moscow launched this construction programme earlier than other regions. Actually, the city has experimented with industrial prefab housing construction. And the results of this experiment were not always very good. Some concrete panels were molded with construction waste," Mr Sobyanin said.

The State Duma is now considering a draft federal law stipulating a Moscow renovation standard that includes the following:

comprehensive construction of high-quality modern residential buildings with the necessary social infrastructure in renovated areas;

relocating tenants only with their consent;

relocating former tenants of five-story buildings to flats with the same area in their home districts or in nearby areas;

exempting residents of buildings included in the renovation programme from paying for residential-building major repairs.

In his speech, Mr Sobyanin asked Federation Council members to support this draft federal law.

In conclusion, Mr Sobyanin quoted the national leaders who are focusing on the development of major city megalopolises. "Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, leader of the United Russia party, has said that a modern economy largely implies the economy of the big cities, and this, of course, does not underestimate the importance of the rural population or that of small towns. They are all important integral components of the country. And President Vladimir Putin has stressed that our cities should aspire to the future," he said.

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moscow mega-city is the largest in europe

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Moscow mega-city is the largest in Europe / News / Moscow City Web Site

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The Moscow megalopolis, that includes Moscow and the Moscow Region, ranks among the ten largest mega-cities in the world and is the largest in Europe. The population exceeds 20 million. This megalopolis makes up about 14 percent of the entire Russian population and produces about 26 percent of the country's GDP.

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Завершающий этап реконструкции ул. Новый Арбат в рамках программы "Моя улица"

Kirill Zykov/Moskva agency

The new system of transport, paid parking and bike rental, plus the renovation of parks and walkways over the past six years have changed the Russian capital beyond recognition.

Over the past six years Moscow has shot up the international league tables and now leads Eastern Europe in terms of transport and infrastructure development, it was announced by the head of the Moscow Department of International Relations, Sergei Cheremin, at the MIPIM International Real Estate Exhibition in France on March 15. Moscow ranks first among Eastern European cities of the future. "The international ratings confirm this," he said.

The most budding infrastructure project was the launch of the MCC transport system, which unites remote districts of the city. Meanwhile, the mayor's most controversial project was the introduction of paid parking and fines in the city center, which angered many Muscovites, but helped raise 17.5 billion rubles (almost $300 million) for the city budget in 2016. In addition, over the past six years Moscow has been equipped with a state-of-the-art bike rental and car-sharing system, new ergonomic parks in central and outlying areas, and a freshly restored historic center with expanded pedestrian zones.

Launched in 2016, the Moscow Central Circle (MCC) is an orbital railway that connects outlying districts of Moscow to Metro stations and overland transport stops.

Almost 320,000 people use MCC trains daily.

Moscow has operated a paid parking system since 2012, and its geographical scope is constantly expanding. Parking costs 40-200 rubles ($0.7 - $3.3) per hour.

In 2016 Moscow raised more than 17.5 billion rubles from paid parking and fines, according to business daily Vedomosti. The sum is comparable to the entire budget of Kazan.

The Velobike rental system appeared in Moscow in 2014. There are currently 330 docking stations in central and suburban areas of the city, but the network of cycle routes is still underdeveloped, which means that cyclists have to ride along main roads.

Because of the long winter, bike rental in Moscow is only available from April to October. Bicycles are removed from docking stations during the cold season.

A car-sharing system was launched in Moscow in 2015. The system is not yet open to foreigners.

Statistics show that one shared car replaces ten private vehicles, which helps to significantly decongest Moscow's infamous traffic.

The expansion of pedestrian sidewalks and the restoration of historic buildings carried out by the city authorities in 2013 transformed the historical center beyond recognition. Pyatnitskaya Street during the day.

Kuznetsky Most street at night.

The extensive renovation touched Moscow's embankments, too. Krymskaya (Crimean) Embankment near Muzeon Park used to be a narrow, deserted sidewalk running along a wide highway.

The renovation project, which involved British and Scandinavian architecture firms, has turned Moscow's parks into the city's calling card. In terms of tourist footfall, Gorky Park rivals Red Square.

If using any of Russia Beyond's content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material.

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Moscow named Eastern Europe's top developing megacity

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Завершающий этап реконструкции ул. Новый Арбат в рамках программы "Моя улица" Kirill Zykov/Moskva agency The new system of transport, paid parking and bike rental, plus the renovation of parks and walkways over the past six years have changed the Russian capital beyond recognition.

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Moscow is infamous for its long traffic jams, especially in the city center.

Moscow is ranked number one in a congestion index of the world's major cities and building more roads is unlikely to solve the problem, according to a new report.

The average time it takes to get from one point to another during rush hour is increasing, according to research presented by TomTom navigation company revealed at the Open Innovations Forum held last week.

Moscow has the highest percentage of delays versus other cities, with Istanbul, Warsaw and Marseille being the three other most congested towns after Russia's capital, the report said.

"And the situation is becoming even worse," said Ralf-Peter Schafer, Head of Traffic Product Unit at TomTom. "A report we did two weeks ago said there were 136 percent more delays during the day, compared to nighttime traffic flow. Another recent check suggested there were 150 percent delays."

TomTom makes its comparisons based on the average time it would take to cover the same distance in the city at night, when the traffic decreases dramatically.

City authorities have said they are making progress, however, as paid parking introduced in the center over the summer has cut traffic by as much as 25 percent, according to deputy mayor Maksim Liksutov.

Buoyed by these results, the government continues a multipronged approach to battle congestion, which some transportation policy experts say is self-defeating.

To tackle the problem of growing numbers of cars, the Moscow city government plans to build 400 kilometers of new and improved roads by 2020.

Some ordinary streets, like the ones that will become part of the northwestern road project in northern Moscow, are planned to be expanded to multi-lane highways.

The results of this approach will resemble the Third Ring Road, which was constructed by enlarging ordinary streets and linking them using new tunnels and thoroughfares.

After the Third Ring Road fully opened for drivers in 2005, transportation experts spoke out unanimously saying it did not reduce congestion but exacerbated it by attracting more vehicles, which is evident from the daily traffic jams it sees.

The same approach, however, is still in use.

"Before you spend a ruble on infrastructure, you have to first measure the impact the road will have and decide whether it will bring the desired change," Schafer said.

But what the government is doing is incorporating local infrastructure into loops and major roads without having the complete picture, as the real-time online tele-monitoring system for measuring traffic flows is still very poor, he said.

Road infrastructure in Moscow is poorly designed and is being jammed, or gridlocked, which means that spending taxpayers' rubles on expanding existing roads is just a waste of money, international urban planning experts said at the innovation event. The only way to improve the situation is to reduce the demand for cars by offering alternatives, they said.

Mexican Best Practice

Mexico City mayor Miguel Mancera presented his view on how to handle traffic. His metropolis, which sees 12 million passengers ride public transportation every day, is one of the biggest in the world, but it is nowhere near the top of the congested cities list.

One of the solutions applied there was to push people to use mainly public transport. Mexico City has dedicated lanes for buses, bicycles, pedestrians and cars. Individual four-wheel vehicles get fourth priority, while public transport is first.

This is one of the reasons that 70 percent of the population in the Mexican capital uses public transport to get around.

During rush hour, Moscow currently has a similar percentage of public transport usage but this does not help to reduce congestion. The city authorities said earlier this year that the goal was to raise the number to 80 percent.

In order to do so, until 2020 Moscow will build over 150 kilometers of new metro lines adding to the existing 300 kilometers. The metro will get a second ring and about 70 new stations.

"We have worked out a detailed program for improving all means of transport with the foremost accent being on public commuters," said Gamid Bulatov, deputy head of the Moscow's Department for Transport and Road Infrastructure Development.

In addition to new roads and metro lines, there will be 224 kilometers of new commuter rail infrastructure built in Moscow and the Moscow region in the coming years, he said, and the government also plans to buy about 1,500 new trains.

Public Inputs Count

While expanding the public transportation network and making this means of commuting more convenient for passengers may lead to improvement, the way that City Hall communicates with its residents could also do the trick, leading international experts said.

It is important to understand what is happening in the city and be connected to the citizenry, said David Burrows, a government and public sector executive at Microsoft.

One of the key elements of more effective public management is to be transparent on where exactly the taxpayer money is going, he added.

The Moscow government is being autocratic in terms of how it handles public hearings and gets inputs from its citizenry, as are the authorities in other cities, Schafer said.

"Your citizens are your customers, and you have to show them what you did with their tax money," the TomTom executive said. "Awareness is the key to effectiveness, and sometimes people do not even know that something is being done."

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Battle Against Moscow Congestion Rages On

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Moscow is infamous for its long traffic jams, especially in the city center. Moscow is ranked number one in a congestion index of the world's major cities and building more roads is unlikely to solve the problem, according to a new report.

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Moscow is amagnet, attracting people fromacross Russia andother parts ofthe former Soviet Union who see thecity andits thriving economy as anopportunity tobuild abetter life.

But not everyone is happy about this inflow, including people who have turned Russia's largest city intotheir adopted home, according toLevada Center, anindependent pollster.

Indeed, Moscow residents consistently complain that aninflux ofmigrants fromformer Soviet republics inCentral Asia andRussia's own North Caucasus is their main concern, Levada found inthree surveys conducted over thecourse ofthe past five years.

Theway things are going, thecomplaints will only grow, said Natalya Zorkaya, aLevada Center sociologist.

"Physical attacks andother forms ofaggression against these visitors could grow because ofcorruption inlaw enforcement agencies, anunclear immigration policy anduncontrolled employers combined with campaigns that stress thegovernment is waging war against illegal immigration," she said.

But migrants are not theonly issue that bothers Moscow residents, who number 11.5 million, according tothe latest 2010 census. Other worries include growing prices forutility bills, traffic jams andhigh prices forbasic products.

Here is alook atthe top 15 problems ofliving inMoscow.

Note: Thesurveys, each ofwhich quizzed 1,000 Muscovites aged 18 or older, were conducted inJanuary 2009, November 2011 andJuly 2013. Respondents were asked toidentify thefive or six most significant problems facing thecity today. Themargin oferror foreach poll is 4.8 percentage points.

1. Number ofmigrants fromCentral Asia andthe North Caucasus (2009-39%- 2011-44%- 2013-55%)
Vladimir Filonov / MT
2. Growth inprices forutility bills (45%- 44%- 43%)

Thegovernment has long subsidized utility prices, apractice that has carried over fromSoviet times. But people, including Muscovites, are now being asked topay their fair share. People now spend about 10 percent oftheir income onutility bills, one ofthe highest rates inthe world, while prices forelectricity andgas inRussia are among thelowest.

3. Traffic jams (42%- 54%- 38%)

Some people say that thelife inMoscow andtraffic jams are synonyms. As aresult ofthe complicated traffic situation inthe capital, President Vladimir Putin promised last spring touse ahelicopter instead ofa car so as toavoid hindering other drivers with his convoy.

4. High prices forbasic products (61%- 48%- 35%)

5. Low wages (31%- 21%- 29%)

Theaverage monthly salary inMoscow is 57,000 rubles ($1,620), twice as high as inthe rest ofthe country. But around 10 percent ofMuscovites still don't earn aliving wage of10,500 rubles ($297). Theminimum wage inMoscow is 12,600 rubles ($358) as ofJan. 1.

6. High housing prices (27%)

7. Growing drug andalcohol addiction (25%- 28%- 22%)

8. Shortage ofdoctors andpoor medical treatment (16%- 27%- 22%)

Despite theofficial statistics show asurplus inphysicians inMoscow, everybody can see that outpatient clinics are understaffed, Deputy Moscow Mayor Leonid Pechatnikov said inDecember. He linked theshortage tothe fact that many clinics are under-equipped, making them unpopular among doctors who seek prospects forfurther career growth.

9. Housing shortage (19%- 25%- 17%)

More than 1 million square meters ofnew housing was built inMoscow last year. Although this provided asufficient number ofapartments, 44 percent ofthe new housing is business class, 33 percent elite and20 percent comfort. Just 3 percent ofthe new housing is economy class.

10. Poor roads (12%- 22%- 17%)

Nearly 100 million square meters ofroads were repaired from2010 to2013, according tothe Moscow city government. Nevertheless, thequality ofMoscow roads remains poor. Thecause can be manifold: adverse weather conditions, thequantity ofcars, or even theinterest ofroad-repair companies tosee endless business.

11. Widening gap between therich andthe poor (37%- 19%- 17%)

According tothe Federal Statistics Service, 20 percent ofthe richest people inMoscow earn 54 percent ofall theincome, while the20 percent poorest earn less than 4 percent.

12. Homeless people andpanhandlers (19%- 33%- 17%)

Officially, 20,000 homeless people lived inMoscow atthe end of2013, but City Hall's social services says thenumber is twice as high andgrowing. Native Muscovites make up 9 percent ofthe number, while another 8 percent are people who moved here andonce were registered here.

13. Noise andexhaust fumes fromcars (14%- 22%- 16%)

Cars, trucks, buses andmotorcycles seem tobe forever clogging theroads- andthe clean air. Moreover, according toCity Hall data, traffic noise levels break thenorm in70 percent ofthe city.

14. Poor condition ofpublic utilities (15%- 17%- 15%)

President Vladimir Putin acknowledged that public utilities posed aserious challenge last year, saying, "Problems with public utilities have always been grave. This is how it was before October 1917, during theentire era ofthe Soviet Union, andhow it remains until today." Moscow is luckier than many other Russian cities, but theproblem still remains.

15. Lack ofparking (15%- 17%- 15%)

Atotal of3.5 million cars are registered inMoscow, andanother 600,000 to800,000 enter fromthe Moscow region alone every day. With 1.7 million parking spaces inthe city, it's perhaps no wonder that drivers are forced topark onsidewalks andin busy streets.

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Moscow's 15 Biggest Problems (Photo Essay)

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Moscow is a magnet, attracting people from across Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union who see the city and its thriving economy as an opportunity to build a better life. But not everyone is happy about this inflow, including people who have turned Russia's largest city into their adopted home, according to Levada Center, an independent pollster.

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There are now some three dozen megacities in the world, each sprawling areas home to more than 10 million people. Bigger cities come with obvious advantages, the increase in people, interactions and infrastructures create more opportunities and efficiencies. But massive population growth has also led to more pollution, spiralling rent, and crumbling infrastructure.

These problems, according to theoretical physicist Geoffrey West, increase alongside population growth. "The bigger you are the more you get per capita. So the bigger you are, the more Aids cases there are, the more higher wages, the more crime there is, the more patents are produced and so forth. All in a systematic, predictable way."

West says all the super-sized cities around the world seem to share this concept of super-linear scaling. "In order to sustain growth," he says, "you need to continuously innovate and you need to do it at a faster and faster rate. So that the time between major innovations gets shorter and shorter, and the pace of life has to necessarily get faster and faster to sustain that growth."

While they may share the same principles, the reasons driving them are very different. Each are under different pressures as they struggle to support increasing numbers. Here are five cautionary tales from megacities, that together paint a fuller picture of the consequences of the spiralling urban population.

Egypt's capital is home to more than 18.5 million people, and for nearly 10 years, city planners have openly acknowledged a crowding and congestion problem. Just last month, Egypt unveiled plans to solve this massive problem by building a new "nameless Cairo" from scratch to the east of the city, according a recent article in The Guardian. It will cost £30bn and five to seven years to complete; "nameless Cairo" will be some 700 square miles, featuring a park twice the size of New York's Central Park.

The problem is this type of planning often doesn't pay any attention to human nature, says urban planner Wendell Cox. "There is a tendency on the part of planners to presume that they can sort of put people in jobs where they want and they'll stay there," he says. "But the world is dynamic. So that kind of thinking just doesn't work."

The other problem is this isn't Cairo's first attempt to start anew. Since the late 1970s Egypt has built 6 October City, which is a 32-kilometre bus ride in the desert west of Cairo, and more recently New Cairo 38 kilometres to the east.

Neither was a success. A 2010 New York Times article reported that most of the cities inhabitants were wealthy. "The new cities... tend to highlight Egypt's already striking imbalance between rich and poor, and could sow the seeds of future troubles." Urban planners are no doubt hoping that they will have more luck on the third attempt.
LONDON - HOUSE PRICES
The British capital's booming population has just surpassed its pre-WWII peak of nearly 10 million. The growth comes at a hefty price for both renters and buyers. Today, the average cost of renting a home in London is now double that of the rest of the UK (£1,412 a month/US conversion).

University College London architect Michael Batty says: "London itself has become very hot, as a kind of place to live internationally. Now it always was, but it's become increasingly attractive I think, with people with money overseas in the last 20 or 30 years. This has driven up house prices enormously in the centre of London."

A project called "London is Changing" has filled central London billboards with messages from disgruntled renters. The billboards include messages such as: "London is miserable unless you're rich," and, "I can't afford to stay in the city I was born in."

But Batty is not sure if there's an immediate solution to keeping both housing and rent prices down. "We're running to keep standing still really, in the sense that, more and more people are coming into Britain and using the services, acquiring housing, transport," he says. "The ability of local government and central government to keep pace with this is very problematic. It has enormous impact on transport, the National Health Service, all kind of things. And it's partly due to the fact we've had very little experience as a nation of this kind of rate of growth."

Wendell Cox says increases in rent and house prices are partly caused by restrictions on suburban development and the inability to build on the "green belt" of green space surrounding London. "The real problem is the inability to use land," says Cox. "For example the GLA, the Greater London Authority, which is most of everything inside the green belt, it covers 600 square miles. The green belt surrounding it covers 1900 square miles. It's three times as large. [But] you can't build on it."

The green belt was created in the 1940s, guaranteeing that the land around British cities and towns is kept as green and pleasant as possible. But decades on, and as its population grows, Londoners are beginning to question whether preserving the green belt is still a good idea.
MUMBAI - TRANSPORT
At 21 million people and rising, Mumbai's population is similar to New York City's but the city is half the size. The city's public transit suffers, especially the trains going from the suburbs to the centre. According to writer Edward Glaeser in The Atlantic, "average (train) commute times in Mumbai are 50 minutes each way, which is double the average American commute."

In 1991, height restrictions were placed on buildings in Mumbai as a way to limit urban growth. Instead, it caused the sprawl of slums and suburban commuters to live farther away, resulting in today's uncomfortably long, hot, and sweaty train journeys.

In January, there were protests over the train system. Commuters went on a rampage after after the train services "which carries half of Mumbai's rail passengers, bringing the city's lifeline to a complete halt" were delayed, said The Hindu.

Even when Mumbai's commuters can get on a train, it is hard work. A study by the International Cooperation and Urban Development says Mumbai's nine-car trains are designed to hold 2,628 passengers (876 seated and 1,752 standing). However, it's typical for these trains to hold 4,500 passengers during rush hours.

Building up, not out, is on the agenda again. Affordable apartments would foster close-knit communities and encourage people to live and work in the centre instead. Unfortunately, the solution isn't quite so easy because Mumbai lacks the kind of transportation infrastructure to make downtown living desirable. Most of Mumbai's skyscrapers are surrounded by green space and thick roads that encourage cars. In Mumbai's case the strategy "build it and they will come" may not work.
JAKARTA - SEA LEVEL
The Indonesian capital is sinking while the sea level rises. Global warming, intense flooding, deforestation, and decades of pumping out groundwater for residents are partly to blame. Jakarta could one day be uninhabitable.

In February, monsoon rains paralysed the city of 14 million and displaced nearly 6,000 people, according to the Wall Street Journal. An even worse deluge hit again in March, when four people were killed and 20,000 residences were evacuated. (Photos of the disaster can be found here.)

Global warming means floods will happen more often. Research Scientist Owen Cooper, who works at the Earth Systems Research Lab in Boulder, Colorado says the sea level is rising faster in Indonesia than most parts of the globe at about six-to-nine millimetres a year.

"Sea level rise isn't quite uniform," says Cooper. "The ocean water sort of sloshes around depending on the ocean currents. Some areas, sea level is actually going down whereas others is going up. Jakarta... has a greater challenge in terms of sea level rise than most megacities, just because of its location where the sea level is rising fastest."

To combat the floods, the city's government has decided to build a 32-kilometre seawall and a chain of artificial islands. It's a $40bn project in a country where the average person earns little more than $10 a day. The project is expected to take 30 years to complete.
SHANGHAI - AIR POLLUTION
China's economy is growing at a rapid 7%, and its megacities are bearing the brunt of this breakneck growth. In Shanghai, analysts believe steel, cement, and glass plants may have increased pollution, which has prompted the local government to consider giving local residents anti-pollution masks.

Cooper, an air quality specialist, says China is experiencing more air pollution than anywhere in the world. "Overall in the US and Europe emissions from automobiles and power plants have plummeted due to policy and emission controls," says Cooper. "In China the exact opposite is happening."

And there doesn't seem to be any slowing down. "They are making efforts to clean up, especially in the last five years. We know from satellites that sulphur emissions from their power plants are starting to level off and come down. But overall we're expecting that emissions of nitrogen oxides that come out of power plants and automobiles will continue to increase at least for the foreseeable future."

What does this mean for people's health? Former Chinese health minister Chen Zhu recently claimed that nearly 500,000 people die in China each year from severe pollution. Tiny particles in the air less than 2.5 microns in diameter - known as PM 2.5 - affect more people than any other pollutant, according to the World Health Organisation.

Cooper says that PM 2.5 "are of concern because those particles are so small that they usually penetrate deeply into a person's lungs so they can get into the blood system." Pollutants such as sulphates, nitrates, ammonia, sodium chloride, black carbon, mineral dust and water can all help create these damaging particles, which can cause life-threatening conditions such as lung cancer.

China plans to cut pollution in places like Shanghai by 2017, partly by closing coal-fired power plants. But it leaves the country scrambling to find an alternative, less polluting power source. And in the meantime, the city's air continues to be a hazard to health.

More and more cities are going to have to deal with the kind of problems outlined above. By 2030, the United Nations predicts that there will be 41 megacities total with a population of 10 million or more.

Despite the ominous numbers, Geoffrey West has some good news. "If we make it through this critical next 30 years," says West, "one of the things that will happen, we believe, although it's very controversial, is that the population overall will stabilise.

"Somewhere towards the three-quarter point of the century we will see an effective slowing really, kind of stabilisation of the global population," he says. "At some stage, associated with that, we might see a stabilisation of the migration to cities." Time will tell if he is correct.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There are now some three dozen megacities in the world, each sprawling areas home to more than 10 million people. Bigger cities come with obvious advantages, the increase in people, interactions and infrastructures create more opportunities and efficiencies. But massive population growth has also led to more pollution, spiralling rent, and crumbling infrastructure.

# data[].attributes.body
search for "Cairo
"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There are now some three dozen megacities in the world, each sprawling areas home to more than 10 million people. Bigger cities come with obvious advantages, the increase in people, interactions and infrastructures create more opportunities and efficiencies. But massive population growth has also led to more pollution, spiralling rent, and crumbling infrastructure.

These problems, according to theoretical physicist Geoffrey West, increase alongside population growth. "The bigger you are the more you get per capita. So the bigger you are, the more Aids cases there are, the more higher wages, the more crime there is, the more patents are produced and so forth. All in a systematic, predictable way."

West says all the super-sized cities around the world seem to share this concept of super-linear scaling. "In order to sustain growth," he says, "you need to continuously innovate and you need to do it at a faster and faster rate. So that the time between major innovations gets shorter and shorter, and the pace of life has to necessarily get faster and faster to sustain that growth."

While they may share the same principles, the reasons driving them are very different. Each are under different pressures as they struggle to support increasing numbers. Here are five cautionary tales from megacities, that together paint a fuller picture of the consequences of the spiralling urban population.

Egypt's capital is home to more than 18.5 million people, and for nearly 10 years, city planners have openly acknowledged a crowding and congestion problem. Just last month, Egypt unveiled plans to solve this massive problem by building a new "nameless Cairo" from scratch to the east of the city, according a recent article in The Guardian. It will cost £30bn and five to seven years to complete; "nameless Cairo" will be some 700 square miles, featuring a park twice the size of New York's Central Park.

The problem is this type of planning often doesn't pay any attention to human nature, says urban planner Wendell Cox. "There is a tendency on the part of planners to presume that they can sort of put people in jobs where they want and they'll stay there," he says. "But the world is dynamic. So that kind of thinking just doesn't work."

The other problem is this isn't Cairo's first attempt to start anew. Since the late 1970s Egypt has built 6 October City, which is a 32-kilometre bus ride in the desert west of Cairo, and more recently New Cairo 38 kilometres to the east.

Neither was a success. A 2010 New York Times article reported that most of the cities inhabitants were wealthy. "The new cities... tend to highlight Egypt's already striking imbalance between rich and poor, and could sow the seeds of future troubles." Urban planners are no doubt hoping that they will have more luck on the third attempt.
LONDON - HOUSE PRICES
The British capital's booming population has just surpassed its pre-WWII peak of nearly 10 million. The growth comes at a hefty price for both renters and buyers. Today, the average cost of renting a home in London is now double that of the rest of the UK (£1,412 a month/US conversion).

University College London architect Michael Batty says: "London itself has become very hot, as a kind of place to live internationally. Now it always was, but it's become increasingly attractive I think, with people with money overseas in the last 20 or 30 years. This has driven up house prices enormously in the centre of London."

A project called "London is Changing" has filled central London billboards with messages from disgruntled renters. The billboards include messages such as: "London is miserable unless you're rich," and, "I can't afford to stay in the city I was born in."

But Batty is not sure if there's an immediate solution to keeping both housing and rent prices down. "We're running to keep standing still really, in the sense that, more and more people are coming into Britain and using the services, acquiring housing, transport," he says. "The ability of local government and central government to keep pace with this is very problematic. It has enormous impact on transport, the National Health Service, all kind of things. And it's partly due to the fact we've had very little experience as a nation of this kind of rate of growth."

Wendell Cox says increases in rent and house prices are partly caused by restrictions on suburban development and the inability to build on the "green belt" of green space surrounding London. "The real problem is the inability to use land," says Cox. "For example the GLA, the Greater London Authority, which is most of everything inside the green belt, it covers 600 square miles. The green belt surrounding it covers 1900 square miles. It's three times as large. [But] you can't build on it."

The green belt was created in the 1940s, guaranteeing that the land around British cities and towns is kept as green and pleasant as possible. But decades on, and as its population grows, Londoners are beginning to question whether preserving the green belt is still a good idea.
MUMBAI - TRANSPORT
At 21 million people and rising, Mumbai's population is similar to New York City's but the city is half the size. The city's public transit suffers, especially the trains going from the suburbs to the centre. According to writer Edward Glaeser in The Atlantic, "average (train) commute times in Mumbai are 50 minutes each way, which is double the average American commute."

In 1991, height restrictions were placed on buildings in Mumbai as a way to limit urban growth. Instead, it caused the sprawl of slums and suburban commuters to live farther away, resulting in today's uncomfortably long, hot, and sweaty train journeys.

In January, there were protests over the train system. Commuters went on a rampage after after the train services "which carries half of Mumbai's rail passengers, bringing the city's lifeline to a complete halt" were delayed, said The Hindu.

Even when Mumbai's commuters can get on a train, it is hard work. A study by the International Cooperation and Urban Development says Mumbai's nine-car trains are designed to hold 2,628 passengers (876 seated and 1,752 standing). However, it's typical for these trains to hold 4,500 passengers during rush hours.

Building up, not out, is on the agenda again. Affordable apartments would foster close-knit communities and encourage people to live and work in the centre instead. Unfortunately, the solution isn't quite so easy because Mumbai lacks the kind of transportation infrastructure to make downtown living desirable. Most of Mumbai's skyscrapers are surrounded by green space and thick roads that encourage cars. In Mumbai's case the strategy "build it and they will come" may not work.
JAKARTA - SEA LEVEL
The Indonesian capital is sinking while the sea level rises. Global warming, intense flooding, deforestation, and decades of pumping out groundwater for residents are partly to blame. Jakarta could one day be uninhabitable.

In February, monsoon rains paralysed the city of 14 million and displaced nearly 6,000 people, according to the Wall Street Journal. An even worse deluge hit again in March, when four people were killed and 20,000 residences were evacuated. (Photos of the disaster can be found here.)

Global warming means floods will happen more often. Research Scientist Owen Cooper, who works at the Earth Systems Research Lab in Boulder, Colorado says the sea level is rising faster in Indonesia than most parts of the globe at about six-to-nine millimetres a year.

"Sea level rise isn't quite uniform," says Cooper. "The ocean water sort of sloshes around depending on the ocean currents. Some areas, sea level is actually going down whereas others is going up. Jakarta... has a greater challenge in terms of sea level rise than most megacities, just because of its location where the sea level is rising fastest."

To combat the floods, the city's government has decided to build a 32-kilometre seawall and a chain of artificial islands. It's a $40bn project in a country where the average person earns little more than $10 a day. The project is expected to take 30 years to complete.
SHANGHAI - AIR POLLUTION
China's economy is growing at a rapid 7%, and its megacities are bearing the brunt of this breakneck growth. In Shanghai, analysts believe steel, cement, and glass plants may have increased pollution, which has prompted the local government to consider giving local residents anti-pollution masks.

Cooper, an air quality specialist, says China is experiencing more air pollution than anywhere in the world. "Overall in the US and Europe emissions from automobiles and power plants have plummeted due to policy and emission controls," says Cooper. "In China the exact opposite is happening."

And there doesn't seem to be any slowing down. "They are making efforts to clean up, especially in the last five years. We know from satellites that sulphur emissions from their power plants are starting to level off and come down. But overall we're expecting that emissions of nitrogen oxides that come out of power plants and automobiles will continue to increase at least for the foreseeable future."

What does this mean for people's health? Former Chinese health minister Chen Zhu recently claimed that nearly 500,000 people die in China each year from severe pollution. Tiny particles in the air less than 2.5 microns in diameter - known as PM 2.5 - affect more people than any other pollutant, according to the World Health Organisation.

Cooper says that PM 2.5 "are of concern because those particles are so small that they usually penetrate deeply into a person's lungs so they can get into the blood system." Pollutants such as sulphates, nitrates, ammonia, sodium chloride, black carbon, mineral dust and water can all help create these damaging particles, which can cause life-threatening conditions such as lung cancer.

China plans to cut pollution in places like Shanghai by 2017, partly by closing coal-fired power plants. But it leaves the country scrambling to find an alternative, less polluting power source. And in the meantime, the city's air continues to be a hazard to health.

More and more cities are going to have to deal with the kind of problems outlined above. By 2030, the United Nations predicts that there will be 41 megacities total with a population of 10 million or more.

Despite the ominous numbers, Geoffrey West has some good news. "If we make it through this critical next 30 years," says West, "one of the things that will happen, we believe, although it's very controversial, is that the population overall will stabilise.

"Somewhere towards the three-quarter point of the century we will see an effective slowing really, kind of stabilisation of the global population," he says. "At some stage, associated with that, we might see a stabilisation of the migration to cities." Time will tell if he is correct.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There are now some three dozen megacities in the world, each sprawling areas home to more than 10 million people. Bigger cities come with obvious advantages, the increase in people, interactions and infrastructures create more opportunities and efficiencies. But massive population growth has also led to more pollution, spiralling rent, and crumbling infrastructure.

# data[].attributes.body
search for "Jakarta"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There are now some three dozen megacities in the world, each sprawling areas home to more than 10 million people. Bigger cities come with obvious advantages, the increase in people, interactions and infrastructures create more opportunities and efficiencies. But massive population growth has also led to more pollution, spiralling rent, and crumbling infrastructure.

These problems, according to theoretical physicist Geoffrey West, increase alongside population growth. "The bigger you are the more you get per capita. So the bigger you are, the more Aids cases there are, the more higher wages, the more crime there is, the more patents are produced and so forth. All in a systematic, predictable way."

West says all the super-sized cities around the world seem to share this concept of super-linear scaling. "In order to sustain growth," he says, "you need to continuously innovate and you need to do it at a faster and faster rate. So that the time between major innovations gets shorter and shorter, and the pace of life has to necessarily get faster and faster to sustain that growth."

While they may share the same principles, the reasons driving them are very different. Each are under different pressures as they struggle to support increasing numbers. Here are five cautionary tales from megacities, that together paint a fuller picture of the consequences of the spiralling urban population.

Egypt's capital is home to more than 18.5 million people, and for nearly 10 years, city planners have openly acknowledged a crowding and congestion problem. Just last month, Egypt unveiled plans to solve this massive problem by building a new "nameless Cairo" from scratch to the east of the city, according a recent article in The Guardian. It will cost £30bn and five to seven years to complete; "nameless Cairo" will be some 700 square miles, featuring a park twice the size of New York's Central Park.

The problem is this type of planning often doesn't pay any attention to human nature, says urban planner Wendell Cox. "There is a tendency on the part of planners to presume that they can sort of put people in jobs where they want and they'll stay there," he says. "But the world is dynamic. So that kind of thinking just doesn't work."

The other problem is this isn't Cairo's first attempt to start anew. Since the late 1970s Egypt has built 6 October City, which is a 32-kilometre bus ride in the desert west of Cairo, and more recently New Cairo 38 kilometres to the east.

Neither was a success. A 2010 New York Times article reported that most of the cities inhabitants were wealthy. "The new cities... tend to highlight Egypt's already striking imbalance between rich and poor, and could sow the seeds of future troubles." Urban planners are no doubt hoping that they will have more luck on the third attempt.
LONDON - HOUSE PRICES
The British capital's booming population has just surpassed its pre-WWII peak of nearly 10 million. The growth comes at a hefty price for both renters and buyers. Today, the average cost of renting a home in London is now double that of the rest of the UK (£1,412 a month/US conversion).

University College London architect Michael Batty says: "London itself has become very hot, as a kind of place to live internationally. Now it always was, but it's become increasingly attractive I think, with people with money overseas in the last 20 or 30 years. This has driven up house prices enormously in the centre of London."

A project called "London is Changing" has filled central London billboards with messages from disgruntled renters. The billboards include messages such as: "London is miserable unless you're rich," and, "I can't afford to stay in the city I was born in."

But Batty is not sure if there's an immediate solution to keeping both housing and rent prices down. "We're running to keep standing still really, in the sense that, more and more people are coming into Britain and using the services, acquiring housing, transport," he says. "The ability of local government and central government to keep pace with this is very problematic. It has enormous impact on transport, the National Health Service, all kind of things. And it's partly due to the fact we've had very little experience as a nation of this kind of rate of growth."

Wendell Cox says increases in rent and house prices are partly caused by restrictions on suburban development and the inability to build on the "green belt" of green space surrounding London. "The real problem is the inability to use land," says Cox. "For example the GLA, the Greater London Authority, which is most of everything inside the green belt, it covers 600 square miles. The green belt surrounding it covers 1900 square miles. It's three times as large. [But] you can't build on it."

The green belt was created in the 1940s, guaranteeing that the land around British cities and towns is kept as green and pleasant as possible. But decades on, and as its population grows, Londoners are beginning to question whether preserving the green belt is still a good idea.
MUMBAI - TRANSPORT
At 21 million people and rising, Mumbai's population is similar to New York City's but the city is half the size. The city's public transit suffers, especially the trains going from the suburbs to the centre. According to writer Edward Glaeser in The Atlantic, "average (train) commute times in Mumbai are 50 minutes each way, which is double the average American commute."

In 1991, height restrictions were placed on buildings in Mumbai as a way to limit urban growth. Instead, it caused the sprawl of slums and suburban commuters to live farther away, resulting in today's uncomfortably long, hot, and sweaty train journeys.

In January, there were protests over the train system. Commuters went on a rampage after after the train services "which carries half of Mumbai's rail passengers, bringing the city's lifeline to a complete halt" were delayed, said The Hindu.

Even when Mumbai's commuters can get on a train, it is hard work. A study by the International Cooperation and Urban Development says Mumbai's nine-car trains are designed to hold 2,628 passengers (876 seated and 1,752 standing). However, it's typical for these trains to hold 4,500 passengers during rush hours.

Building up, not out, is on the agenda again. Affordable apartments would foster close-knit communities and encourage people to live and work in the centre instead. Unfortunately, the solution isn't quite so easy because Mumbai lacks the kind of transportation infrastructure to make downtown living desirable. Most of Mumbai's skyscrapers are surrounded by green space and thick roads that encourage cars. In Mumbai's case the strategy "build it and they will come" may not work.
JAKARTA - SEA LEVEL
The Indonesian capital is sinking while the sea level rises. Global warming, intense flooding, deforestation, and decades of pumping out groundwater for residents are partly to blame. Jakarta could one day be uninhabitable.

In February, monsoon rains paralysed the city of 14 million and displaced nearly 6,000 people, according to the Wall Street Journal. An even worse deluge hit again in March, when four people were killed and 20,000 residences were evacuated. (Photos of the disaster can be found here.)

Global warming means floods will happen more often. Research Scientist Owen Cooper, who works at the Earth Systems Research Lab in Boulder, Colorado says the sea level is rising faster in Indonesia than most parts of the globe at about six-to-nine millimetres a year.

"Sea level rise isn't quite uniform," says Cooper. "The ocean water sort of sloshes around depending on the ocean currents. Some areas, sea level is actually going down whereas others is going up. Jakarta... has a greater challenge in terms of sea level rise than most megacities, just because of its location where the sea level is rising fastest."

To combat the floods, the city's government has decided to build a 32-kilometre seawall and a chain of artificial islands. It's a $40bn project in a country where the average person earns little more than $10 a day. The project is expected to take 30 years to complete.
SHANGHAI - AIR POLLUTION
China's economy is growing at a rapid 7%, and its megacities are bearing the brunt of this breakneck growth. In Shanghai, analysts believe steel, cement, and glass plants may have increased pollution, which has prompted the local government to consider giving local residents anti-pollution masks.

Cooper, an air quality specialist, says China is experiencing more air pollution than anywhere in the world. "Overall in the US and Europe emissions from automobiles and power plants have plummeted due to policy and emission controls," says Cooper. "In China the exact opposite is happening."

And there doesn't seem to be any slowing down. "They are making efforts to clean up, especially in the last five years. We know from satellites that sulphur emissions from their power plants are starting to level off and come down. But overall we're expecting that emissions of nitrogen oxides that come out of power plants and automobiles will continue to increase at least for the foreseeable future."

What does this mean for people's health? Former Chinese health minister Chen Zhu recently claimed that nearly 500,000 people die in China each year from severe pollution. Tiny particles in the air less than 2.5 microns in diameter - known as PM 2.5 - affect more people than any other pollutant, according to the World Health Organisation.

Cooper says that PM 2.5 "are of concern because those particles are so small that they usually penetrate deeply into a person's lungs so they can get into the blood system." Pollutants such as sulphates, nitrates, ammonia, sodium chloride, black carbon, mineral dust and water can all help create these damaging particles, which can cause life-threatening conditions such as lung cancer.

China plans to cut pollution in places like Shanghai by 2017, partly by closing coal-fired power plants. But it leaves the country scrambling to find an alternative, less polluting power source. And in the meantime, the city's air continues to be a hazard to health.

More and more cities are going to have to deal with the kind of problems outlined above. By 2030, the United Nations predicts that there will be 41 megacities total with a population of 10 million or more.

Despite the ominous numbers, Geoffrey West has some good news. "If we make it through this critical next 30 years," says West, "one of the things that will happen, we believe, although it's very controversial, is that the population overall will stabilise.

"Somewhere towards the three-quarter point of the century we will see an effective slowing really, kind of stabilisation of the global population," he says. "At some stage, associated with that, we might see a stabilisation of the migration to cities." Time will tell if he is correct.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There are now some three dozen megacities in the world, each sprawling areas home to more than 10 million people. Bigger cities come with obvious advantages, the increase in people, interactions and infrastructures create more opportunities and efficiencies. But massive population growth has also led to more pollution, spiralling rent, and crumbling infrastructure.

# data[].attributes.body
search for "Shanghai"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There are now some three dozen megacities in the world, each sprawling areas home to more than 10 million people. Bigger cities come with obvious advantages, the increase in people, interactions and infrastructures create more opportunities and efficiencies. But massive population growth has also led to more pollution, spiralling rent, and crumbling infrastructure.

These problems, according to theoretical physicist Geoffrey West, increase alongside population growth. "The bigger you are the more you get per capita. So the bigger you are, the more Aids cases there are, the more higher wages, the more crime there is, the more patents are produced and so forth. All in a systematic, predictable way."

West says all the super-sized cities around the world seem to share this concept of super-linear scaling. "In order to sustain growth," he says, "you need to continuously innovate and you need to do it at a faster and faster rate. So that the time between major innovations gets shorter and shorter, and the pace of life has to necessarily get faster and faster to sustain that growth."

While they may share the same principles, the reasons driving them are very different. Each are under different pressures as they struggle to support increasing numbers. Here are five cautionary tales from megacities, that together paint a fuller picture of the consequences of the spiralling urban population.

Egypt's capital is home to more than 18.5 million people, and for nearly 10 years, city planners have openly acknowledged a crowding and congestion problem. Just last month, Egypt unveiled plans to solve this massive problem by building a new "nameless Cairo" from scratch to the east of the city, according a recent article in The Guardian. It will cost £30bn and five to seven years to complete; "nameless Cairo" will be some 700 square miles, featuring a park twice the size of New York's Central Park.

The problem is this type of planning often doesn't pay any attention to human nature, says urban planner Wendell Cox. "There is a tendency on the part of planners to presume that they can sort of put people in jobs where they want and they'll stay there," he says. "But the world is dynamic. So that kind of thinking just doesn't work."

The other problem is this isn't Cairo's first attempt to start anew. Since the late 1970s Egypt has built 6 October City, which is a 32-kilometre bus ride in the desert west of Cairo, and more recently New Cairo 38 kilometres to the east.

Neither was a success. A 2010 New York Times article reported that most of the cities inhabitants were wealthy. "The new cities... tend to highlight Egypt's already striking imbalance between rich and poor, and could sow the seeds of future troubles." Urban planners are no doubt hoping that they will have more luck on the third attempt.
LONDON - HOUSE PRICES
The British capital's booming population has just surpassed its pre-WWII peak of nearly 10 million. The growth comes at a hefty price for both renters and buyers. Today, the average cost of renting a home in London is now double that of the rest of the UK (£1,412 a month/US conversion).

University College London architect Michael Batty says: "London itself has become very hot, as a kind of place to live internationally. Now it always was, but it's become increasingly attractive I think, with people with money overseas in the last 20 or 30 years. This has driven up house prices enormously in the centre of London."

A project called "London is Changing" has filled central London billboards with messages from disgruntled renters. The billboards include messages such as: "London is miserable unless you're rich," and, "I can't afford to stay in the city I was born in."

But Batty is not sure if there's an immediate solution to keeping both housing and rent prices down. "We're running to keep standing still really, in the sense that, more and more people are coming into Britain and using the services, acquiring housing, transport," he says. "The ability of local government and central government to keep pace with this is very problematic. It has enormous impact on transport, the National Health Service, all kind of things. And it's partly due to the fact we've had very little experience as a nation of this kind of rate of growth."

Wendell Cox says increases in rent and house prices are partly caused by restrictions on suburban development and the inability to build on the "green belt" of green space surrounding London. "The real problem is the inability to use land," says Cox. "For example the GLA, the Greater London Authority, which is most of everything inside the green belt, it covers 600 square miles. The green belt surrounding it covers 1900 square miles. It's three times as large. [But] you can't build on it."

The green belt was created in the 1940s, guaranteeing that the land around British cities and towns is kept as green and pleasant as possible. But decades on, and as its population grows, Londoners are beginning to question whether preserving the green belt is still a good idea.
MUMBAI - TRANSPORT
At 21 million people and rising, Mumbai's population is similar to New York City's but the city is half the size. The city's public transit suffers, especially the trains going from the suburbs to the centre. According to writer Edward Glaeser in The Atlantic, "average (train) commute times in Mumbai are 50 minutes each way, which is double the average American commute."

In 1991, height restrictions were placed on buildings in Mumbai as a way to limit urban growth. Instead, it caused the sprawl of slums and suburban commuters to live farther away, resulting in today's uncomfortably long, hot, and sweaty train journeys.

In January, there were protests over the train system. Commuters went on a rampage after after the train services "which carries half of Mumbai's rail passengers, bringing the city's lifeline to a complete halt" were delayed, said The Hindu.

Even when Mumbai's commuters can get on a train, it is hard work. A study by the International Cooperation and Urban Development says Mumbai's nine-car trains are designed to hold 2,628 passengers (876 seated and 1,752 standing). However, it's typical for these trains to hold 4,500 passengers during rush hours.

Building up, not out, is on the agenda again. Affordable apartments would foster close-knit communities and encourage people to live and work in the centre instead. Unfortunately, the solution isn't quite so easy because Mumbai lacks the kind of transportation infrastructure to make downtown living desirable. Most of Mumbai's skyscrapers are surrounded by green space and thick roads that encourage cars. In Mumbai's case the strategy "build it and they will come" may not work.
JAKARTA - SEA LEVEL
The Indonesian capital is sinking while the sea level rises. Global warming, intense flooding, deforestation, and decades of pumping out groundwater for residents are partly to blame. Jakarta could one day be uninhabitable.

In February, monsoon rains paralysed the city of 14 million and displaced nearly 6,000 people, according to the Wall Street Journal. An even worse deluge hit again in March, when four people were killed and 20,000 residences were evacuated. (Photos of the disaster can be found here.)

Global warming means floods will happen more often. Research Scientist Owen Cooper, who works at the Earth Systems Research Lab in Boulder, Colorado says the sea level is rising faster in Indonesia than most parts of the globe at about six-to-nine millimetres a year.

"Sea level rise isn't quite uniform," says Cooper. "The ocean water sort of sloshes around depending on the ocean currents. Some areas, sea level is actually going down whereas others is going up. Jakarta... has a greater challenge in terms of sea level rise than most megacities, just because of its location where the sea level is rising fastest."

To combat the floods, the city's government has decided to build a 32-kilometre seawall and a chain of artificial islands. It's a $40bn project in a country where the average person earns little more than $10 a day. The project is expected to take 30 years to complete.
SHANGHAI - AIR POLLUTION
China's economy is growing at a rapid 7%, and its megacities are bearing the brunt of this breakneck growth. In Shanghai, analysts believe steel, cement, and glass plants may have increased pollution, which has prompted the local government to consider giving local residents anti-pollution masks.

Cooper, an air quality specialist, says China is experiencing more air pollution than anywhere in the world. "Overall in the US and Europe emissions from automobiles and power plants have plummeted due to policy and emission controls," says Cooper. "In China the exact opposite is happening."

And there doesn't seem to be any slowing down. "They are making efforts to clean up, especially in the last five years. We know from satellites that sulphur emissions from their power plants are starting to level off and come down. But overall we're expecting that emissions of nitrogen oxides that come out of power plants and automobiles will continue to increase at least for the foreseeable future."

What does this mean for people's health? Former Chinese health minister Chen Zhu recently claimed that nearly 500,000 people die in China each year from severe pollution. Tiny particles in the air less than 2.5 microns in diameter - known as PM 2.5 - affect more people than any other pollutant, according to the World Health Organisation.

Cooper says that PM 2.5 "are of concern because those particles are so small that they usually penetrate deeply into a person's lungs so they can get into the blood system." Pollutants such as sulphates, nitrates, ammonia, sodium chloride, black carbon, mineral dust and water can all help create these damaging particles, which can cause life-threatening conditions such as lung cancer.

China plans to cut pollution in places like Shanghai by 2017, partly by closing coal-fired power plants. But it leaves the country scrambling to find an alternative, less polluting power source. And in the meantime, the city's air continues to be a hazard to health.

More and more cities are going to have to deal with the kind of problems outlined above. By 2030, the United Nations predicts that there will be 41 megacities total with a population of 10 million or more.

Despite the ominous numbers, Geoffrey West has some good news. "If we make it through this critical next 30 years," says West, "one of the things that will happen, we believe, although it's very controversial, is that the population overall will stabilise.

"Somewhere towards the three-quarter point of the century we will see an effective slowing really, kind of stabilisation of the global population," he says. "At some stage, associated with that, we might see a stabilisation of the migration to cities." Time will tell if he is correct.

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There are now some three dozen megacities in the world, each sprawling areas home to more than 10 million people. Bigger cities come with obvious advantages, the increase in people, interactions and infrastructures create more opportunities and efficiencies. But massive population growth has also led to more pollution, spiralling rent, and crumbling infrastructure.

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The Biggest Problems In London And The People Solving Them

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The Biggest Problems In London And The People Solving Them

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Opinion Piece

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This is my Asian Megacity research assignment on Shanghai. Here you can learn about the characteristics of the amazing city of Shanghai. Facts about the population, urban problems and innovations and...

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To write about urbanisation in China is to traffic in superlatives.

Three decades of sustained economic growth, concentrated along the booming coast, has lured millions from the impoverished Chinese countryside. This great migration - unprecedented in human history - has put 46 Chinese cities over the one million mark since 1992, out of a national total of 102.

And this is just the start.

Currently only about 40% of China's population lives in cities, roughly that of America in 1885.

It is estimated that another 350 million Chinese will become urban by 2025, raising China's urban numbers to a cool billion.

Accommodating all these people has meant building on a scale the world has never seen before.

In the first 20 years of China's economic revolution, begun under Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, China built some 6.5bn sq m (70bn sq ft) of new housing - the equivalent of more than 150 million average-sized apartments.

In Shanghai there were no skyscrapers in 1980; today it has twice as many as New York. Between 1990 and 2004 developers erected 85m sq m of commercial space in the city - equivalent to 334 Empire State buildings.

Nationwide, China's construction industry employs a workforce of about 37 million.

Nearly half the world's steel and cement is devoured there, and much of the world's heavy construction equipment has relocated to the People's Republic. Tower cranes, for example, have become the ubiquitous symbol of urban China.

'Spreading pancake'

But China's urban revolution has also destroyed as much as it has built.

In its head-long rush to be rich and modern, China has deprived itself - and the world - of a priceless heritage.

Beijing, once among the world's great urban treasures, is fast becoming just another node of globalised consumerism; full of absurdly sanitised reconstitutions of its lost past, unaffordable to working people, lacerated by eight-lane highways.

Urban development in China has also displaced more people than any nation in peacetime.

In Shanghai alone, redevelopment projects in the 1990s displaced more residents than did 30 years of urban renewal in the United States.

Because China's cities are growing outward as well as upward, urbanisation has also consumed a staggering amount of rural countryside.

Between 1985 and 1995, Shanghai's footprint grew from 90 sq miles to 790.

The "spreading pancake" of urban growth in China - "tan da bing", the popular Chinese expression for sprawl - has devoured some 45,000 sq miles of productive farmland over the last 30 years, nearly half the land area of the United Kingdom.

Chinese suburban development is much more concentrated than in the US. Large detached homes owned by single-families - the American standard - are relatively rare.

The basic unit of Chinese suburbia - with its mid-rise apartment towers, community centre and shared public spaces - is half way between a Maoist "dan wei" (work unit) and a Californian gated community.

Nonetheless, such development on the urban periphery is fast making China a nation of motorists.

China's domestic car market now exceeds America's, and the largest car showrooms in the world today are not in Los Angeles or Houston but the People's Republic.

Accommodating the steady flow of new cars - Beijing and Shanghai average 1,000 new vehicle registrations a day - is a national road network on the verge of eclipsing the American interstate system as Earth's most extensive human artefact.

And with cars and highways have come all the standard spaces of suburban consumerism - drive-through restaurants and big-box shopping malls, budget chain motels, and even that vanished icon of middle America, the drive-in cinema.

Saving the world

None of this bodes well for planet Earth. How ironic that, just as the West has begun to get its environmental house in order - finally taking serious action to reduce its carbon footprint, combat global warming, and end its oil addiction - here come the millions of China, wanting the very lifestyle and material amenities that have put us on the verge of environmental collapse.

If China were to match, per capita, car ownership in the US (which is falling, incidentally), it would mean more than one billion cars.

The planet, in a word, would be fried.

And this takes no account of India, which will soon overtake China as the world's most populous nation.

Experts such as Paul Gilding have come up with a measure for our total global footprint in terms of our impact on the environment and resources. In his book The Great Disruption he concludes that our economy is operating at about 150% of capacity - in other words, the way we live will take between one-and-a-half planets to sustain.

That is not just unsustainable, it is a catastrophe.

And yet, who are we to say to China: "We've had our playful, wasteful day in the sun but you must now conserve."

Happily, we don't need to; the Chinese are saying it themselves.

Even as it sprawls, China is building more public transit than all other nations combined, and is well ahead of the US in developing sustainable building technologies and clean-energy alternatives such as solar, wind, and biomass.

According to a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts, China invested $34.6bn (£21bn) in the clean energy industry between 2005 and 2009 - nearly twice that of the US.

We may have taught China to drive, eat, and buy its way to ruin; China may yet show us how to save the world.
Thomas J Campanella is author of The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World. He is currently a Fellow in residence at the American Academy in Rome.

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To write about urbanisation in China is to traffic in superlatives. Three decades of sustained economic growth, concentrated along the booming coast, has lured millions from the impoverished Chinese countryside. This great migration - unprecedented in human history - has put 46 Chinese cities over the one million mark since 1992, out of a national total of 102.

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World of Change: Sprawling Shanghai : Feature Articles

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If you could go back in time to the 1980s, you would find a city that is drastically different than today's Shanghai.

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Sao Paulo - challenges of rapid urbanisation

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A photoessay outlining some of the challenges of rapid urbanisation in Sao Paulo. For AS Geography classes.

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GEOCASES: Case Study: São Paulo: Population and Slum Housing

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About 32% of the world's urban population live in slums. The problem of poor housing quality is overwhelmingly concentrated in the developing world. São Paulo has the largest slum population in South America. Here, urban poverty is concentrated in two types of housing, favelas and corticos.

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In São Paulo, drinking water is used to flush toilets, bathe and, until very recently, to wash cars and even hose down city pavements, as porters use jets of crystalline water to shift those last specks of grime. In Brazil, a land of immense natural riches and home to around 12% of the world's fresh water, the very idea of a water shortage is hard for people to conceive of. Yet despite the state government's prevarication over possible imminent rationing - consisting of two days of water followed by four days without - in reality, millions are now getting just a few hours of water per day, with many struggling with none at all for days on end.

The São Paulo water crisis, or "hydric collapse" as many are calling it, has left this city of 20 million teetering on the brink. Though domestic use accounts for only a fraction of the water consumed in the state of São Paulo - where extensive agriculture and industry places intense pressure on available resources - for paulistanos, as the city's residents are called, learning to use water wisely is suddenly the most pressing need of all.

The sudden nature of the crisis has left people struggling to cope with the reality of the taps running dry. The state governor Geraldo Alckmin has insisted repeatedly that the water will continue to flow as usual, and no state of emergency has yet been declared, though some experts believe such a declaration well overdue.In the meantime, residents of São Paulo are making their own arrangements: storing water at home, and in some cases drilling homemade wells. In part a result of badly stored water, instances of dengue fever spread by mosquitoes almost tripled in January, compared with the previous year.

Graphic designer Isabela Berger Sacramento, 33, lives in a neat, well maintained apartment complex, Condominium Solar das Palmas, in the neighbourhood of Saúde, south-central São Paulo. The complex consists of three 1970s tower blocks flanked by a leafy tropical garden at the front, and an open-air pool at the back. Its residents are teachers, small business owners, sales and administrative workers and pensioners. When the complex was suddenly left without water for four days straight at the beginning of February, the learning curve for Berger and her neighbours turned out to be painfully steep.

"My workmates keep fretting about how they are going to stay clean if their water runs out," says Berger. "They have no idea: when the water goes off, bathing is the least of your problems." Berger was able to shower at her father's apartment 20 minutes away, and found that at home a mixture of wet wipes and a damp flannel worked relatively well, at a push.

With no idea of when the water would be back, Berger and her partner Bruno de Melo Rodrigues, a 30-year-old web designer, bought disposable cups, plates and cutlery, deciding against dirtying any pots and pans for fear they would rot in the sink. "We made coffee, but that was about it. We're lucky in that we were able to afford to eat out for a couple of days," says Berger. Their eighth-floor apartment looks out over the mostly low-rise surrounding neighbourhood, where the "verticalisation" process that has made São Paulo an archetypal concrete jungle is very evident, but where there are still vast expanses of one- and two-storey houses lining the long, quiet streets.

I'd always imagined people would try and help each other out in a crisis situation, but it's not what happened at all

Isabela Berger Sacramento

Nothing about the experience was easy, says Berger, "but the worst thing by far was having no water to flush the toilet with. It was degrading." With no warning that their taps were about to run dry, the couple had no reserves of water . "Within a day or two, there was a really unpleasant smell in the apartment," says Berger, who says she was reduced to wondering whether it might be better to squat and urinate into the shower grate. "At least that way, it would drain away rather than just sitting there," she says. Two days into the crisis, the síndica - the apartment complex manager - gave permission for residents of the complex's 192 apartments to collect water from the swimming pool, initiating a line of bucket-toting neighbours traipsing back and forth to the pool.

On the third day without water, residents set out rows of plastic chairs in the communal area and held an emergency meeting to discuss the problem. But to Berger's dismay, the meeting quickly descended into furious argument:"I'd always imagined people would try and help each other out in a crisis situation," she says. "But it's not what happened at all."

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A man places a net over a water container on his roof. Dengue fever spread by mosquitoes is a risk. Photograph: Nacho Doce/Reuters

Her complex had purchased a truckload of water halfway through the crisis, at the beginning of February: 90,000 litres, costing R$5,400 (£1,225). When they tried to agree on how future water purchases should be split between residents, an argument broke out almost immediately. "People were really, really shouting at each other," says Berger. "I left after a while - I couldn't stand it. I heard one person saying that elderly residents are at home all day and use more water, so they should pay more." Others argued that since some flats had several residents, the cost should be divided per person, and there was even a suggestion that people with dogs should pay extra - "because they bathe them".

Catastrophic situations often foster solidarity, but a lack of resources tends to do the opposite, leading to chaos

"It was like a horror film," says the building manager, Maria Aurilene Santana. "No one seemed able to agree on anything." When a small amount of water finally trickled into the tanks Santana says "people were filling buckets, grabbing as much water they could." According to a crisis report published on 9 February by the pressure group Aliança Pela Água (Water Alliance), whereas catastrophic situations like flooding often fosters solidarity, a lack of resources tends to do the opposite, leading to chaos and even violence. In Itu, a city 100km from São Paulo a desperate water shortage in late 2014 led to fighting in queues, theft of water, and the looting of emergency water trucks, which are now accompanied by armed civil guards. These events left many paulistanos wondering how the hardship might play out in their own pressurised and densely populated city.

For the residents of Solar das Palmas, the supply returned after four days, albeit in fluctuating quantities. Before the crisis, 20,000 litres flowed into the tanks of each of the complex's three tower blocks per day, but that's now down to an average of 10,000, and occasionally as little as 3,000. The complex initiated its own programme of rationing for a while, turning the water on each day for 3-4 hour stretches in the mornings and evenings, but Santana now leaves the supply open. "When it runs out, it runs out."

During the four-day crisis, Santana went to Sabesp, São Paulo's water board, to find out when the water would be returning. "I told the man who was working there that the apartment building over the road had water, and yet we did not," she says. "He said, 'They may have water for now, but it's going to run out for everyone soon'. He said there were some areas where the people had been without water for two months."

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Isabela Berger Sacramento tops up her water stocks. Photograph: Juliana Spinola/Demotix

"I think about this all the time, and about the possible consequences," says Berger. She and her partner have discussed moving away, back to their native Rio de Janeiro or elsewhere, if the proposed two-days-on/four-days-off rationing kicks in.

"It's not viable," she says. "We spent four days without water, and we saw what it was like. We saw people behave like animals in our building, so imagine 20 million people." For now, with the water back on albeit reduced, the experience has brought about a profound change in Berger's attitude. "I think twice about every single choice I make - do I really need to wash that top? I feel like we're having to learn the value of every drop the hard way, and maybe in the long-term, that's a good thing." Berger and her partner now keep three buckets and two pans filled with tap water, three 20-litre kegs of drinking water - and a supply of wet wipes. "I can't stand the smell of them now," says Berger.

For Santana, who attracted the wrath of her residents at the lack of water, the crisis has been a baptism of fire. "Some of them seemed to think it was my fault," she says, "and one woman even threatened to punch me." She was voted into the building manager position by her fellow residents in November. "Ah well," she says, as we speak in the empty social area on a quiet Sunday afternoon. "At least the worst is over." Her deputy, Ivani Pavoski, throws her a shrewd sideways glance.

"You must be joking," she says. "This has only just begun."
Topics

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São Paulo - anatomy of a failing megacity: residents struggle as water taps run dry

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In São Paulo, drinking water is used to flush toilets, bathe and, until very recently, to wash cars and even hose down city pavements, as porters use jets of crystalline water to shift those last specks of grime.

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Seoul Population 2018 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs)

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Seoul, officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the largest metropolis and capital of South Korea. This megacity is the largest city proper in the developed world and the Seoul Capital Area is the second largest metropolitan in the world with more than 25.6 million people, which is half of all the residents in the country.

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Seoul is one of the most populous cities in the world and, in a city where one of its most manufactured item is cars, there is bound to be a high prevalence of traffic congestion. Traffic congestion...

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People living in the capital of South Korea express their love for it with a playful alliteration in English, saying that " Seoul is the soul of Asia ".

The soul of this city of 10 million people - 25 million when including the metropolitan area - is instead manifested by the speed with which it forges ahead towards a future of advanced technology and avant-garde infrastructure. But it is ever mindful of its people, rising through the international rankings for the quality of life it offers.
Business, technology and transport infrastructure are the three pillars on which Seoul has based its success. Sustainable development has recently become another one, a method adopted by this growing city in response to some of the world's worst air pollution. And so a city that was a chaotic megalopolis 20 years ago has become a rich and powerful "smart" megacity.

As for quality of life, Seoul has reached seventh in the world, according to 2016 figures from the Sustainable Cities Index by Arcadis, a design and consultancy firm. With a gross domestic product (GDP) of $903 billion, according to 2015 figures from Oxford Economics, an advisory firm, the city's economy is equal to 67% of the national GDP. Among the world's cities, it ranks fourth, the Brookings Institution has found.

What is more, Seoul is the sixth most powerful city on the planet, beating the likes of Hong Kong, according to the Global Power City Index 2017, compiled by the Mori Memorial Foundation's Institute for Urban Strategies that examines six parametres including economy, research, culture, liveability and accessibility.

Global technology giants Samsung and LG have their headquarters in Seoul. Then there are initiatives that link urban development with business. One example is the Digital Media City, a complex of more than half a million square metres and dedicated to digital technology. Built in 2002, it has attracted avant-garde companies from the world of high-tech. In 2015, Google opened its first Asian campus for start-ups in the Gangnam district, confirming the city's vitality. So it should not come as a surprise that the city is one of the broadband capitals of the world, high up in the rankings of the ICT Development Index put together by the United Nations.

Seoul embracing technological innovation is thanks to its modern public transport system. The metro is its fulcrum, carrying seven million people a day. It has nine lines covering a combined 327 kilometres operated by four different operators, which together create an integrated system that includes light rail and suburban trains. It is a system that is connected to a fleet of buses (120,000 units) that by 2020 are to run exclusively on electricity.

Efficiency, reliability, accessibility and, to a certain degree, guaranteed entertainment, what with the big video screens affixed in the stations and along the escalators: these are major elements of Seoul mass transit. Technology has also inserted itself into the infrastructure: since 2010, mobile connection is ubiquitous on trains and metros.

In a 2012 report entitled " Seoul Metropolitan Rapid Transit to the World", the city says the "Seoul subway has led the incredible development of Seoul", making it "a driving force behind the remarkable development of Korea". Strong economic incentives are used to encourage the use of public transport and reduce the use of private vehicles. Free bus and metro rides are offered whenever air pollution levels are at their highest.

Seoul's strength in public transport is also manifested in its airport. In March, the futuristic Incheon, described by CNN as "the airport you'll never want to leave", was ranked as the best in the Asia Pacific among airports handling more than two million passengers a year by Airports Council International.
A lot of this can be attributed to South Korea's "ppalli-ppalli" culture of accomplishing things in a hurry. But this should not lead to think that residents do not enjoy their free time. Seoul has a vibrant cultural life and the city makes a point of making investments to improve the quality of life in general.

One of the most significant investments of this kind was the restoration of the Cheonggyecheon Stream in the Jongno District a decade ago that resulted in the removal of an elevated highway. Although it was criticised for its $900 million cost, it was lauded by the public at large after its inauguration. Running for more than 10 kilometres, it has become a much frequented and loved public park. What is more, it prompted other changes in the city like the construction of a rapid bus transit system covering 14.5 kilometres aimed at reducing the need to move about the city centre by car.

This same idea led to the construction of Seoullo 7017, an elevated garden nearly a kilometre long. Recently opened, it was designed by Dutch architect Winy Mass of MVRDV. The " skygarden", as the architect's firm describes it, came into being by reusing an elevated street in the middle of the city at a cost of $50 million.

It is a feature of the city that is inspiring the creation of new dynamics like a sharing economy. The " Sharing City Seoul" initiative, for example, promotes the shared use of public and private resources. Launched by the city in 2012, it is aimed at reducing waste while at the same time creating new economic opportunities. It has led to job training, the recovery of abandoned buildings, renting suits to people ahead of job interviews and donating clothes to school children.

Seoul's experience in urban planning shows that sustainable and economic development projects do not exclude one another - not even in an Asian metropolis. And it confirms how sustainable development can produce benefits not only in the long term but also in short term.

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Seoul: the MegaCity with high quality of life - Salini Impregilo Digital Magazine

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People living in the capital of South Korea express their love for it with a playful alliteration in English, saying that " Seoul is the soul of Asia ". The soul of this city of 10 million people - 25 million when including the metropolitan area - is instead manifested by the speed with which it forges ahead towards a future of advanced technology and avant-garde infrastructure.