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NYU Urban Seminar
Jul 20,2012
How Sprawling Megacities Might Just Save the World
+ Brandon Fuller
In a recent piece for Foreign Policy, Jonathan Kalan challenges the notion that rapid urbanization poses a major development crisis, offering a more optimistic perspective on the growth of global megacities and what it means for human progress. Kalan spoke to NYU's Alain Bertaud and Paul Romer. Bertaud emphasized that 21st century urbanization is charting new territory. Though the fast-growing cities in low and middle income countries can learn from the experiences of other cities, they will have to forge their own paths:
Foreign investment, guidance, and advice are not necessarily bad. But there is no one-size-fits-all approach to megacities in the developing world, and working from the bottom up is as important as working from the top down. “There are no historical precedents for such large cities,” explains Alain Bertaud, a senior research scholar at New York University. “Lagos, Mumbai, and Shanghai have to find their own solutions. None of them can pretend to become one day successful blown-up models of Copenhagen or Amsterdam.”