Megacities’ challenges: administer cities of more than 10 millions inhabitants?

 

Actually, 28 urban areas are defined as megacities, urban areas with more than 10 million inhabitants. Amongst them we can find New York, Mexico DF, Sao Paula, Paris and Shanghai. It has been estimated that in 2030, twelve new cities will be included into that category. The demographic tendencies towards overpopulation, with estimations of 8 to 11 billion people in 2030, conjugated with high urban development level have made appear great challenges to the administration of urban spaces.

The spatial expansion of cities imply various issues at different scales such as the access to resources and distribution, socio-spatial segregation, increasing vulnerability in front of natural catastrophes…

Because of this frightening panorama, it has become necessary to implement projects of urban planning that would fill both the social, political, economic and the environmental objectives. New technics and construction material, innovating systems are some of the solutions we might consider. There are also private initiatives such as the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group or non-governmental initiatives such as the Mega Cities Project whose objective is to analyze challenges administrations are facing in finding efficient and green solutions.

 

 

How is it possible to conjugate economic and environmental sustainability in urban areas?

 

For 2050, it has been estimated that the urban population will double, going from 3.6 billion people in 2011 to more than 6 billion. The urban development levels are increasing all around the world, which makes it even more worrying from an environmental standpoint. While cities only occupy 2% of the global territory, they consume 78% of the world’s natural resources, greatly participating global warming. At the same time, overdeveloped urban areas are very flawed, in social terms because of a growing segregation and in environmental terms because of their great vulnerability in case of a natural catastrophe. Numerous are the cities that do not have the necessary human and financial resources to produce strong and coherent urban planning projects. That is why it is extremely important to find viable solutions, including for the cities that are less economically strong.  It is in that optic of sustainable development that we should look for solutions that would be economically realizable and in matters of the environment and safety, viable. The propositions should take into account the multiplicity of actors implicated, from public institutions to civilians, from companies to associations, to NGOs.

Actually, the Masdar project in the United Arab Emirates is getting done. The project consists in constructing an auto-sufficient city, with an energetic and environmental impact equal to zero, only 20 minutes away from Abu Dhabi. Only a portion of the central zone has been constructed yet, including the Masdar Institute, an educative entity that wants to become the first global institution for environmental research. While Masdar might constitute a useful example, it was constructed from nothing. Today, the real challenge is the re-organization of cities established a long time ago.