Urbanization as Opportunity

Urbanization deserves urgent attention
from policy makers, academics, entrepreneurs, and social
reformers of all stripes. Nothing else will create as many
opportunities for social and economic progress. The
urbanization project began roughly 1,000 years after the
transition from the Pleistocene to the milder and more
stable Holocene interglacial. In 2010, the urban population
in developing countries stood at 2.5 billion. The developing
world can accommodate the urban population growth and
declining urban density in many ways. The most important
citywide projects - successes like New York and Shenzhen
show even more clearly how influential human intention can
be. The developing world can accommodate the urban
population growth and declining urban density in many ways.
One is to have a threefold increase in the average
population of its existing cities and a six fold increase in
their average built-out area. Another, which will leave the
built-out area of existing cities unchanged, will be to
develop 625 new cities of 10 million people - 500 new cities
to accommodate the net increase in the urban population and
another 125 to accommodate the 1.25 billion people who will
have to leave existing cities as average density falls by half.