On this blog, we often talk about city building in the context of doing things to help improve a city -- whether that be a development project, a new public art mural, or an interesting local business. These interventions help to build a city. But even more specifically, the term has, for many, come to mean building up a city in a positive way.
But there is another way to think about city building. You can think of it in terms of building actual new cities. We've spoken about some of these before, namely this one in California and this odd one in Saudi Arabia. But apparently it is becoming more common. According to The Economist, the world is now building more new cities than it has in the last 80 or so years:
Egypt’s “New Administrative Capital” is part of a rush of city-building. Firms and governments are planning more settlements than at any time in the post-war period, with many already under construction. Ninety-one cities have been announced in the past decade, with 15 in the past year alone. In addition to its new capital in the north, Egypt is building five other cities, with plans for dozens more. India is considering eight urban hubs. Outside Baghdad, Iraq, workers have just broken ground on the first of five settlements.