In advance of his new book, titled Connectography, Parag Khanna recently delivered an interesting TED Talk called, How megacities are changing the map of the world. It’s about 20 minutes long.
A lot of what is covered won’t be new to this audience, but I like how he talks about the importance of urban connectivity, the shift from political to functional geography, and the idea that, in a megacity world, countries can actually be the suburbs of some cities.
One thing you might notice about the talk is how he glosses over both Canada and Europe. This is a reminder to me that if Canadian cities are going to continue to compete against the emerging megacities of the world, we are going to need to think at the scale of the megalopolis. And a big part of that means a focus on extra-urban connectivity.
Click here if you can’t see the embedded talk below.
https://embed-ssl.ted.com/talks/parag_khanna_how_megacities_are_changing_the_map_of_the_world.html
Ed Glaeser, Giacomo Ponzetto, and Yimei Zou recently published a new academic paper called, Urban Networks: Spreading the Flow of Goods, People and Ideas.
The paper looks at whether it’s more advantageous to build huge and consolidated mega-cities or build connected networks of smaller urban centers (perhaps connected by high speed rail). As countries like China rapidly urbanize, this is something that many people are thinking about.
In China, there is a lively urban planning debate about whether to facilitate the increased expansion of the vast agglomerations of Beijing and Shanghai or whether to focus on creating networks of cities that are smaller, albeit still much larger than almost all of the cities of Western Europe. The current government policy favors networks, in the hope that connected smaller cities may be free of the extreme downsides of mass agglomeration, such as extreme congestion, pollution and high housing costs.
Like most things, there are real trade-offs.
In the paper, they assume that larger cities lead to more urban amenities, which in turn serves as an important magnet for skilled workers. However, for unskilled workers who may not care/benefit from the same urban amenities, it is possible for them to dislike the bigger cities. In this case, the benefits do not outweigh the negatives of urban expansion and an urban divide is created (rich/poor).
One of the potential negatives is housing.
The attraction of denser, not larger, mega-cities is determined also by the elasticity of housing supply. When it is easy to add extra homes on a narrow plot of land, as in Texas, then density becomes more attractive. European urban networks may well be the right answer because history and regulation makes it so hard to build in Europe’s older cities. Even though China has usually been quite friendly towards skyscrapers, the sheer scale of the Chinese population may still make the case for urban networks.
If you’re interested in this topic, there’s a section (#2) in the paper on the history of urban networks that you might like.
A few weeks ago I wrote a post talking about megalopolises and the importance of the Great Lakes region in North America. And I suggested that high speed rail could be one way to better stitch together the region.
To some, I’m sure this sounded like a bit of a pipe dream. But thinking at the megalopolitan scale is something that I think we are going to need to do. Other parts of the world certainly are.
The Chinese government is in the midst of developing a supercity around Beijing that is called Jing-Jin-Ji. It will span about 82,000 square miles and will house approximately 130 million people.
As part of the plan, a high-speed rail network is being built that will bring the region’s major cities within an hour’s commute. The objective is to compete with the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta regions in the south.
It’s a scale of planning and development that most people aren’t used to thinking about. But it’s happening right now.
Image: New York Times