A Great Overview of the Megacity Phenomenon

I came across this nice video yesterday at the Business Week Web site. It's an interview with Siemens One President Ken Cornelius, in which he discusses some of the challenges and opportunities inherent in the increasing population of the world's cities, and the trend toward ever bigger cities.

Here's the video:



To boil it down to just two words: density works. It's a far more efficient way to use energy, has less impact on the environment, simplifies the provision of services, and involves far less infrastructure per capita. A far cry from the myth of natural, clean country living set in opposition to the dangerous, dirty city.

To me, the big question is not why cities are getter bigger and attracting ever bigger shares of the world's population, but rather why this isn't happening even more rapidly. The answer, at least in the United States, lies in the subtle ways that our suburban lifestyle is subsidized, hiding the true cost of our dispersed living patterns and the vast interior and exterior living spaces we view as a birthright. In other words, through the magic of tax dollar allocation, revenue produced by urban dwellers and companies is redirected in ways that subsidize the cost of providing power, sewage lines, communications, utilities and even transportation to those in far flung subdivisions.

If we ever want to fully realize the economic, environmental, and yes, social benefits that vibrant cities support, we have to ensure that the true cost of dispersed living is born by those who live that way.