Global cities in a changing world
I managed to miss the recent exhibition on “Global Cities” in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern Museum in London, but there’s a lot of material on the museum’s web site here. The exhibition looked at growth and development in 10 major cities around the world. I live in one of these cities – London – and have visited six others: Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, Shanghai and Tokyo.
One thing I learned from the site is that London – which is growing again – now has 7.5 million citizens but used to have 8.6 million in 1939. There are now over 20 mega-city regions with more than 10 million people. There are also nearly 450 city regions with over one million residents. Together they house more than one billion people in a relatively small surface of the earth.
I confess that, for all the problems of cities, I love living in a major city and I really enjoy visiting cities around world [notes on 22 cities that I have visited here]
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:41 pm
I remember attending a lecture or something similar (my memory for details has always been shady) where one of the interesting points made was that of a global network of cities that have more in common with each other than with other parts of their own country – i.e. Auckland has more in common with London, Tokyo, NY, than it does with Nelson, Dunedin, Palmerston.
I have to say after a reasonable amount of travel (although not as much as you) I think it is quite true. I feel more at home in a big city anywhere in the world than I do in a small village a few hours away.