Large cities: matrice of urban transition

Stimulated by globalisation, financialisation and the rise of digital technology, over the past fifteen years or so, and especially since the 2008 financial crisis, cities have massively concentrated global financial flows. More than ever before, cities are migration hubs and melting-pots of all the world’s cultures, and shape global societal values. Metropolitan regions are now part of a global interconnected urban system made up of established global cities (New York, London, Paris), of global challengers (Shanghai, Toronto, Sydney) and of emerging global cities (Shenzhen, Mumbai, São Paulo), forming a world apart that is detaching itself from national contexts. Cities increasingly resemble one another: “the world is covered by a sole [city] that neither begins nor ends: only the name of the airport changes¹,” says Italo Calvino’s Marco Polo. The use of cities has intensified: after a phase of deindustrialisation and decline in the late twentieth century, at the dawn of the third millennium developed cities are enjoying renewed attractiveness, especially in their central areas. They have reorganised their economies around finance, high-level services and innovation. Density in terms of jobs and inhabitants, mobility and real estate, and educational, recreational and cultural opportunities are all on the rise. Reclaimed from cars, metropolitan public spaces are being transformed into open-air lounges offering varied uses and forms of mobility, spotlighted by global urban marketing. While the hearts of cities are intensifying, urban peripheries continue to spread, fragmenting natural and rural environments and continuing the centuries-old global de-densification of metropolitan regions.

The urban species

The last two decades have seen the world change faster than ever before. The planet has become hugely urbanised and anthropic: some believe that the human species is the origin of a new geological period, the Anthropocene², characterised by the pre-eminence of Man over the biophysical balances of the terrestrial system. The Earth now has 7.7 billion inhabitants, 4.2 billion of whom live in cities³: for the first time in the history of humanity, in 2007 over half of the world’s population has become urban (55% today), and is thus bereft of its ancient connections with nature. There will be 5 billion urbanites in 2030 and 6.7 billion in 2050 (68%): twice the total world population in 1975... In the 1970s, just four “megacities” had populations of over 10 million (Tokyo, New York, Osaka and Mexico City). This had risen to 33 in 2019 (including Paris), and will reach 43 by 2030⁴. The emergence of urban mega-regions, such as that of Shanghai (80 million inhabitants), the Pearl River Delta (47 million) and Jakarta (26 million), reflects the shifting of the world’s centre of gravity towards Asia. By 2050, nine tenths of global urban growth will occur in Asia and Africa, giving rise to a second world of giant cities (and slums). By 2100, according to some forecasts⁵, the ten largest world cities will be Lagos, Kinshasa, Dar-es-Salam, Mumbai, Delhi, Khartoum, Niamey, Dhaka, Calcutta and Kabul, each with over 50 million inhabitants.

Social crisis

Victims of their success, cities exacerbate the contradictions of the development model put in place in the second half of the twentieth century. In 2000-2010, the spectacular rebirth of post-industrial cities in Europe and North America led some economists to be overoptimistic. In 2002, Richard Florida thought that the “creative” classes would make cities more prosperous and liveable⁶. Edward Glaeser’s best seller, Triumph of the City⁷ is subtitled: “How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier”! Fifteen years later, things had turned out very differently: The New Urban Crisis⁸ from the same Richard Florida lamented growing social disparities and the pauperisation of the middle class in the most “successful” American cities. Among the factors that explain this are the disconnection between rising housing costs and stagnant salaries, along with the financialisation of real estate fuelled by the dizzying concentration of global wealth⁹. Since the crisis of 2008, the centres of New York, London, Singapore and Dubai, for example, have become “vertical safes” in which the liquidities of billionaires in search of safe investments can solidify; this helps to drive out the middle classes while increasing the risk of a property bubble¹⁰. Spatial segregation is increasing, as seen in the Paris Region¹¹, threatening the cohesion of metropolitan areas that had hitherto been spared, such as Munich, Copenhagen, Berlin and Oslo. With relatively high levels of poverty and unemployment and shrinking public resources, cities struggle to play their historic role of integrating migrants: the number of homeless people is rising almost everywhere.

Ecological crisis

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), at the current rate global warming is on track to reach at least 3°C by 2100. With 55% of the population living on 2% of the planet, cities consume three quarters of its energy and of its natural resources and emit 70% of its carbon dioxide (CO₂). These figures are growing, as the development model of cities relies 86% on fossil energy (oil, gas, coal)¹². Taxes and public policy fail to curtail the purchase of individual houses, urban sprawl and car use, thus worsening congestion and pollution and affecting public health. Land artificialisation and the contamination of environments connected to urbanisation contribute to the global collapse of biodiversity. The global ecological footprint of cities is beyond the planet’s capacities: London’s footprint, for example, is equivalent to 124 times its area¹³: more than that of the United Kingdom as a whole… Floods, heat waves, hurricanes, wildfires: faced with the realities of climate change, cities are becoming aware of how vulnerable they are. While the water supply in many cities is becoming a problem, rising sea levels threaten cities such as London, Shanghai, Lagos and Dhaka. These crises may be combined with other catastrophes (earthquakes, epidemics, terrorism), making resilience into an existential challenge for cities.

Can cities change the world?

Faced with this situation, cities are mobilising to turn things around. Via their networks (United Cities and Local Governments, C40, 100 Resilient Cities, Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance), they are taking collective action against climate change, seeking a more sustainable, more equitable, and greener urban model. They played a key role in the 2015 Paris Agreement on limiting global warming to less than 2 °C by 2100. They were instrumental in the definition of the New Urban Agenda¹⁴ of Habitat-III and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2016), whose Eleventh Goal is “to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Over 9,600 local and regional authorities in almost 60 countries have signed the Global Convention of Mayors for Climate and Energy, committing to reduce CO₂ emissions by 1.3 billion tonnes, equivalent to 276 million fewer cars. Cities understand that reducing their global ecological footprint and their emissions by at least 80% by 2050 is a vital economic and social challenge. Although they know how tough this will be, Barcelona, Stockholm, London, Paris, Boston, Sydney, Melbourne and others aim to be carbon neutral within thirty years. For ten years, climate and energy plans and carbon strategies are developing increasingly integrated approaches: for example, going further than PlaNYC (2007), the OneNewYork 2050 plan, adopted in 2014 by the city of New York, fosters systemic initiatives combining housing, social fairness, energy, resilience, climate, greening, water management, the circular economy, etc. Long-term climate and energy strategies rely on massive public and private investment: reduction of energy consumption in buildings, the rise of renewable energy sources, the recycling of waste and materials, green infrastructures, sustainable mobility, etc. These strategies are integrated into spatial planning programmes: cities are adopting master plans for 2040 or beyond, often based on the principles of density¹⁵, compactness and polycentrism. Some refer to the concept of the “urban bioregion¹⁶, linking metropolitan and rural space within a more self-sufficient development model. Pioneers of eco-planning such as Stockholm, Malmö and Vancouver are applying the lessons learned in their eco-districts on a large scale. And now digital giants are positioning themselves on the market for major urban projects (Toronto) and urban management (China), prompting legitimate fears. Cities are rediscovering their geography and their “nature”. They are reconnecting with their rivers (New York), uncovering buried rivers (Seoul), rewilding watercourses (Munich), and revitalising suburban valleys (Milan). Thanks to intensive farming, cities are becoming islands of biodiversity providing a home for threatened wildlife. In response to the need to cool dense built-up areas, they encourage the greening of roofs, walls and terraces (Singapore), set minimum greening levels (Berlin), and develop urban forests¹⁷ (Vancouver), wetlands (London), farming belts (Medellín) and regional urban parks (Melbourne)¹⁸. These projects are often citizens’ initiatives: people are increasingly mobilising to invent new ecological and humanistic development models, as seen in the global “cities in transition” movement¹⁹.

A new era?

Do these changes point to a paradigm shift? It’s probably too early to tell, as the disconnect between economic growth and greenhouse gases is still in its infancy and only concerns emissions in cities in developed countries, excluding imported emissions. One thing is for sure, though: the acceleration of change (ecological, energy-related, economic, digital, democratic, etc.) that cities and humanity face is causing a great deal of uncertainty. According to some authors, the “great transition of humanity” we have been experiencing since 1945 is comparable in significance to the Neolithic revolution and to the emergence of the first cities²⁰. Others, like Michel Lussault, think that we are reaching the end of a cycle of metropolitanisation and that we need to invent more local models for the production of wealth. Still others predict that tomorrow’s cities will be able to produce the energy they consume and recycle all the materials they need to operate, or even regenerate the planet’s natural environment²¹. Between density and liveability, between competitiveness and social fairness, between freedom and regulation, between ecology and “business as usual”, the future of cities is being prepared and debated. Each city, with its own system and its own expertise, can be an in vivo laboratory used to invent ways of managing the spaces where most of humanity will live. Time is the raw material for the transformation of cities and regions. The need for quick decisions and immediate action must not make us lose sight of the long-term impact of our individual and collective choices.

Paul Lecroart, Senior Urbanist, with Léo Fauconnet, Political Scientist and Urbanist,
and Maximilian Gawlik, Landscape Architect and Urbanist, L’Institut Paris Region