Writing in
New Geography Aaron M. Renn examines a list of the world's 29 megacities (> 10 million souls) ranging from Tokyo-Yokohama at 37,500,000 inhabitants down to London with 10,100,000. He asks the question: Will they be able to turn the corner and become global cities? For most Renn's answer is "no." He concludes:
The general rule seems to be that a megacity can only escape pervasive dysfunction if they are a major city in a country that is the world’s current rising economic (or historically imperial) power.
Places like London, Paris, New York City, Tokyo-Yokohama, Seoul-Inchon, Moscow, and Los Angeles have already made it, Beijing and Shanghai are getting there, for a total of 9. The remaining 20 are in worse shape:
There’s no clear path to prosperous maturity for these megacities. They are so huge, and their problems so immense that they are difficult to even conceptualize, much less do something about. The amount of needed infrastructure provision alone – water, sanitation, drainage, transport, telecom, electricity, parks, schools, etc. – is staggering. And that doesn’t even touch arguably more difficult problems like corruption and good governance.
