Lavasa aims to take advantage of its proximity to
Pune, a booming software hub 40 miles ( 64 kilometers) away. Konza Techno City, Kenya, a US$14.5
billion development, will be 37 miles ( 60 kilometers)
from the capital of Nairobi.
China has offered a counterpoint lesson. As many
cities have sprung up in remote areas, the country
has seen an epidemic of ghost towns—newly constructed urban centers that did not attract businesses and residents and now sit largely empty.
“These Chinese cities were built mainly as speculative housing projects, not necessarily corresponding
to where people want to live,” Dr. Ben-Joseph says.
It may seem counterintuitive to build a new city
near another, more established one, but such urban
clusters carry distinct advantages. “You can benefit from and complement the social and economic
dynamics of the metropolis. This makes the new city
much more attractive for companies and the types
of tenants they envision hosting,” says Luis Carvalho,
PhD, senior researcher, European Institute for Comparative Urban Research, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
To help future residents and businesses appreciate
the allure of their city over others, project sponsors
must coordinate with nearby cities to make sure
they’re complementing others’ appeal, not duplicating it. “Many new cities are designed to provide heavy
incentives to lure companies, but those are often
insufficient to match the social advantages of other
places, let alone the fact that they can hardly be kept
over time,” Dr. Carvalho says. “This would call for the
integration and coordination between the new city
and other nearby locations, to avoid negative-sum
competition for companies and tenants.”
Source: United Nations
“[New] Chinese cities
were built mainly as
speculative housing
projects, not necessarily
corresponding to where
people want to live.”
—Eran Ben-Joseph
The Urban Future
The world will see not only more cities, but bigger ones too.
City Dwellers
Percentages and populations of
the world living in urban areas
Big
Medium-sized cities, each with 1 million
to 5 million inhabitants
1950
100%
10%
50%
2014 2050
30 54 66%
746
million
people
3. 9
billion
people
6. 4
billion
people
417
827 million people
43
300 million people
8 percent of the global
urban population
28
16 in Asia, 4 in Latin America,
3 in Africa, 3 in Europe,
2 in North America
453 million people
12 percent of the global
urban population
63
400 million people
9 percent of the global
urban population
41
Top two:
Tokyo, Japan, 37 million;
Delhi, India, 36 million
558
1. 1 billion people
Bigger
Large cities, each with 5 million to 10
million inhabitants
Biggest
Megacities, each with more
than 10 million inhabitants
2014 2030
2014 2030
2014 2030
medium-
sized cities
large cities large cities
medium-
sized cities
Top two: Tokyo, Japan, 38 million;
Delhi, India, 25 million
megacities megacities