Ambivalence of Megacities: Catastrophe or Solution?

Abstract

Cities have always been dynamic places of change and beyond that of human civilisa- tion. They are nodes connecting highly di- verse networks, flows of people, capital and knowledge on local, regional and global lev- els (Castells 1996; Levebvre 1976). Thereby they are transformers of development proc- esses (Braudel 1985; Dwyer 1972; Dwyer 1975). As development is ambivalent, it im- plies that cities are not only centres where problems, conflicts and tensions are con- centrated and intensified, but also that they form innovative milieus (Hall 2000) continu- ously creating new ways of coping with changing circumstances (social creativity) (Holston 2002, p. 326; Korff 1988). Solutions to numerous problems faced by humankind are in fact invented and tested in the urban context and disseminated through city net- works on national and global scales. In con- clusion, a city is always as much a centre of conflicts, problems, tensions as it is a centre of innovations and solutions. Unfortunately, most research on megacities focuses on Cassandra-like warnings of a coming apoca- lypse and largely neglects identification of solutions created already. 1