Urban revolution as catastrophe or solution? Governance of megacities in the global south

Abstract

A city is always a centre of problems and innovations and therefore a milieu where solutions are evolving. Because any city is part of a city system and therefore of patterns of agglomeration, urban dynamics have effects beyond city limits. Conse- quently, visions of an urban disaster derive from the fear that it would spread over the whole globe, and this is why means to contain this disaster through proper planning are searched. The argument is that in fact such means are developing within the cities themselves through self-organisation. This requires that the people in the city are taken seriously as citizens in a form of governance closely connected to public life and open for multiple demands, what we refer to as "agora governance". It depends on the citizens, their rights and their possibilities, whether the current urban revolution will lead towards barbarism or civilisation.