Cities and global environmental change

Abstract

Megacities, due to their enormous population concentrations and rapid development dynamics, are gaining more and more importance as junctions of globalisation processes and governance centres in a world increasingly dominated by cities. Megacities are not just large cities. Their scale creates new dynamics, new complexity and new simultaneity of events and processes - physical, social, political and economic. A multitude of drivers, driving forces and actors as well as interacting and partially selfenhancing acceleration and feedback effects is further contribu ting to the complexity of their development dynamics.