Megacity

The general trend is that of increasing city size parallel to the increase in population and migration from the rural areas to the urban in developing nations. Although the earth's carrying capacity will long be exhausted before people manage to fill the world full of skyscrapers, cities are bound to become larger first before they are likely to shrink via colonization of space or family planning. Megacities are this intermediate. They are likey to result from the merger of several close metropolises (extremely large cities) such as those on the United State's Atlantic Seaboard.

Structure of Megacities
Based on the growth of cities seen to date, megacities will preserve their component cities as 'districts' with distinct character of their own.


 * Until transport is dramatically improved, it will not be practical to completely centralise key resources like schools, hospitals and shopping areas, with the result that there will be many local centres.
 * High density cities such as Tokyo and Rotterdam show how transport adapts to high density living. Cities end up with what are in effect multi-level motorways, in order to create free flow of traffic through them.

http://www.douglass-truth.com/blog/blog_pix/megacity.jpg

Links

 * Maps of world megacities
 * MegaCity TaskForce of the International Geographical Union
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology
 * Proposed megabuildings in Tokyo
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimizu_Mega-City_Pyramid - one of them
 * http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-09/27/content_377978.htm - China encourages megacities