Abstract
Imagine this: in 1960, Tokyo, Osaka, and New York were the only three megacities with over ten million people in the world. By 2030, only seventy years later, 730 million of 9.7 billion people are projected to live in 41 megacities, with most of those cities disproportionately located in the “Global South.” By 2050, the United Nations predicts that 68 percent of the world population will live in urban areas, with ninety percent of the growth in Africa and Asia (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2019, 1–6).
The need to understand the social, cultural and ecological consequences of concentrated urbanization in megacities is a critical planning challenge, and one that is not commonly discussed. Emerging from a convergence of rapid population growth, increased suburbanization and inner urban consolidation, megacities both influence and are influenced by global change processes (Kraas et al. 2014, 1–6). The result of concentrated urbanization has affected all aspects of city life, from governance processes and infrastructure development, to consumption practices and technological innovation aimed to improve efficiencies.
In “The Routledge Handbook of Planning Megacities in the Global South” Deden Rukmana and fellow authors ask us reinterrogate how cities are made, for whom, and toward what end. The collection fills an important gap in existing literature by focusing on planning and governance in Global South megacities. A focus on megacities, particularly as an edited compilation representing diverse geographic locations, is timely as populations continue to cluster in urban areas. Global South megacities represent a concentrated microcosm of the possibilities and perils of planning and governance technologies, including heightened inequalities resulting from such innovations.
The ambitious collection is divided into six sections. Part one, “Managing Urban Growth,” highlights urbanization processes and urban form changes with the advent of megacities. In the next section, “Shaping the Future: the Legacy of Spatial Planning and Master Plans” authors draw from historical examples to critically examine how future-oriented master planning might take shape. The third section “Connecting the Places” includes chapters that analyze the transportation and land use nexus, as well as the effect of other public infrastructure on mobility and access. Part four highlights housing in Global South megacities, specifically the rise and management of informal housing. In the fifth section, “Planning for Resilience,” authors reflect on climate vulnerable megacities, as well as technological innovations that might help mitigate natural disasters. The sixth section in the collection, “Democratizing the Planning Process,” focuses on a range of innovations that question how democratic ideals are realized through planning. Finally, section seven “Challenges, Reconfigurations, and Initiatives,” while in some ways feels like a “capture all,” revisits underlying rapid urban growth and management challenges of megacities while looking forward.
As the section titles suggest, this edited collection serves as a reminder that critical conundrums in contemporary urban theory are persistent regardless of geography, making the collection relatable to scholars across Global South and North contexts. Urban growth, spatial planning, public spaces, housing disparities, natural disaster management, and participatory planning are nothing new, albeit the scale of the megacity shifts the specificities of planning, participation, and implementation. Specifically, chapters highlight topics such as “bi-polar development,” public private partnerships, public space contestations, (im)mobility, and urban rural-dependencies that are prevalent in different urban contexts, although their expressions might vary. Whereas the focus is on megacities, the reader quickly realizes that the issues discussed are relatable phenomena taking place in other cities as well. In this sense, the book presents a delicate balance of revisiting existing planning tools with newer innovations. For example, chapter authors Schmidt and Mueller discuss the effects and efficacy of participatory budgeting, a commonly discussed tool, to address the persistent planning issue of citizen participation in Mexico City, Mexico while Liu, Li, and Yu reflect on the effects on newer sponge city construction on short- and long-term ecological effects in Shenzhen, China.
The collection’s focus on Global South cities also acknowledges the postcolonial condition that has influenced the types of planning and governance regimes that exist in many present-day megacities. This analysis comes at a critical juncture, when planning scholars recognize that the unique histories and configurations of challenges in southern and southeastern contexts offer different challenges opportunities and possibilities for urbanisms. One of the most successful aspects of this compilation is the historization of planning and development in specific locations throughout the Global South. Many of the authors successfully connect a complicated colonial history to present-day planning challenges, including state fragmentations, exacerbated spatial mismatch issues, and ongoing racial and ethnic tensions. For example, chapter author Milheiro’s contribution reflects on the tension between modernization and coloniality’s persistence through the built typologies of Luanda, Angola. Through a rigorous historical overview of spatial planning in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, chapter author Omunga demonstrates the lingering effects of the British colonial administration’s planning ideologies despite discrete paradigm shifts that have taken plan since.
At times, the dense reflections on land use changes, planning paradigm shifts, and technological and governance innovations highlighted in the collection obfuscated the face of residents. A focus on megacities necessitates a deeper discussion of planning’s “dark side” (Yiftachel 1998), specifically the effects of the social production of space on residents’ day-to-day experiences and negotiations. How do megacities exacerbate the rational and oppressive tendencies of the profession? What are the implications of concentrated hyper-urbanization on social control in the everyday lives of residents? Moreover, what are examples of resistances by residents that confront the planning system? However, there are some refreshing examples. Chapter author Friendly adopts Agamben’s (2005) ’state of exception’ to discuss the ways in which mega events in Rio de Janeiro’s redevelopment and gentrification have led to notable resistance movements established through academic, professional and NGO solidarities with residents. Similarly, in São Paulo, author Belik describes the nuanced and polarizing opinions of residents as they organized to convert a controversial highway into a public space. In their contribution, authors Rishi and Sayal challenge the dominant and persistent exchange value rationale for demolition and redevelopment through a neighborhood-level case in Delhi, India where slum residents shared their positive experiences with self-built housing and the organic characteristics of informality that they found to appreciate. While megacities can be understood as hubs of innovation and progress, they are simultaneously representative of the increasing class-based inequities and social tensions where planning and governance regimes historically and currently have failed to accommodate those most impacted. A clearer articulation of what is at stake as we concentrate on planning for the next fifty years, as well as examples, would have served the compilation well.
Rukmana’s inclusion of fifty-one established and early career scholars, as well as practitioners, mostly from non-western locations as chapter authors is commendable. The cities in this compilation represent much of the Global South, including South America, the Middle East, South/southeast Asia, and Africa. Not only are the cities in this compilation representative of the Global South, many of the contributors themselves are also located in the Global South, repositioning whose knowledge is foregrounded in academic circles. The book is also well-structured, and as Rukmana intends, would serve well as a catalog for graduate and undergraduate students to get a comprehensive overview of planning and governance challenges in megacities. Discussion guides at the end of each section might have helped serve this purpose even better; still, one could easily imagine this collection serving as a foundational text to introduce the nuances of social, environmental, and economic challenges that planners face in megacities and cities more generally.
