Heading into the 21^st century, the world now holds 23 cities with populations in excess of 10 million. According to Janice E. Perlman, Trinity’s new and first-ever professor of comparative urban studies, and founder and president of the Mega-Cities Project (now housed at Trinity), these "’mega-cities’ will be the defining settlements that determine how we will live on this planet in the next century."

For many, that is a deeply troubling prospect. Mega-cities are rife with debilitating internal contradictions: homes to great wealth and great poverty, political power and social inequality, high technology and disease and deprivation, high culture and abject ignorance. Perlman, however, wants to transform that fearful prospect to a more purposeful one. She sees in these cities solutions to the problems that plague them, blight other cities, and imperil the global environment. Accordingly, the goal of the Mega-Cities Project is to establish a "transnational network of community, academic, government, business, and media leaders" trained to develop and share "innovative solutions" and "make cities worldwide more livable." The Mega-Cities Project has already begun to make good on these goals, and, in addition, since its arrival at Trinity a short while ago, Mega-Cities has also generated a great deal of excitement about the many academic, cultural, and extracurricular opportunities it offers.

Transferable solutions
The Mega-Cities network currently connects 22 of the world’s largest cities in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. It has deployed research/action teams to identify successful innovations in these cities and share them with others in the network. Building off the work originated by a local nongovernmental office in an impoverished community in Cairo, for example, Mega-Cities was instrumental in successfully transferring an indigenous solution to other troubled areas. In years past, the rag pickers and garbage scavengers of the Egyptian capital were a stigmatized social caste, collecting garbage from the entire city and bringing it back to a huge dump, where they lived in squalor. Thanks to the collaborative effort of governmental and nongovernmental organizations, private sector groups, and international aid agencies, this community developed innovative micro-enterprises from each part of the garbage flow. Workshops, for example, were formed to make quilts and place mats out of the rags and to convert scavenged metal to trays. This recycling generated monies sufficient to support thousands of families and fund the construction of schools and houses with running water, electricity, and sanitation. Through the Mega-Cities network, this solution—with its attendant environmental, educational, economic, and health benefits—was successfully replicated in Manila and Bombay, affecting thousands more families.

Since its creation in 1987, Mega-Cites has brokered 40 such solution-transfers. True to its mission to "create new knowledge," the Project has also identified and documented hundreds of innovations and produced large numbers of case studies, books, and other scholarship aimed at informing and transforming social policy. The success of the Mega-Cities Project has been recognized by the United Nations, which has adopted, endorsed, and promoted the Project’s collaborative methodology of sharing and scaling up local solutions.

A philosophical home
Perlman, who, since the publication of her 1976 book The Myth of Marginality, has become a major figure in urban development studies, founded Mega-Cities out of her "lifelong passion and goal" to link pioneering scholarship with the construction of new social policies and practices that can change cities for the better. Having recently relocated the Project from New York to Hartford, Perlman believes the Mega-Cities Project has found in Trinity both a physical and a philosophical home. Trinity’s commitment to scholarship, to the well-being of its urban environment, and to educating students in global civic literacy fits well with Mega-Cities’ founding ideas and goals.

"For several years I have been intrigued by the challenge of preparing the next generation of leaders for the complex world they will inherit," says Perlman. "We’re at a level of urban opportunity and crisis that really demands a new approach." She is thus "delighted to join Trinity," where she will participate in the College’s efforts in preparing future leaders educated in the ways of the world.

Impressed by the accomplishments and promise of the Mega-Cities Project, members of the Trinity community have quickly set about developing curricular and scholarly initiatives to capitalize on the wealth of new educational opportunities the Project offers. Associate Academic Dean J. Ronald Spencer notes that Mega-Cities has the potential to enrich Trinity’s educational landscape in a variety of ways. One is that the project’s staff will teach and thus expand curricular offerings. Perlman herself, an anthropologist by training whom Associate Professor of History and Director of International Studies Dario A. Euraque calls "a major figure in Latin American scholarship," is teaching urban studies courses in the fall and spring semesters this year. Also teaching will be Mega-Cities project director Cecilia Martinez de la Macorra, a licensed architect and formerly a professor of architecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, where she led a number of key Mega-Cities initiatives; and Abdou Maliq Simone, the project’s senior research associate, whose expertise is in urban Africa and Asia.

Spencer reports that several faculty members are interested in developing Trinity global learning sites at some of the Mega-Cities sites. He notes, "The move of Mega-Cities to Trinity opens doors for us and gives us access to an existing network of key people in these cities."

Euraque is one of a number of faculty who have met over the summer to begin developing ways to mesh Trinity’s goals, programs, and resources with the Project’s. Euraque sees "enormous potential" for student internships, among other academic and educational opportunities. And faculty members whose research has focused on other cities, he adds, can now "think more broadly" about scholarly possibilities in Mega-Cities sites where Trinity has not previously had an established presence.

Director of Asian Programs and Chairman of the History Department Professor Michael E. Lestz is in the process of developing a study program for the Bard College-based International Honors Program that will take Trinity students as well as students from other colleges to Kathmandu, Nepal, and Lhasa, Tibet. In addition, Lestz was the architect of a conference in June, supported by the Christian Johnson Endeavor, that brought together leading academic figures from China, Vietnam, Nepal, Taiwan, and Hong Kong with President Dobelle, Dean of the Faculty Miller Brown, Professor Perlman, and other Trinity faculty to discuss the elaboration of an Asian "citiscape" program that will be akin in some respects to an urban studies course elaborated by the Mega-Cities Project as a program for undergraduate foreign study. The "citiscape" design foresees that undergraduates would visit cities in East, Southeast, and South Asia to engage in a comparative examination of the history, common challenges, and developmental dilemmas of a range of Asian societies. Both of these ventures in international study have been nourished by the Mega-Cities link with Trinity and are suggestive of the range of opportunities opened as Trinity shares the Mega-Cities Project's experience in a variety of settings and the networks it has created to nurture global communication and understanding.

Another idea under consideration would further infuse Trinity’s own campus with a greater global presence. Perlman is developing a plan that would bring top undergraduate students from each of the Mega-Cities sites to Trinity for yearlong fellowships.

Resource and catalyst
This crop of proposed or developing projects is indicative of the many creative and educationally powerful ideas that have sprung up around the Mega-Cities Project since its arrival at Trinity. While the Project will continue to generate solutions to problems of global importance, it will now also be an important resource and catalyst for learning at Trinity. Perlman says she hopes students and faculty will realize that "the limits of our imaginations are the only limits to this network."