Shrinking World, Growing Cities
Trinity's Mega-Cities Program offers international linkages for teaching and research

by Janice E. Perlman

The urban century and the four transformations
Welcome to the urban century! For the first time since the rise of cities 10,000 years ago, more than half the world's population will soon live in urban settlements. This transformation from a predominantly rural world to a predominantly urban one forces us to rethink our most basic paradigms, not only of the urban condition, but also of the human condition. It will profoundly alter how we conduct every aspect of our lives, from the household level to the international level, and will determine the legacy we leave for future generations.

   At the beginning of the 19th century, only five percent of the world's population lived in urban areas; at the beginning of the 20th century, it was close to 15 percent; and today, as we enter the 21st century, close to 50 percent of us are urbanites. Looking towards the future, the trend is even more dramatic. According to the United Nations, "Virtually all of the population growth expected during 2000-2030 will be concentrated in the urban areas of the world."

   From 2000 to 2030, the urban population is expected to increase by two billion persons, the same number that will be added to the whole population of the world. The current urban population of 2.9 billion people will swell to 4.9 billion by 2030; whereas, the total world population is 6.1 billion now and will grow to 8.1 billion over the same time period.

   The second major transformation is a total reversal in the locus of our major cities, from the highly industrialized countries of the north to the developing countries of the south, in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In 1950, only three of the world's largest cities were in poor countries; currently, only three of the world's largest cities are in rich countries.

This reversal has contributed to the third transformation--from the city of the elite to the city of the masses, or from the formal-sector city to the informal-sector city. While cities of the "first world" remain relatively stable in population, cities in the developing countries are growing at about 2.3 percent per year, and their low-income areas (shantytowns, slums, and squatter settlements) are growing at twice that rate. This means that poverty is becoming urbanized, as cityward migration transforms rural peasants into urban squatters. Housing, jobs, and services, not provided through state or market mechanisms, are created by the ingenuity of the urban poor through the "informal economy," which accounts for one-quarter to two-thirds of the "real economy" of these cities.

   Despite these overwhelming urban trends, less than 10 percent of all international assistance funding goes to cities, while over 90 percent is still targeted at rural areas, in the misguided belief that investment in rural development will somehow stem the tide of cityward migration.  Regardless of the type of city, every country has responded to the "urban explosion" by trying to limit the growth of its largest cities. These efforts have included restricting in-migration, dispersing the would-be migrants (to growth poles near capitals, smaller cities, or resettlement areas), and stimulating rural development in hopes of equalizing the level of living in the countryside and the city. These efforts have met with limited success in the developing world. Some, such as rural development, have even proven counterproductive, actually hastening out-migration from the countryside.

   To my mind, the most dramatic transformation of all is from cities as we have known them to enormous mega-city regions with populations of more than 10 million each. In the next 14 years, there will be 23 of these huge metropolitan areas, five of them with more than 20 million people each.

   The sheer size and scale of the mega-regions presents a situation for which we have no collective experience. No precedent exists for feeding, sheltering, educating, or transporting so many people in such dense and heterogeneous conditions. Regardless of historic, economic, political, or socio-cultural differences, all of these cities face increasing demands on limited city budgets, extreme polarization between rich and poor, and severe environmental strain, stretching to the limit the carrying capacities of their surrounding areas.

   The congestion, pollution, crime, and contamination in these cities are well-covered by the mass media. What goes unnoticed is their energy, vitality, and opportunity, which exert a magnetic force, attracting the best talent and most highly motivated people. What distinguishes mega-cities from capital cities (capitals of nation states) and world/global cities (capitals of capital and information flows) is precisely that mega-cities are capitals of people. People have voted with their feet, seeking a better life, more choice, and wider opportunities for themselves and their children.

    
The very diversity and proximity of this many people confronting together the crises and contradictions of urban life are what make these mega-cities such fertile soil for innovation. The fact of their importance economically, politically, intellectually, and culturally makes them the trendsetters. As Manuel Castells writes, "Mega-cities are the directional centers, the centers for technological innovation, the senders of symbolic messages, images and information, the producers of producer services, the collective factories of the new manufacturing, as well as depositories of the remnants of traditional manufacturing. Mega-cities are the nerve centers of our interconnected global system . . . they are the amplified portrait of ourselves."

 The challenge: transforming urban policy and practice
   There is sufficient energy and creativity in the cities today to address their myriad challenges of livability, but there are too few mechanisms to channel these forces into policy or to multiply the effects of approaches that work. Thus, there is a compelling need to discover alternative approaches that make better use of the abundant and underutilized human resources in the city and create multiplier effects with the scarce natural and financial resources.

   To address this need, I founded the Mega-Cities Project, a transnational, nonprofit network among these cities. Its immediate objective was to shorten the 20-to-25-year lag-time between new ideas and their implementation by identifying, documenting, and transferring successful urban innovations among cities, creating a "can-do" climate for urban problem solving.

   Over the past 15 years, the Mega-Cities Project has identified hundreds of workable solutions and transferred some 40 of them across geographically, culturally, and politically disparate communities worldwide. After 10 years of uphill struggle to promote an asset-based view of mega-cities and reverse the incentive system for risk-taking, the Mega-Cities Project's approach was incorporated into official United Nations policy at the U.N. City Summit in Istanbul in 1996 under the rubric "urban best practices."

   At that point, the Mega-Cities Project refocused its mission. We decided to dedicate our efforts to preparing the next generation of urban leaders for the complex challenges they would face in the future. We began developing cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary, and cross-sectoral urban experiences for undergraduates through the International Honors Program, while starting a search for an appropriate base for our core office. This opened the possibility for my return to teaching and research, providing the opportunity to distill what we had learned and to rethink the city of the 21st century. The outmoded 19th-century model that was stretched into the 20th century pits economic development against environmental sustainability and has led to ever-greater disparities between rich and poor and ever-greater squandering of natural resources.

 Urban engagement at Trinity College
 Simultaneously, Trinity had just completed a new strategic plan--launched at its 175th anniversary--based in large part on the recognition that it was uniquely positioned to leverage its urban location and global connections. The College could further differentiate itself by expanding links to world cities and preparing its students to thrive as global urban citizens. The faculty and administration had already developed a new approach to town-gown relations with Hartford, particularly in the surrounding neighborhoods. Among the ongoing initiatives was the Community Learning Initiative, which encouraged faculty members across campus to involve their students in hands-on research/service projects in the city, and the Trinity Center for Neighborhoods, building upon a $5-million grant from the Kellogg Foundation that supported, among other things, creation of the Smart Neighborhood Program, the Trinfo.Café, and the Cities Data Center.

    In January 2000, I joined the College's faculty as the first professor of comparative urban studies, and the Mega- Cities Project moved from Hunter College in New York City here to Trinity. Since then, we have embraced the challenge of linking local Hartford issues with global urban developments and bridging research and action, theory and practice.

   Last fall, in my course on "Cities, Mega-cities, and Our Global Future," each of the 25 undergraduates selected one of the mega-cities and did weekly research on different aspects of that city, ranging from demographics to job creation, housing, participatory democracy, environmental sustainability, urban policy and planning, and cultural expression. By the end of the term, the students had become "experts," presenting oral and written comparative research projects and entering their newly acquired knowledge and insights onto the World Wide Web.

   Teaching about cities is not sufficient, however. There is a need to expand the learning community by linking rigorous research and the creation of new knowledge with the construction of conditions for a new knowledge field as well as constructive social outcomes born of new ideas, policies, and practices that make cities work for all urbanites, not just the elite. Toward this end, Dean of Faculty Miller Brown has initiated the Metropolitan Hartford Social Science Research Initiative, which brings together urban-oriented faculty members to collaborate with each other and with students in joint research and publication ventures. In conjunction with this effort, faculty members and administrators are working to integrate the insights of the Mega-Cities Project into the College's teaching and research efforts.

   As of the writing of this article, 25 sophomores are taking my course "Social Science Approaches to the City." A smaller group of juniors and seniors is engaged with me in an intensive "Studio in Urban and Community Development," focused on the Hartford metropolitan region. Our research project traces the dynamics of urban poverty over the past 30 years. We are interviewing community leaders in each low-income neighborhood and collecting individual life histories to analyze against the backdrop of public policy, civil society initiatives, and macro political/economic changes.

   This research paradigm evolved from my research and experience over the past 30 years in the favelas (squatter settlements) of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 1968-69, I lived in three favelas and interviewed 200 randomly selected individuals and 50 leaders from each for my doctoral dissertation, later published as The Myth of Marginality: Urban Politics and Poverty in Rio de Janeiro. Since coming to Trinity, I have received a Fulbright award and grants from the Tinker Foundation, the World Bank, and DFID (the British International Aid Agency) to re-study those same individuals and their descendants to determine what factors contribute to breaking the intergenerational persistence of poverty. This means that we now have Trinity students and Hartford community members engaged in direct comparative research with their counterparts in Brazil.

 Internationalizing Trinity College
 It is our hope that within the foreseeable future, we may have as many as 40 undergraduate Mega-City Fellows spending a year each on Trinity's campus, integrated in courses of their own choosing and coordinated through a special thematic seminar, doing work that will result in a joint publication. Our Mega-Cities teams around the world have agreed to conduct competitions for the best and brightest undergraduates for this privilege. Concomitantly, 10 of our Mega-Cities teams are ready to offer Trinity students a variety of summer or semester-long internships, courses, and/or research projects, specifically tailored for individuals or groups. In this way, we anticipate moving Trinity towards becoming the preeminent liberal arts college for undergraduates interested in urban and international studies.

   Ultimately, by working with young people here and elsewhere around the world, we envision making our cities of the future more attractive and convivial places in which to live and learn, work and play.

Janice E. Perlman is the director of the Mega-Cities Program and professor of comparative urban studies.