Urban Research Round-up: Recent Articles on City Trends

Here’s a quick list of articles that provide significant research on cities, both in the US and overseas.

The global megacity boom

This article is a handy little reference. It provides a snapshot of the world’s ten largest cities with total population, per capita GDP, and a reference population from 1975 to demonstrate growth. The article is worth mining for several other factoids as well.

New Urbanism isn’t dead – but thanks to climate change, it is evolving

This article is a bit in the weeds, but I point it out for one, simple reason. In the past, new urban city development with its walkable live, work, play settings were pushed for social reasons and to alleviate issues such as congestion. However, this movement to urbanize and densify cities may get a new wind from issues surrounding climate change. The argument now stands that urban sprawl (the suburbanization of metro areas) contributes to the severity of things like flooding from hurricanes. Our experience here in Houston with Harvey is the current prime example. This may only intensify the push for urbanization.

Richard Florida Is Sorry

If you’re really into the philosophical arguments behind urbanization, then this article is for you. Richard Florida is one of the premier urban scholars in North America, and he recently published a book called the New Urban Crisis. From my read, this book was a development of his older works. However, Sam Wetherell reads it at as a mea culpa. Regardless of the take, this article does a great job critiquing some really important topics that fuel the changing shifts in the urban landscape. It’s a good read if you enjoy high level conversations.