WEBVTT - The Megacity Era 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.080 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.280 --> 0:00:14.360 Forward Thinking. Hey then, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:17.000 the podcast that looks at the future and says, when 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:19.040 you're alone in life is making you lonely, you can 0:00:19.079 --> 0:00:23.680 always go downtown. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren, and I'm 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:25.840 Joe McCormick. And I've got a question for you guys. 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:30.920 You do what's the biggest city you've ever been to? Uh? 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:35.720 New York City? Yeah? New York? Are you sure you actually? 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:40.080 I haven't. London might be bigger as London, bigger significantly, 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:43.319 So yeah, yeah, that was kind of a surprise to me. 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:45.919 When we were doing research for this episode. I assumed 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:48.440 London was bigger than it actually is. Well, part of 0:00:48.479 --> 0:00:51.800 the problem is defining what a city is, right, because 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:54.480 the perception of what a city is versus what it 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:58.040 legally is are two different things. Just as a quick 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:02.200 aside before we even get to the topic, So Atlanta, 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:04.640 for example, not that big of a city. I live. 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:08.800 I live actually in the city limits of Atlanta, all right, 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:10.960 So we're all three in the city limits of Atlanta, 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:14.840 But about five years ago I lived just outside the 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:18.320 city limits. And the thing about it is that I 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:20.520 would still tell people I live in Atlanta. I still 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:23.400 thought of it as Atlanta. And in fact, I noticed 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:27.720 something interesting that the further away from Atlanta a person lived, 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:31.480 the bigger the city seemed to be. So, for example, 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:34.040 you might you might live inside what we call the perimeter, 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:37.479 that's to eighty five. It's a highway that circles not 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:39.840 just the city of Atlanta, but some of the metropolitan 0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:44.039 area immediately around it, and uh, someone outside of that 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:46.720 would refer to anything inside two eighty five is Atlanta. 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:50.680 So when living in say, part of Decatur, might say, oh, well, 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.120 I live in Decatur. Uh, Atlanta. The city of Atlanta 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:56.680 is down the street. But you know, when I lived 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:59.560 in Decatur, if I was talking to somebody who didn't 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:01.560 live in town, I would just tell them I lived 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:05.000 in Atlanta, so that the answer made sense exactly. And again, 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:06.840 the further out you would go, the bigger the city 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:10.120 would be. So I know people who live uh, pretty 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:13.200 far up in northern Georgia who would think of Gwynette, 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:15.800 which is a suburb of Atlanta, as being Atlanta. That 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:20.560 is also Atlanta, and it's not people who live in 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:24.720 Atlanta and Gwynette is where you like get lost looking 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:28.320 for a flea market you heard about, or a Chinese 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:31.040 restaurant or etcetera. Yeah, it's it's where you go and 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:33.679 you drive to eight different chain restaurants, all of which 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:35.560 have a forty five minute wait, and you think, what 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:39.639 where am I? I apologize, I didn't mean to slam Gwynette. 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:42.360 I'm sure it's it's just full of absolutely lovely people, 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:44.840 but it is. Yes, it's way out there. Yeah, and 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:47.120 our point being that even all of us who live 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:50.600 within the city limits, I think there's at least seven miles. 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:53.360 Is the crow flies between each of our houses. Yeah, 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:57.079 And so it's it's one of those things where defining 0:02:57.240 --> 0:02:59.240 what is the actual city is a is a bit 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.680 of a tricky situation. And the reason why we're even 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:06.919 talking about it, why this the seemingly weird tangent is happening, 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:09.440 is because we're going to talk about mega cities today. 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:14.880 Now these are giganto enormous cities, and the same problem 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:18.240 of defining what is a mega city exists on that 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:20.799 scale as it does with something like Atlanta, which does 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:24.040 not merit it is not a mega city. Sure, because technically, 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:26.800 a mega city has to have a population of over 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:30.600 ten million people to be considered a mega city. But 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:33.280 but right, But where do you draw those lines? Because 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:35.400 as as it turns out, when we call it something 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:39.640 a mega city, it's not necessarily the political or or 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:41.800 you know, the boundary of a city. It's it's the 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:46.760 urban development around it. Where from an outsider's perspective, you 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:50.720 you know, you come into the outside areas of that sprawl, 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:54.600 that's where you start saying, this is the city of whatever. 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:57.320 And a mega city can also be not just a 0:03:57.400 --> 0:03:59.760 single entity, but it could be two cities that have 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:05.040 grown outward so that their edges now meet. A lot 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:07.760 of what you're talking about actually points to a larger 0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:11.080 principle that might be something that's good to start with here, 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:14.480 which is that in many ways, the cities we live 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:20.159 in today's are largely accidental. Yea. You know, they grew 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:24.840 out of settlements that arose for some reason. They might 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:28.279 have been on a river where there was a good 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:31.479 place to load and unload cargo, or they might have 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:35.000 been at the center of where some railroad lines met, 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:39.200 or at the end like Terminus, which is the old 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:42.080 name for Atlanta, sure where they might have been at 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:44.520 a good port where there was a place to again 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:47.360 load and unload cargo. It seems to be mostly based 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:50.680 around economic transportation. But right, so there are these kind 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:52.599 of strange ways in which many of the cities we 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:56.719 live in today are the result of this strange growth 0:04:56.800 --> 0:05:00.480 process that we don't even fully plan or under stand 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:04.320 all the time. Like we we live in an urbanization age. 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:07.240 This is the age of moving to the big city. 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:09.880 And it's not just where we live. This is a 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:13.760 trend that's happening all over the world. Yeah, more all 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:18.040 over the world than right, Like, if you go back 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:22.280 a couple hundred years to like eighteen hundred, what percentage 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:24.960 of the people on earth were living in urban areas, 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:31.240 like in cities three percent of the hum of the humans. 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:35.920 We're living in places that you would not describe as 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:38.919 an urban area. So not a city or a large town. 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:42.880 We're talking people who are living out in small villages 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:47.840 or even on you know, individual farmland, real one Starbucks 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:51.480 town kind of places. Yeah, right where where if you're 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:56.359 equivalent of Starbucks, it was a horse. I think if 0:05:56.400 --> 0:05:57.720 your town had a horse in it, that was a 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:01.800 big deal about those one horse town. Yeah. So if 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:04.279 you go a hundred years after that and go to 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:09.039 nineteen hundreds, so now the industrial revolution is underway right 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:11.520 where we're seeing people who are meeting each other on 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:15.160 the road like do you have small yet? We have small? 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:18.520 Let me show you. So by then a hundred years 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:20.960 going by, it went from three percent to fourteen percent 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:23.720 of the world's population. And at that time about a 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:27.880 dozen cities had populations of a million or more people 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:31.240 in it. So now we're talking about an era where 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:34.400 we've got some some pretty large cities for the time 0:06:34.920 --> 0:06:38.320 and just we're starting to see this trend of people 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:43.560 seeing an opportunity to make a living doing something uh 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:46.640 in a city. Also, mechanization is starting to take some 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:50.520 of the load off of agriculture, meaning that there are 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:53.560 fewer jobs out in the more remote areas. So you've 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:56.279 got a double incentive to try and find your way 0:06:57.279 --> 0:06:59.880 possibly moving to the big city. Right. But new to 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:02.920 types of jobs are coming into being, and a lot 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:06.600 of these would be urban based jobs, like some manufacturing 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:11.200 type jobs or new knowledge based jobs. So if we 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:13.520 move up to nineteen fifties and now now we're just 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:17.120 going fifty more years, uh, it had more than doubled. 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:23.000 We're talking about thirty of the world's population exactly. Yeah, yeah, 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:27.040 And in ninety to the world's population was about seven 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:30.440 forty six million people. And that also happens to be 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:35.160 when the growth of rural population started to officially slow. Uh, 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.160 it hadn't quite peaked yet, but the UN expects it 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:43.480 to begin reversing. Today there are fifty four percent of 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:46.840 the world's population living in urban areas. So how many 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:50.920 is that? Some three point nine billion three point nine 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:54.720 billion people living in urban areas. Now, whether you define 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:57.640 that as a city or the suburb of the city 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:00.320 or a large town, that sort of stuff. So World 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:04.200 Health Organization actually predicts that between twenty and twenty will 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:06.880 have a growth rate of urban population of one point 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:10.480 eight four percent. Uh, that's global. Like if you were 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:13.720 to average everything out, and then that would actually slow 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:16.640 down and continue to slow down over the next few years. 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:19.720 So between twenty five the growth rate would be one 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:23.560 point six and twenty five to thirty would be one 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:26.840 point for four percent. And if you look at the 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:32.600 globe that these different regions have um very different percentages, 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:36.400 like the overall percentage of the globe, like Lawrence said, 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:41.200 has of the population living in urban areas in North America, 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:45.559 it's excuse way more to the urban areas. It's two 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:48.559 of the population of North America lives in an urban area. 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:51.920 But if you look in areas like Asia and Africa, 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:55.800 it's closer to So it all depends on where you 0:08:55.840 --> 0:09:01.040 are looking. Um So, yeah, it's it's it's a trend 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:04.360 that is going to continue, and it's going faster in 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:10.040 some places, some some places significantly faster than yeah, absolutely so. 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:14.320 So in we said that there were twelve cities that 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:16.679 had populations of a million or more. How many is 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:20.319 it today? More than four d more than four hundred 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:22.920 cities with a population of a million or more people. 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:28.000 And uh, there are the mega cities like you mentioned, Lauren, 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:31.080 those are the ones that have ten million people in them. 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:35.280 We now have about twenty eight of those. By we 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:40.200 may have as many as forty estimations, very because it's 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:44.839 very difficult to predict exactly how sustainable some of these 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:47.920 growth trends are. UH. And there's some who think that, 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:52.160 you know, Chicago, which has been hovering just beneath mega 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:56.360 city levels, like they have around nine million something uh 0:09:56.440 --> 0:10:00.560 in their population may top that by twenty twenty. But 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:04.440 other cities like London, which has also been hovering just 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:07.120 under mega city for for the actual city, well not 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:10.480 the actual city of London, for greater London, um, they 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:13.920 might also hit that level. Yeah, there was another estimate 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:16.560 I found that was according to the u N again, 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:19.600 there are going to be a predicted forty one mega 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:24.319 cities on Earth with populations exceeding ten million by right. Yeah, 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:27.439 So again the estimations obviously their estimations, so they vary 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:30.080 depending upon what data people are looking at and how 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:32.400 they are are breaking that down, and they change from 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:35.240 year to year. So that's exciting, Yeah, because I mean 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:38.320 all sorts of stuff. Factors can things like you know, 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:43.000 natural disasters, weather patterns, wars, I mean, all these very 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:46.680 complex issues will clearly make a huge impact on these 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:49.840 growth rates. Also, what's interesting to me is that while 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:52.440 fifty four percent of the world's population live in cities, 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:54.840 if you look at just mega cities and say, all right, 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:57.800 well what percentage of the population lives in mega cities, 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:02.600 it's six point seven percent. So mega cities, while they 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:05.200 are huge, and you know, you look at this and 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:07.800 you're like, wow, ten million people or more are living 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:10.960 in this mega city. It still represents um six point 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:16.640 seven percent population, but that number is growing, Yes, it is, 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:19.720 and we will expect that to continue to grow, both 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:24.040 as existing mega cities grow larger and new mega cities 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:28.240 come into being as the smaller I hate to use 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:30.880 the word smaller. That doesn't even make sense. These these 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:36.200 already large cities boom into mega cities. Uh so, it's 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:40.080 there's other some other predictions that are really interesting to me. 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:43.480 The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs says 0:11:43.520 --> 0:11:46.960 that by nearly seventy percent of the world's population will 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:49.200 be living in urban areas, so we'll continue to see 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:54.560 that increase from up to seventy percent, and that at 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:57.480 that time, the population is expected to be somewhere in 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:00.760 the neighborhood of ten billion people. So that means the 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:02.959 number of people who are living in cities by the 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:05.800 year will be the same as the number of people 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:09.280 who are alive on the planet right now. So if 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:11.480 we took everyone who's alive right now and put them 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:13.839 in a city, that's essentially the number of people who 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:16.960 will be living in cities by according to the United Nations, 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:21.680 well let's start busting people in and see you feel fit. Yeah, 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:23.679 we could fit another twenty or thirty people in this 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:27.120 room alone. Yeah, I mean as long as they don't mind, 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:29.480 you know, not touching the floor, and then we just 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:32.080 be stacked on top of one another. But but no, 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:34.240 I mean, I mean that's that's a joke, but also 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:38.880 a kind of horrifying actual question of how are we 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:41.360 going to fit all of these people into these areas 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:43.840 and what on earth are we going to do with them? Right? 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:45.800 And I would say it's not so much a question 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:49.360 of physically fitting, like you're packing a trunk in some 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:52.360 In some areas, it kind of is, but we're we're 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:55.080 lucky enough to not really have that problem in middle 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:58.720 class Atlanta. But yeah, I think that the issue is 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:02.480 more thinking about what a city is. I mean, a 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:06.600 city is not your resource production landscape. It is your 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:11.200 resource consumption landscape. And it makes lots of things. It uh, 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:14.800 you know, it makes knowledge, It creates economic value in 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:19.360 plenty of ways. But the raw resources that your population 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:22.600 uses don't typically come from cities, and how could they. 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:26.319 You You need farmlands to create food, your quarries to 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:28.840 to mind stuff exactly. Yeah, and that's going to come 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:32.480 from the wider landscape. So as you think about cities, 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:35.680 it's kind of interesting to think about. Basically, you're moving 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:41.079 more and more consumption into tiny areas farther and farther 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:45.560 away from where resources are produced, and beyond that, you're 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:51.280 also expanding outward the borders of the urban That's that's 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:53.720 why a lot of these these studies talk about urban 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:57.240 environments as opposed to cities, because the term city has 0:13:57.280 --> 0:14:00.320 a very specific meaning. If you are being really you know, 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:04.440 strict about it, you're talking about the borders of a municipality. 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:07.199 And when we say the city of you know, when 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:09.320 we say New York City, we're really not just meaning 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:12.120 the New York City like where the borders would stop. 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:15.480 We mean the entire metropolitan area around New York City. 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:18.200 In fact, if we were to limit ourselves to just 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:23.080 the definitive this you know, city, then the numbers would 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:26.200 be totally different when you start looking at the you know, 0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:30.480 the the top mega cities that are out there. Um So, 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:36.000 whether it's an a a concentrated urban environment around a 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:40.040 large city like New York City is, or it's um 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:43.800 more of a kind of a convergence of two different cities. 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:46.280 We've got different terms for that as well to kind 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:51.040 of explain those. Okay, what's Dallas fort Worth? Is that 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:55.440 just one city? Now that would be I would argue 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:59.240 that Dallas. I guess it all depends on your your perspective, right, 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:04.160 You've got like the metroplex. A metroplex would be a 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:08.480 an urban environment made up of two different cities that 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:11.400 are more or less or two or more cities that 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:14.120 are more or less on the same level already. So 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:17.840 you wouldn't say that one city is predominantly you know, 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:20.040 this was the big anchor city and these other ones 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:22.760 just got swallowed up by the sprawl. Yeah, it's like 0:15:22.800 --> 0:15:26.200 a binary star system. Yeah, exactly. And it's just that 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:30.360 the spheres of influence have now overlapped one another. So 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:34.480 Baltimore and Washington, d C. This is absolutely the case, Lauren. 0:15:34.520 --> 0:15:37.080 I remember we went up to when we went up 0:15:37.120 --> 0:15:39.600 to visit the Discovery headquarters back when How Stuff Works 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:43.640 was part of Discovery Communications. We took a bus from 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:46.640 or I guess it was a cab from the DC 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:51.240 area all the way into Baltimore to where or actually 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:54.720 beyond Baltimore to too um, silver Spring. I think it 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:58.960 was left town the whole time. You're just like, Okay, 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:02.000 I see now there's more city, and now there's more city, 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:05.120 and now there are different monuments and more city. There's 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:07.720 no differentiation. Really, you know, you didn't You never felt 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:10.080 like you had left one city and now you're entering another. 0:16:10.160 --> 0:16:14.680 You just free landscape. Yeah, so that would be a metroplex. 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:17.480 Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill is another great example. You know, 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:21.040 that's a that's sometimes called the triangle, and but it's 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:25.000 the same sort of thing. Then you've also got a conturbation, 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:28.440 which is where that's the best word. I've got to say, 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:33.440 it's the least awkward best word ever, conturbation, conbation. Yeah, yeah, 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:35.680 it doesn't. It doesn't make me think that. I'm like, 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:37.720 there's gotta be a different way to pronounce that, right. 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:40.960 Um No, I can see that. It's it's con so 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:45.960 with and then urbation. Yeah. And so it's it's more 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:52.920 or less continuous urban environment. Yes, so we're talking about city, suburbs, towns, 0:16:52.960 --> 0:16:56.000 everything getting swallowed up that I would argue metro Atlanta 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:00.560 falls into that category. Um, it's it's obviously it's not a. 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:03.320 It's it's not a mega city. We don't have a 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:06.480 population that would put us into that category. But if 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:09.679 you look at a map of the metropolitan Atlanta area, 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:12.400 there are a lot of little towns that are essentially 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:14.960 swallowed up by the city. Oh yeah, absolutely, the same 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:18.720 thing with with Boston or San Francisco. So let's take 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:21.480 a look really quickly about the two at the top 0:17:21.520 --> 0:17:23.639 five cities by population. Now, this is according to the 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:27.960 World Atlas. Again, look, depending upon what resource you use, 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:31.680 you may see different a different ranking. And it's also 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:36.119 because it's all on how you define the city. So 0:17:36.160 --> 0:17:39.199 if you're defining it as the metropolitan area around a 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:42.880 particular core, that's going to give you a different number 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:45.119 than if you limit yourself to a specific city. So 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:49.320 number one on the list is Tokyo, Japan. It is 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:54.280 the largest mega city with thirty seven million, one d 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:58.119 twenty six thousand people in it. I do not even 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:01.840 understand that number. Yeah. Now, to be fair, this again 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:06.280 doesn't just mean the the established historical borders of Tokyo. 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:09.840 It it also is the metropolitan area around it. Now, 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:13.920 the population density is six thousand, thirty eight people per 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:18.280 square kilometer, or fifteen thousand, six hundred people per square mile. 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:24.960 Every square mile is a lot. Yes, as someone who 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:28.960 walks a few miles each day, the thought of, uh, 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:30.800 you know, if I were to walk a square mile 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:33.359 and think fifteen thousand people are inside of that, that 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:36.240 would be pretty incredible. However, that's not as incredible as 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:39.400 it gets, it gets more so. So again, the city 0:18:39.480 --> 0:18:40.959 is number one. If you look at Tokyo and its 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:44.040 surrounding areas, the actual population within the established borders of 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:46.439 what is Tokyo is closer to nine millions. So if 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:48.800 you were being really super strict and saying no, I'm 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:51.520 just talking about traditional Tokyo, it would not even be 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:53.960 a megacity. It would be nine million people. It wouldn't 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:57.720 quite uh, it wouldn't quite count. But no one reasonable 0:18:57.720 --> 0:18:59.679 would ever say that, because again, it's not like as 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:02.480 soon you cross the border you go into like, oh 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:06.280 now it's pastoral Japan. That's not the way that works. 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:10.439 So Tokyo itself is a collection of twenty three smaller cities. 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:12.800 They are called wards, and each of those has its 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:16.800 own independent administration. This also makes it complex when you 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:19.720 start talking about mega cities, because you're off often talking 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:26.240 about lots of different political entities, all working within uh 0:19:26.640 --> 0:19:29.520 kind of vaguely defined areas. Like you know, there are 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:31.960 actual borders that if you look on a map you 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:34.199 can see them, but when you are a person just 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:37.720 moving through that environment, you may not see that distinction. Also, 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:42.040 the like material necessities of life don't necessarily obey the 0:19:42.119 --> 0:19:46.560 administrative borders that you've put up. Because so you've created 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:48.199 a mega city and you just say, oh, we'll just 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:50.119 divide it up like a pie into a bunch of 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:52.879 smaller things that are easier to manage, you still have 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:56.600 to get all the resources that a city this size 0:19:56.640 --> 0:19:59.440 needs to the area, and you still have to find 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:02.359 a way to provide all of the overlapping services a 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:05.240 city of this size needs within the area, right, And 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:08.760 you can't just put water pipes for for one ward 0:20:08.840 --> 0:20:11.320 of a city in that ward and have them not 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:13.800 connect to any of the other water pipes in the area, 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:18.919 for example, does the perfect example, because anyone who has 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:23.000 ever seen anything about water rights knows this is incredibly complicated, 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:27.960 and even neighboring towns that are technically within the same 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:32.800 urban environment can have vicious fights over this sort of stuff. Understandably, 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:35.440 because this is a necessity, right Oh yeah, yeah, Well 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:39.360 neighboring states have that argument sometimes, so yeah. And as 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:42.560 these mega cities grow, we're likely going to see more 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:47.040 and more examples of mega cities across state lines start 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:49.520 to merge where you can't see the difference between one 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:52.280 city and the next even as you're going from one 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:54.520 state to the next, And that gets complicated. Man, I 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:56.840 bet it's no fun to be a mega city that's 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:02.040 literally down river of another mega city. Probably not great. 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:06.240 So uh to to kind of sum up with Tokyo, 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:07.639 one of the things I wanted to point out is 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:09.640 that some of the wards, you know, keeping in mind 0:21:09.640 --> 0:21:12.280 that that number, that population density number I gave earlier, 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:14.960 the six thousand, thirty eight people per square kilometer that 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:18.240 was an average across Tokyo. Obviously there's some words that 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:21.440 have a much higher density and some that have lower. 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:26.520 One of the highest is uh Setagaya, which in two 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:29.879 thousand seven, uh there was a census that listed at 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:32.440 having a density of fourteen thousand, seven or twenty eight 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:34.960 people per square kilometer. So if we convert that to 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:38.280 square miles, that's thirty eight thousand people in a square mile. 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:41.520 So twice more than twice what it is throughout the 0:21:41.560 --> 0:21:43.679 rest of Tokyo. Yeah, if you were to you know 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:46.920 the average, it's more than twice what the average is. Now. 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:49.040 The other four cities that are in that top five, 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:50.920 I don't I'm not going to break them all down, 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:52.919 but I'll tell you know what they are and what 0:21:52.960 --> 0:21:56.040 their populations are. You have Jakarta, Indonesia, which has twenty 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:59.960 six million people, Seul, South Korea two million, five d 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:03.920 forty seven thousand, Delhi, India, which is two million, two 0:22:04.280 --> 0:22:07.919 forty two thousand, and Shanghai, China twenty million, eight hundred 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:12.080 sixty thousand. New York City, which is in fact the 0:22:12.160 --> 0:22:14.880 largest city I have ever visited, ranks at number eight, 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:17.159 So it is is a little bit further down on 0:22:17.200 --> 0:22:20.480 the list. It has twenty million, uh four hundred sixty 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:23.440 four thousand people living in the city and surrounding metropolitan 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:28.600 area Los Angeles, which I've also been to, number seventeen. UM. 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:31.520 But yeah, you know, London doesn't even count in mega 0:22:31.560 --> 0:22:38.639 cities because of defining what is an actual city. UM, London, 0:22:38.680 --> 0:22:41.040 in fact is is a particularly interesting one. If you 0:22:41.080 --> 0:22:42.960 look at the city of London, you want to be 0:22:43.040 --> 0:22:45.800 super official and really pedantic and say just the city 0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:49.040 of London. The city of London is tiny. It is 0:22:49.080 --> 0:22:53.400 about one point one two square miles in area. It's 0:22:53.440 --> 0:22:58.040 basically inside big ben kind of uh, kind of. I 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:01.960 have walked through like from one edge side to the other, 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:04.240 the city of London. It is not a big deal, 0:23:05.200 --> 0:23:07.120