Concept in Definition ABC

As the name suggests, megacity means a large city, since the Greek prefix mega means large. An equivalent concept, huge city, has been coined in the Anglo-Saxon world.

The specialists in geography, demography and urban planning understand that the concept of megacity must be applied to those cities with more than 10 million inhabitants. Another relevant aspect is related to the population density, since these large cities usually have a density equal to or greater than 2000 inhabitants per square kilometer. On the other hand, the immense city does not simply include the urban nucleus but also its entire metropolitan area.

The concept of the city and examples of megacities

The word city comes from the Latin civitas, which means civilized. Thus, the city has been the place associated with the concept of civilization. In fact, the human being took a qualitative leap in his evolution when he abandoned nomadism and settled in urban centers. In them another kind of life was possible (with stable commercial activities,

institutions public and an activity politics and increasingly complex culture).

Over the centuries cities have grown slowly but steadily. In the Middle Ages, most of the walls that surrounded the cities were collapsed because the population it was growing and it was necessary to expand the urban space.

On the other hand, a similar phenomenon has occurred throughout the planet: the depopulation of the countryside and the parallel growth of the city. The different stages of demographic growth have finally resulted in a series of cities much larger than the original size, thus forming megacities. On many occasions, the growth of a city has been associated with the absorption of neighboring cities (as happened, For example, with the growth of New York, which eventually absorbed the city of Brooklyn, now a neighborhood New Yorker).

Currently there are several cities that have this qualification: Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Cairo, Buenos Aires, Jakarta, New York, Bombay, Paris or Johannesburg. As can be seen, there are megacities on all continents and in this sense it is a phenomenon directly related to the demographic explosion and the globalization.

General characteristics

Megacities are so large that it involves a whole series of drawbacks. In this way, size affects transport (with urban trips of several hours), traffic jams or parking problems. The vastness of the city is usually accompanied by a large volume of vehicles, which has a very negative effect on the contamination atmospheric.

The urban space of immense proportions is associated with very diverse problem situations: noise pollution, stress among citizens, a certain dehumanization, ghettos and suburbs and unsafety citizen, water supply problems and a long etcetera.

Photos: iStock - Young777 / Alex Potemkin

Themes in Megacity