A metropolis is a very large city or urban area which is a significant economic, political and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections and communications.( http://en.wikipedia.org)
Metropolises once represented development and prosperity in people’s sense. However in the field of planning, scholars hold different opinions on metropolis. Some scholars are worried about the future of metropolis. For example, Joel Kotlin believes that huge buildings and dense population will lead to some security problems like local crime and international terrorism. Also, pollution deprives many people’s access to clean air and water. All the problems will probably end a city’s future (Content from the urban future, Joel Kotlin). Still some other scholars are quite optimistic about metropolis and encourage building more metropolises. Geoffrey West draws a conclusion that the bigger the size of a city is, the more efficient the city works. (content from a physicist solves the city, Jonah Lehrer, 2010 ).
"The image shows New York, the largest metropolis in United States. New York Ciry is often cited as the quintessential metropolis, exerting a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment and being widely deemed as the economic and cultural capital of the world." (http://en.wikipedia.org)
by Qi Shen
so what do you think about the future of the metropolis? any difference between a metropolis in the US and one in China?
ReplyDeleteI don't think metropolis should be advocated any more. In the contrast, I think more small cities should be built in order to avoid problems of crime, disease and terrorism, especially in countries where people density is not very high. However in China, it's impossible to build many small cities if we want to accelerate urbanization. We have such a large population that 15 more cities with 10 million people should be built if we want to realize 50% urbanization rate. This means that metropolis will be an inevitable trend in China.
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