Cities are in essence just a physical manifestation of ourselves; a concrete representation of our tendency to cluster in networks.
I am a born and bred city girl. Because of this upbringing I bear all the traits of a metropolitan native: I can simultaneously be on my phone, drinking a take away coffee, while jay walking and hailing a taxi. A tram could come thundering toward me and I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. A slow walking couple ahead of me on a footpath just forces me to speed up and overtake them. I’m used to manoeuvring this urban jungle. It comes naturally.
City living is not uncommon these days. In fact, since 2006 over half the world’s population lives in urban areas. Only 200 years ago The United States was less than 4% urbanised – it is now over 80%. Apparently in the next 20 years China will build 300 more cities for its growing population.
Evidently humans are increasingly attracted to cities and the supposed benefits and prosperity that comes with them.
But what does this mean? Are cities a good or bad thing?
Some benefits of living in cities are:
· Better coffee
· Better access to health care
· Concentration of creativity
· Increased economies of scale for utilities
But what are the potential downfalls? Anyone who has spent time on Punt road during AFL season could tell you that traffic is a big one. So is increased crime and contagion.
My boyfriend recently informed me that when a zombie apocalypse happens I would be one of the first to go. This is because, he reasoned, in cities contagion spreads much faster due to proximity. He then explained that because I live in the city, and he lives outside it, he would be unable to save me before I got infected so probably wouldn’t try. I then told him that my first goal as a zombie would be to jump on the eastern freeway with my zombie buddies and come and find and infect him.*
Zombies aside, the question out of all this is: are cities just a part of biology? Are we like a bacterial organism, infecting the earth like a cancerous growth? Mr Anderson from the Matrix certainly thought so. The phenomenon of urbanization has been found (by actual people) to be superlinear – that is, super exponential unbounded growth will lead to eventual collapse.
Fortunately this is something we need to worry about in our lifetimes. The moral of this story? Let’s not envy the life of those yet to be born, let’s just enjoy the life we have. Traffic or no traffic.
*yes, I know zombies can’t drive.
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I hope you enjoyed my musings. I can assure you that the statistics on cities are real. If this is a topic that interests you, I recommend a TED talk “Geoffrey West: The surprising math of cities and corporations”.
Please feel free to comment!
