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Drawing on Simmel's view of the modern metropolis, the article provides a reflection on the present research on megacities and likewise a corrective to approaches focusing too unilaterally on risks. At the same time the emergence and advancement of megacities will be explored in the context of the current processes of urbanization, globalization, and metropolization. It will be argued that a "hazards perspective" on major cities needs to be complemented by a focus on the potential of these cities, i. e., on hope, creativity, and urban resilience. Overall, it is concluded that city size is not necessarily an obstacle to sustainability.

Urbanization is one of the most important mega-trends of the 21st century. Consequently, the possibility of U.S. military involvement in a megacity or sub-megacity is an eventuality that cannot be ignored. After elucidating the nature of urbanization and developing a typology in terms of smart, fragile, and feral cities, we give consideration to the kinds of contingencies that the U.S. military, especially the Army, needs to think about and prepare for. Understanding the city as a complex system or organism is critical and provides the basis for changes in intelligence, recruitment, training, equipment, operations, and tactics. One of the key takeaways is the need to understand the urban environment and the need to work with (instead of against) the flows and rhythms of a city. Without such an approach, the results of military involvement in such a formidable environment would likely be disastrous; with it, the prospects for success would at least be enhanced. ; https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1416/thumbnail.jpg

Two hundred years ago, just 3% of the world's population lived in cities. Today, cities hold more than half of all people on Earth. The number of urban residents is growing by nearly 60 million every year, a trend driven by rapid industrialization, rural-urban migration, and globalization. If this pace continues, by 2050 over 70% of people will call cities home. The largest of today's urban centers are known as 'megacities.' Megacities hold enormous value for the developing world, and ensuring that they deliver this value starts, fundamentally, with no longer seeing them as utter catastrophes. Much of the economic opportunity that slums offer is through vibrant, informal marketplaces. While existing and soon-to-be megacities hold enormous potential -- for the environment, for the poor, for economies -- important transformations are still needed to ensure that they can fully deliver on their inherent promise. To speed up these transformations, some institutions and economists offer prescriptive policies and top-down planning recommendations. Adapted from the source document.

Big cities, especially megacities, have reputation of places not facilitating marriages because of change of moral values in favor for career and self-development. The result is postponement of marriages, extend of cohabitation and remarriages. Within my research I check this statement on examples of two Russian largest cities – Moscow and Saint Petersburg with more than 12 and 5 million inhabitants. Taking into account the size of the country, different nationalities with different attitude to marriage, which live in Russia, I conduct my analysis by comparison cities and the regions that surround them–Moscow region and Leningrad region. In the research I use official Dada of Federal State Statistics Service for period of last 25 year. The variables used in the analysis are marriage rate, marital age, divorce index and rate of remarriages. The results of the study indicate that in both megacities there is an increase of marriages rate and reduction of divorce index. Cities have almost the same age structure at the "marital ages, though Saint Petersburg is slightly younger. While marital situation in both megacities does not have any significant difference, the considerable variation is observed in comparison with the Leningrad and Moscow regions. There is no evidence of later marriages in cities than in regions, moreover the divorce index is less in cities and remarriages are less popular. These results give us the reason to identify Russian megacities as untypical in the framework of demographic transition from point of view of marriages.

1. Introduction : the institutions of the urban fabric / Dominique Lorrain -- 2. Governing Shanghai : modernising a local state / Dominique Lorrain -- 3. 'Transforming Mumbai' or the challenge of forging a collective actor / Marie-Helene Zerah -- 4. Governing Cape Town : the exhaustion of a negotiated transition / Alain Dubresson and Sylvy Jaglin -- 5. Santiago de Chile. Prototype of the neo-liberal city : between a strong state and privatised public services / Geraldine Pflieger -- 6. Governing under constraints : strategy and inherited realities / Dominique Lorrain, Alain Dubresson and Sylvy Jaglin.

This book focuses on the material city and its institutions and shows that, without recourse to a big new theory, urban leaders have devised mechanisms of ordinary government. They have done so through the resolution of practical and essential problems: providing electricity, drinking water, sanitation, transportation. In the originality of its hypotheses and the precision of the analyses carried out in the four case study cities of Shanghai, Mumbai, Cape Town and Santiago de Chile, this work is addressed to all those interested in the life of cities: politicians, local and central government.