ABSTRACT
City growth is changing the condition of humanity and the face of the earth. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, urban growth was occurring mainly in the North, as a result of the spread of industrialization and the associated rapid increase in the use of fossil fuels. Urban systems with millions of inhabitants are unique to the current age and they are the most complex products of collective human creativity. Urban agglomerations are becoming the dominant feature of the human presence on earth, with supplies brought in from an increasingly global hinterland. We have a great opportunity to develop a whole new range of environmentally friendly technologies for use in the cities. Cities are centers of communication and new electronic systems have dramatically enhanced that role. Cities for a new millennium will be energy and resource efficient, people friendly, and culturally rich, with active democracies assuring the best uses of human energies.
