ABSTRACT
If we had wished to begin this account of megacities and large cities with a film shot, we would have chosen a violent image that would convey the intensity of the urban phenomena we have been describing. Growth rates and the human masses involved, gaps in income and property, the challenge of integrating new inhabitants – all of these are bigger than in cities in industrial countries. The emerging cities we have studied radically switched directions in the late twentieth century, shaking up their urban societies and pulling them toward new political systems or accumulation regimes. History has not taken peaceful paths here. These large cities, gigantic energy accumulators and transformers, are intense, turbulent. This reality invites us to reflect on the factors of change that are leading some of them out of path dependence.
