Magazine

More of us live in cities now than ever before, and we’ve come for opportunities we didn’t have in the plains or mountains. In the city, whether in slums or condos, we are linked to millions of others, and can organize quickly and trade efficiently. But if we don’t get what we need, we just might revolt, writes Jeb Brugmann, an international development consultant who teaches at Cambridge University, in his absorbing (if turgidly written) Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities Are Changing the World.

Brugmann gives the word “revolution” double meaning. The world’s cities, he writes, form a system through which huge, pressing problems ranging from climate change to poverty can be solved — hence the “urban revolution.” On the other hand, the system is capable of fomenting smallscale, literal revolutions when politics, planning, development and local needs clash infelicitously. Migrants, most of whom now move to cities, have the potential to turn nothing into something, given time and low interference from planners. But they can rebel if officials and institutions cut off opportunities for investment or “relocate” their homes.