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Living Cities: Urban Development as a Complex System

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Abstract

A United Nations report in 2007 announced that more than half the world’s population now lives in cities. This shift in the balance between urban and rural dwelling is unprecedented in human history, and implies that for most of humankind the future is an urban one. Over the past several decades there has been massive migration of people from the countryside into cities. Partly as a result, there are now many mega-cities with populations of over 10 million, most of which are in developing countries in Asia, Africa and South America. Nearly all the population growth forecast for the next two decades will be based in such cities.

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Ball, P. (2012). Living Cities: Urban Development as a Complex System. In: Why Society is a Complex Matter. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29000-8_9

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