When architect and urban planner Richard Wurman learned that the majority of Earth's population lived in cities, he became curious.He wondered what the effects of global urbanization will be. With a group of business and media partners, Wurman set out on a five- year study--a project called 19.20.21--to collect information about urbanization, focusing on
the world's largest urban concentrations, or megacities.The hope is that urban planners will be able to use these objective data to enhance the quality of life for people in cities while reducing the environmental impact of urbanization.The project's aim is to standardize the
way information about cities--such as health, education, transportation, energy consumption, and arts and culture--is collected and shared.Cities are where you put museums, where you put universities, where you put the centers of government, the centers of corporations.The inventions, the discoveries, the music and art in our world all take place
in these intense gatherings of individuals.Wurman: People flock to cities because of
the possibilities for doing things that interest them.Q: What draws people to cities?Wurman: For the first time in history, more people live in cities than outside them.Those interests--and the economics that make them possible--are based on people living together.We really have turned into a world of cities.Cities cooperate with each other.Cities trade with each other.