Lakhasly

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.

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 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. 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.
Q: What draws people to cities?
Wurman: People flock to cities because of
the possibilities for doing things that interest 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. 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.
Q: Tell us about 19.20.21.
Wurman: For the first time in history, more people live in cities than outside them. I thought I’d try to discover what this new phenomenon really means. I went to the Web, and I tried to find the appropriate books and lists that would give me information, data, maps, so I could
62 UNIT3
a
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“
One has to understand
understand. And I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I couldn’t find maps of cities to the same scale. Much of the statistical information is gathered independently by each city, and
the questions they ask are often not the same. There’s no readily available information on the speed of growth of cities. Diagrams on power, water distribution and quality, health care, and education aren’t available, so a metropolis1 can’t find out any information about itself relative
to other cities and, therefore, can’t judge the success or failure of programs.