What is a megacity?
Cities may come and go...or grow!
Sometimes, cities dissolve entirely. Other times, cities grow so far that they grow into each other. They are like cookies placed too closely together on a cookie sheet. Many cities become megacities when this happens. A megacity is a city with more than ten million people.
What does ten million mean? Can you imagine ten million? What does it look like? The number ten million looks like this: 10,000,000. But what does it mean to have ten million people in one city?
How megacities grow
These yellow maps show how a megacity might grow like a megacookie.
The megacity experience
Why is it important to think about megacities?
The border below this exhibit has ten million dots. Imagine that each of these dots is a person. Try to give each one an individual face and personality. Can you do it?
As more people all over the world come to live in megacities, there are many results. Some of these results can include convenient living, public transportation, more cultural sites and events, more people living in your neighborhood, food and water shortages, large amounts of trash and pollution, higher crime, and higher costs of living.
Can you think of other results? How would each of these results make you feel? How do you think megacity residents feel about these results? Have you visited a megacity? How was it different from Seattle? Ask others!
Portattlouver
Could Seattle become a megacity?
Some people think that Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, and Vancouver, British
Columbia will someday merge together like cookies into a megacity called “Portattlouver.”
Would you want to live in Portattlouver?
Why or why not?
Thinking about lots of people
What groups would you fit into?
Whether in a city or a megacity, imagining large numbers of people can be overwhelming. As a result, we often group people to make them easier to think and talk about. Groups are made by age, appearance, religion, nationality, money, culture, and many other factors. Can you think of others?
Look in a mirror.
Is there anything about you that makes you difficult to group? How does this make you feel? How might this be similar to or different from what other individuals feel? What does this mean about groups? What does it mean about people?
Understanding people
How could we know millions of people?
It is impossible to count millions of people and know each one as an individual. What can we do instead to understand people? How can we respect them? How can we live together?
Cities are made of individuals
In cities, thousands—even millions of people live close to each other.
We may know each other or we may not. We may be happy or sad or healthy or sick—our lives are complex and always changing.
Can we understand cities by thinking about people? How would it change our ideas about cities?
Can we understand people by thinking about cities? How would it change our ideas about people?
Let’s talk about it. Take a moment to chat, to share, to brainstorm with friends and strangers. Let’s imagine cities together!
sarcenet.org © 2008
by Shana West
Template courtesy of
The Horizontal Way
Portattlouver map courtesy of
Radical Cartography
Dots courtesy of
A Million Dots
on One Page