WHOSE CITY?

I was born in a city and have hopped to others over the course of my life, at times through choice, at others through necessity. When I was younger, I longed to live in London – from which friends had fled, disgusted by the rat race. I was drawn to its myriad local cultures, its green parks and their invitation to laze, its buffet of entertainments both high and low brow, and at night its clubs pulsing with sweaty, euphoric bodies where all sense of self seemed to dissolve. But it was a dream beyond my means, as I couldn’t reconcile myself to living in a cupboard.

Most of all I love the bustle of the city; seeing strangers going about their business is inexplicably gratifying – one gets a sense of safe, anonymous distance from their activity and yet also of belonging. Cities can make you feel part of something bigger, even when social atomization is often closer to the reality.

I realize my perspective arises from having found a space – a place to live in and work to sustain me – which allows me to enjoy some of the human creativity and diversity that the city has to offer. But the pull of the city as a place of opportunity and greater social freedoms is matched by an equally vigorous rejecting force that seeks to repel all those of uncertain – and, increasingly, even moderate – economic means, no matter how valuable their work may be.

Around the world, three million people arrive every week to try to make their lives in cities – and more than half of all human beings live in urban areas already.1 Much of this migration is happening in the Global South and the majority are moving to cities of fewer than a million people rather than to megacities. In the past 30 years alone, nearly 500 million people in China upped sticks, transforming a predominantly rural country to one that is now 60 per