SESSION 27: EXERCISES FOR DISCUSSION AND FINAL TASK
Adapted from “Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life” by Richard Florida.
Cities have always been the natural economic units of the world. But in the past several decades, what we once thought of as separate cities — with central cores surrounded by rural villages, or later by suburbs — have grown into "megaregions" composed of two or more cities, like the Boston-New York-Washington corridor. Megaregions are more than just bigger versions of a city. As a city is composed of separate neighborhoods, and as a metropolitan region is made up of a central city and its suburbs, a megaregion represents the new, natural economic unit that emerges as cities (and their suburbs and exurbs) not only grow upward and become more dense, they grow outward and into one another.
Today, megaregions range in size from 10 to 50 million people — and in some cases, in the developing world, even more. They produce hundreds of billions — and sometimes trillions — of dollars in economic output. They harness human creativity on a massive scale, and they are the source of the lion’s share of the world’s scientific achievement and technological innovations.
The megaregions of today perform functions that are somewhat similar to those of the great cities of the past — massing together talent, productivity, innovation, and markets. But they do so on a far larger scale. Furthermore, while cities in the past were part of national systems, globalization has exposed them to worldwide competition. As the distribution of economic activity has gone global, the city-system has also become global — meaning that cities compete now on a global terrain. This means that bigger and more competitive economic units — megaregions — are required to survive and prosper.
Population is not tantamount to economic growth. Unlike megacities, which are termed as such simply for the size of their populations, megaregions are by definition places with large markets, significant economic capacity, substantial innovation, and highly skilled talent, as well as large overall populations.
A megaregion must meet three key criteria. First, it must be a contiguous, lighted area with more than one major city center. Second, it must have a population of 5 million or more. Finally, it must produce more than $100 billion in goods and services. By that definition, there are some 40 megaregions in the world. If we take the largest megas in terms of population:
The 10 biggest are home to 666 million people, or 10 percent of world population.
The top 20 comprise 1.1 billion people, 17 percent of the world population.
Today, megaregions range in size from 10 to 50 million people — and in some cases, in the developing world, even more. They produce hundreds of billions — and sometimes trillions — of dollars in economic output. They harness human creativity on a massive scale, and they are the source of the lion’s share of the world’s scientific achievement and technological innovations.
The megaregions of today perform functions that are somewhat similar to those of the great cities of the past — massing together talent, productivity, innovation, and markets. But they do so on a far larger scale. Furthermore, while cities in the past were part of national systems, globalization has exposed them to worldwide competition. As the distribution of economic activity has gone global, the city-system has also become global — meaning that cities compete now on a global terrain. This means that bigger and more competitive economic units — megaregions — are required to survive and prosper.
Population is not tantamount to economic growth. Unlike megacities, which are termed as such simply for the size of their populations, megaregions are by definition places with large markets, significant economic capacity, substantial innovation, and highly skilled talent, as well as large overall populations.
A megaregion must meet three key criteria. First, it must be a contiguous, lighted area with more than one major city center. Second, it must have a population of 5 million or more. Finally, it must produce more than $100 billion in goods and services. By that definition, there are some 40 megaregions in the world. If we take the largest megas in terms of population:
The 10 biggest are home to 666 million people, or 10 percent of world population.
The top 20 comprise 1.1 billion people, 17 percent of the world population.
The top 40 are home to 1.5 billion people, 23 percent of global population.
After reading the text and the comments above,
- Do you think megaregions could become a threat?
- How are they going to affect the future of the human being?
- How are they going to affect the environment and our ecosystem?
- Is there a quasi mega-region in Spain? (Within the limits of a small country)
- How are they going to affect agriculture and farming?
- How are they going to affect poor countries where their economy isn´t strong enough to compete?
PREPARING A DISCUSSION IS FUNDAMENTAL:
THIS MUST BE DONE IN TWO DIRECTIONS:
FIRST, you need to learn new vocabulary and expressions that you will have to use for the discussion.
SECOND, you have to prepare the topic by looking up information in the internet, books and encyclopaedias.
This way you will feel much more confident and at the same time you will have much more to talk about.
FINAL TASK
Here is one final task that you may do in order to cover the four skills you should focus on when learning a language: LISTENING, READING, SPEAKING AND WRITING.
Write a composition on the following topic and leave it in the blog as a comment to Session 27:
- Mega-regions will lead to global pandemics, food shortages, wars, etc. Express your opinion.
It is very difficult for me to write about mega-regions because I have never thought of them but after reading this text maybe these new super-cities were a logic consequence of the population growth.
ReplyDeleteOf course, mega-regions, as other important changes in our history, are going to mean new opportunities and new risks in our world, but what would happen if most of people lived in the country, millions and millions of human beings spread exploding and contaminating not just a relative small area of earth but most of the areas in the world? This would create other kind of problems but problems after all.
As in other occasions future is not foreseeable and although we can suspect and predict some of the problems mega-regions can cause, it is sure the worst of those problems we cannot even imagine them nowadays.
A good example of this is that you can think new technologies run very well, but they can have problems, so if you cannot use e-mail then you have to look for other options as facebook.