Megacities, the World's Largest Cities Unleashed: Major Trends and Dynamics in Contemporary Global Urban Development

Key findings: (1) Cities around the world are becoming bigger and bigger, and megacities, the world's biggest cities, are unleashed, with a clear divergence between “mega-global cities” with more powerful and advanced business services sectors or international financial centers, and “mega-local cities” that do not; (2) an empirical “megacity relationship” whereby a country or territory will potentially have one megacity for every 100 million people in the country with the prime city population largely controlled by country population; (3) powerful “internal” forces at work: the prime city of each country tends to dominate their respective urban structures and occupy an increasingly-larger share of national population, giving an endogenous account as to why some cities, particularly the largest cities, become bigger and bigger; (4) major “external” forces: among the tested 20 and aggregated 5 variables, IT, and finance and business sectors are the key “external” factors driving the growth of cities and megacities, transforming “mega-local cities” to “mega-global cities”; (5) improved transport and telecommunication networks are also strong external factors driving megacity growth, in contrast to common perceptions and most of the existing literature.