Chapter 5
Regional Diversity and Sustainability
of Megacities in Global Historical
Perspective
Naoko Fukami
5.1 Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of the development of urban environments and to place megacities within the context of urban
history. Megacities are defined as the areas with agglomerations of population
exceeding 10 million, as discussed later in the chapter. A hypothesis regarding the
regions and the eras influencing cities is proposed and megacities are positioned as
examples of pluralism in the evolution of urban environments from the twentieth
century. This chapter is based on the Muramatsu Project
1 at the Research Institute of
Humanity and Nature (RIHN).
All cities have their own cycles of growth and decay. Thus, each city demonstrates its resilience through its continued survival. In considering the pluralistic
N. Fukami (*)
JSPS Research Station, Cairo, Egypt
e-mail: naoko-fukami@oversease.jsps.go.jp
1 https://www.chikyu.ac.jp/rihn_e/project/C-08.html. From 2007 to 2015, Shin Muramatsu, the
project leader, led the megacity project and organized six research teams. Our research team for
the megacity review consisted of four members: Reiko Hayashi, who focused on urban demography, Kyota Yamada, who focused on dwelling environments, Yuta Uchiyama, who focused on data
analysis, including climate and land cover data, and the author of this chapter, who focused on
urban history. The results of our research were published in Japanese in Megacities vol.
2 (Muramatsu 2016b). In writing the current chapter, the author has used this previous research
as a basis but added some new data, including data on the historical populations before 1950 and the
United Nations (UN) Annual Population of Urban Agglomerations series for cities of 300,000
inhabitants or more in 2018. In light of this new information, the author has reconsidered the
borders of the six regions, with the result that Section 4 in particular has been rewritten. For clarity,
we note that the terms “region” and “era” have specific meanings in this chapter. We define and
discuss these meanings in the main text.
© Springer Japan KK, part of Springer Nature 2021
S. Muramatsu et al. (eds.), Living in the Megacity: Towards Sustainable Urban
Environments, Global Environmental Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-56901-5_5
67
Regional Diversity and Sustainability
of Megacities in Global Historical
Perspective
Naoko Fukami
5.1 Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of the development of urban environments and to place megacities within the context of urban
history. Megacities are defined as the areas with agglomerations of population
exceeding 10 million, as discussed later in the chapter. A hypothesis regarding the
regions and the eras influencing cities is proposed and megacities are positioned as
examples of pluralism in the evolution of urban environments from the twentieth
century. This chapter is based on the Muramatsu Project
1 at the Research Institute of
Humanity and Nature (RIHN).
All cities have their own cycles of growth and decay. Thus, each city demonstrates its resilience through its continued survival. In considering the pluralistic
N. Fukami (*)
JSPS Research Station, Cairo, Egypt
e-mail: naoko-fukami@oversease.jsps.go.jp
1 https://www.chikyu.ac.jp/rihn_e/project/C-08.html. From 2007 to 2015, Shin Muramatsu, the
project leader, led the megacity project and organized six research teams. Our research team for
the megacity review consisted of four members: Reiko Hayashi, who focused on urban demography, Kyota Yamada, who focused on dwelling environments, Yuta Uchiyama, who focused on data
analysis, including climate and land cover data, and the author of this chapter, who focused on
urban history. The results of our research were published in Japanese in Megacities vol.
2 (Muramatsu 2016b). In writing the current chapter, the author has used this previous research
as a basis but added some new data, including data on the historical populations before 1950 and the
United Nations (UN) Annual Population of Urban Agglomerations series for cities of 300,000
inhabitants or more in 2018. In light of this new information, the author has reconsidered the
borders of the six regions, with the result that Section 4 in particular has been rewritten. For clarity,
we note that the terms “region” and “era” have specific meanings in this chapter. We define and
discuss these meanings in the main text.
© Springer Japan KK, part of Springer Nature 2021
S. Muramatsu et al. (eds.), Living in the Megacity: Towards Sustainable Urban
Environments, Global Environmental Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-56901-5_5
67