Biography
Austin Williams is director of the Future Cities Project. An architect and project manager by profession, he was the technical editor at the Architects’ Journal; architecture critic on BBC London; and transport commentator with The Daily Telegraph. He is now the architectural producer of NBS Learning Channels and author and illustrator of “Shortcuts”.
He is the author of “The Enemies of Progress”, co-editor of “The Future of Community” and co-author of ‘The Macro World of Microcars’. He is the founder of “Manifesto Towards a New Humanism in Architecture” and is currently researching for a new book “Sanitizing the City: The Suburbanization of the Urban Experience”
He has written for a range of books and publications, including: The Times Literary Supplement, Daily Telegraph, Times Higher Educational Supplement, Top Gear, Blueprint, Building Design, spiked-online and The London Property Review.
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ABSTRACT
Is increased migration to cities and unchecked growth really a problem?
For the first time in human history, half of the world’s population lives in cities. However, instead of this being seen as something to be celebrated, it is regularly portrayed as an accident waiting to happen. The UN predicts the number of urban dwellers will reach 5 billion by 2030, by which time urban populations in the less developed regions will be nearly four times as large as those in more developed regions. In China, 120 million people have moved into urban areas in the past 20 years. While this explosion of urban life could be greeted enthusiastically as a sign of progress and modernity, often rapid urbanisation is seen through the prism of other concerns: over-population, fears for ‘indigenous’ communities, and the dangers cities create for the environment.
Actually it is ‘growth’ and ‘development’ contained in the ambition to urbanise, that are the very things needed to lift poor populations out of penury. This is the opposite of the recent Sustainable Development Commission’s insistence that “growth” is a problem.
The enlightened response to population growth is to celebrate it. More people is a good thing: the more we attach value to humanity the more human we become.
