The Urban Paradox
Cities in Search of the Future
By 2030, 9 percent of the world’s population will live in the world’s 33 largest cities, which will produce 15 percent of global GDP. The capital of cities, the super megacity, will not be in Europe or America, but in Asia. The world’s most populous city will be Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, which will be home to 35 million people by 2030. Increasingly, cities will be the places where the future of the planet will be worked out, where new social models and attempts at lasting peace will be experimented with, where frontier research will be conducted, and where unprecedented models of cultural cooperation will be developed. The focus will be less on competition than on the exchange of good projects and good information. Just as Barcelona, Turin, Pittsburgh, Lyon, Milan, Istanbul, Tokyo, Wroclaw, and Matera have done. The nine stories in this volume tell of world cities that have overcome crises, adopted innovative strategies and achieved concrete results. But they also tell of the need not to rest on one’s laurels. A city can never say “I did it”: a city is a a turtle of extraordinary longevity and beauty, to which no citizen will ever be an Achilles.
Author
Paolo Verri. Director of the Turin International Book Fair from 1993 to 1997, he has spent more than twenty years working on urban development. As an “urban practitioner,” he led Turin’s strategic plan until 2006, oversaw the celebrations for Italy’s 150th anniversary in 2011, and coordinated events for both the Italian Pavilion at Expo Milan 2015 and Matera 2019, European Capital of Culture. Since January 2024, he has been the General Director of the Mondadori Foundation and President of the Cirko Vertigo Foundation. He advises numerous Italian and international administrations on cultural planning. He teaches Place Attractiveness & Big Events at IULM University in Milan and Organization of Major Events in the Communicating Sport Master’s program at the Catholic University of Milan, and he coordinates the Transdisciplinary Design Master’s Diploma at IED Milan.
Book Details
ISBN: 9788831322836
Pages: 204
Trade Paper: $34.95
