Each issue of the Journal features a Forum section that brings together academics, policymakers, and other professionals to analyze a single issue in depth. By examining the topic from a unique perspective, each Forum contributor incorporates his or her personal experiences and knowledge to offer Journal readers a complete perspective on the issue at hand. Previous Forums have examined the issue of transnational crime, space-based weapons, and the intersection of religion and politics.

Cities will be home to half the world's population by 2030, giving them an unprecedented political, economic, and cultural power. The speed and magnitude of urban growth also forebode unprecedented problems, particularly the presence of massive, intractable slums; demographic floods of dislocating and relocating migrants; environmental decay; and unforeseen difficulties in governance and planning. The uncertain boundaries, faltering structures, and ultimate sustainability of today's megacities are global concerns. From Rio to Lagos, Beijing to Moscow, this Forum explores how megacities are poised to influence and transform the new century.

Issue 8.1

Poverty and the Periphery: Cities in Latin America and the Former Soviet Union by Allison Garland, Mejgan Massoumi, Blair A. Ruble & Joseph S. Tulchin

This year, for the first time in history, a majority of the world's people will live in cities. Global population growth will continue to concentrate in urban centers of the developing world, which will absorb more than two billion new residents over the next two decades. The pace of urbanization far exceeds the rate at which basic services can be provided, and the consequences for the urban poor have been dire. Global poerty has increasingly become an urban phenomenon. The challenge to academics and policymakers is to better understand the process of urbanization and the needs of local populations by recognizing the opportunity to harness the energy of urban diversity and growth as a positive force of human development.

Criminal Networks in Urban Brazil by Bryan McCann - Full Text

Brazil's megacities are under seige from within. Criminal networks formerly content with control over isolated slices of turf have demonstrated an ever-greater willingness to choke off the economic and social life of the city at large whenever it is in their immediate interests. Brazil's security apparatus - chiefly its surprisingly timid federal investigative bodies and its corruption-plauged state police corps - have proved unable to adapt to this transformation. In consequence, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo are at the leading edge of a crisis confronting many megacities across the global south, driven by the mismatch between increasingly flexible transnational criminal networks and corrupt local security forces. Read the full text...

Greening the Red Cities: Sustainable Development in China by Jingjing Qian, Barbara Finamore & Connie Chan

Since opening its doors to the world in 1978 and implementing reforms to its central planning economy, China has experienced the fastest period of urbanization in its history. The percentage of its population living in cities increased from 18 percent in 1978 to 43 percent in 2005. Today, 560 million Chinese people - nearly double the U.S. population - live and work in cities. The Chinese central government has begun to recognize the devastating levels of environmental pollution and inefficient land and is changing its strategies to promote sustainable urban development.

A Lagos Thing: Rules and Realities in the Nigerian Megacity by Oka Obono

The word Lagos has a peculiar resonance for inhabitants and visitors alike, who associate it with several competing tendencies. On the one hand, it represents a virtual necropolis, replete with corruption, poverty, crime, and sprawling corpses. Paradoxically, however, this modern metropolis, the largest in Nigeria, is also celebrated for its life, ethos of hard work, ingenuity, and capacity for local technological innovation and adaptation. It is associated with industrialization, modernization, and bright city lights - a place of boundles affluence and economic and political opportunities. The city possesses a pontaneous intimacy which locals view as proof of its cultural authenticity, while the rise of ethnic militias and neighborhood vigilante groups speaks of the resistance of a besieged human spirit.

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