Journal of Socialomics

Abstract

The City, Redux but Deeply Flawed

Allen J Scott

In the mid-19th century, Baudelaire complained that Paris was changing more rapidly than the human heart. Cities are again going through upheavals, in their built environments, their economic activities, and their forms of life. When Baudelaire was writing about Paris, few large cities existed anywhere in the world and only a handful with one million people or more. Today there are over five hundred cities with populations over one million. These are no longer confined to Europe and North America, but also occur in the Global South, especially in Asia .