City Creation for Growth
Cities are the cornerstone of political, economic, social and cultural development. Cities such as Paris and London have created a unique position in the Global environment, which has resulted in the countries that they are located in are defined by them. For instance, travellers feel London is England and Paris is France.
Although, this is far from reality once you start traveling outside the main cities. Furthermore, some cities have less than 1000 people whilst cities such as Mumbai in India is home to officially 23 million people. Therefore, when describing the definition of a city one runs into unimaginable difficulties.
Nonetheless, despite the difficulty to define what a city is, each city has their own characteristics. Let us look at Dubai for instance, a trading hub with one of the best airlines in the World driving air traffic from across the globe. Emirates airline has been a catalyst in the development effort of Dubai. However, some might argue that the development in Dubai enabled Emirates to emerge to where it is today.
Although the debate might continue in the eyes of some, we need to understand that their relationship is complementary and not contradictory. Furthermore, consider London, built on the river Thames is a vibrant hub and has been for centuries. The growth England has experienced can be traced back to the progress made in London where the population as at 2022 is higher than New York or Paris. This clearly reinforced the fact that London has been pivotal.
On the other hand, one can look at Paris. A city has been built on beautiful and exquisite architecture with nearly 2.2 million inhabitants. The City is a masterpiece of beauty which has encapsulated romance. Many have voted Paris as the most romantic city in the World. The city has a character of romance and fine beauty. Therefore, the city has been a success to the entire France where Paris accounts for above 33.3% of the entire French economy.
These examples show the importance of a proper city for the entire growth trajectory of a country. As a result, in today’s context much emphasis has been placed on city development and experts are rallying around to identify unique methods to grow cities. Therefore, persons of authority should reconsider and re-calibrate their visions to drive cities so it can push wealth creation as Deyan Sudjic in the Language of Cities wrote “… that is a wealth creating machine that can, at the minimum, make the poor not quite as poor as they were”.
Original Content | Author: Yatila Wijemanne
