There is an optimistic view of the unprecedented migration, we are witnessing from rural to urban areas, and it’s that cities could offer the biggest hope for the survival of other species and ecosystems in the Anthropocene. Cities are entirely shaped and created by humans to protect and separate them from the natural world, allowing selected bits in and punishing others. If humans – and their landscapes of concrete and glass, and their industrial sprawl – are kept within the confines of a megacity, the rest of the planet should be free to rebuild, to revert to a more natural
