Why Have Cities Become A Megacity?

In order to be considering a megacity, a city has to have over 10 million citizens in its metropolitan area (Bugliarello, 1999). Different reasons can be nominated as causes of cities become a megacity. People coming from rural areas trying to find a better condition of life maybe are the major reason of the population growth in most megacities. However, with a big agglomeration of people and a big city, the government has to not let the problems assume control of the city. Problems such as overpopulation, housing and natural disasters are common in every megacity and solve them are important to achieve a better quality of life and avoid or reduce environmental problems for the citizens. Every year, people move to city centres to achieve successful …show more content…
During the process of development of the megacities the offers for jobs increase in a very quick way; as a consequence, the rural exodus, which is a migratory pattern from people from rural areas going to urban areas, occur. However, at the same time the price of houses and apartments rise in a fast rhythm and those who do not find a job probably will not have money to afford a house. At this moment, poor people move from illegal areas, as a consequence, creating the slums. This problem have been happen in Brazil, especially in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo since early 1970s (Camarano and Abramovay, 1998). In the beginning of the massive growth in Rio de Janeiro, the government tried to solve the housing problem building social houses in an area outside the city centre called City of God. It was an attempt to remove the poor people from the city centre; nevertheless, after ten years, the situation was already out of control again and all the planning was modified in a wrong way. For instance, the sidewalks were taken by the citizens to enlarge their property. Today, the City of God has over than 42.000 habitants (IBGE, 2010) and it is one of the biggest slums in Rio de Janeiro. A clever and challenger solution for housing problems was developed in Lagos, Nigeria. The project consists in build a whole new city because about 70% of the citizens of Lagos live in slums. This project is supported by the government and by private initiative. After finished the new city called Eko Atlantic is going to have 250,000 habitants, it will generate at least 150,000 employments and it is going to be the new financial centre of Nigeria. Whilst the Lagos idea is good, an extreme solution should be carefully decide because build another city may bring natural