Military Review English Edition May-June 2015 | Page 10

Future Megacity
Operations—Lessons
from Sadr City
Maj. Christopher O. Bowers, U.S. Army
The cities of the future, rather than being made of glass and steel … are instead largely constructed out of crude brick, straw,
recycled plastic, cement blocks and scrap wood. Instead of cities of light soaring toward heaven, much of the twenty-first century urban world squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement, and decay.
—Mike Davis, Planet of Slums

W

e are in the age of the slum. Studies of
future cities and megacities bristle with statistics, growth trend lines, and comparative
analogies, prophesizing: The future of the human race
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is the city; the future of the city is the megacity, and the
reality of the megacity is the slum.
A megacity is a metropolitan area with a total
population in excess of 10 million. The recent growth
May-June 2015  MILITARY REVIEW