Information on current exhbition
SIZE: Cities are increasingly at the centre of global flows of people, capital, culture and information. Over the last 30 years their role as financial command centres has expanded, creating a new type of sprawling, often multi-centred, urban agglomeration.
SPEED: The speed with which many of the world's cities are growing affects their social and physical structure dramatically. The five cities featured in this section - Cairo, Istanbul, London, Los Angeles and Shanghai - are experiencing growth at a different pace, and absorbing it in different manners: some are growing upwards, others are growing outwards.
FORM: This section provides an overview of the distinctly different urban forms of five cities: Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Mumbai, and Tokyo. Satellite photographs illustrate the diversity and complexity of human impact on these cities, as physically manifest in street widths, block and plot sizes and distribution of open green spaces.
DENSITY: Density – the number of people living in a given area, usually expressed as people per square kilometre – is at the centre of public debate on the future growth of cities. Used as a planning tool, awareness of density can help to curtail over-development and overcrowding, or ensure that scarce urban land is not under-used, especially in areas with good public transport and social amenities. High density does not mean high-rise; large numbers of people can be accommodated in five- or six-storey buildings arranged in a compact and efficient manner, creating congenial places for living.
DIVERSITY n an urban context, diversity - the level of variety within a city - is usually interpreted as its ethnic and racial composition. But diversity has a much broader range of indicators: the spread of ages and incomes, education levels, the range of employment sectors, and people born in the city versus newcomers.
