3.1. Urbanization, inequality, and economic growth
Urbanization has exploded with great speed and scale in recent
decades with ‘‘more than half the world’s population now living in
urban centres’’ (Tacoli, 2012, p. 4), as countries and even individual
cities struggle to be competitive in the global marketplace (Cohen,
2004). While just 16 cities contained at least a million people at the
start of the 20th century – the vast majority of which were in