GREENS are prone to idealising the past. They instinctively look back to a pre-industrial pastoral idyll, or to the age of hunter-gatherers living in harmony with their environment. In this view, urbanisation and the rise of the megacity are the harbingers of doom. City dwellers, after all, make up only half of the world’s population but consume three-quarters of its resources and generate three-quarters of its pollution. Further urbanisation can only accelerate environmental decline and threaten the long-term future of humankind.
Many of the environmental demons implicit in this analysis are real: urbanisation is responsible for some of our most…
