Earth Day and China's Urban Future

Yesterday I noted the stark realities of pollution in China, especially in its rapidly growing cities. Andrew Revkin of the New York Times has a closely related item in today's paper, summarizing an event he organized on "Cities for Tomorrow" which was apparently focused mainly on China. Topics ranged from air pollution to social infrastructure (referring presumably to things like getting rid of the hukou household registration system that creates "illegal" immigrants in China's cities, as I've discussed before). But a key take-away was the set of comments by Karen Seto of Yale University:

Karen C. Seto, a professor of geography and urbanization at Yale University, warned against too much of a focus on China’s marquis “eco cities” and megacities, given that the greatest migrations — and greatest prospect for change lay in a constellation of small cities far from the central government and media spotlight.

Indeed, this is true throughout the Indian subcontinent and also in Africa--people are piling into cities that most of us have never heard of it, but how they use resources in those places will affect us as much or more as the big cities that get all of the publicity.