Cities, Creativity, Connectivity: welcome to IAMCR in Istanbul, 2011
2008 was a milestone in human history, when more than half the world’s population was deemed to live in cities. UN forecasts suggest that the world’s urban population will reach 5 billion by 2030, when three out of five people will live in cities. Mega-cities, once defined by a population of five million or more, and now defined by a population of 10 million or more and with a certain population density. There were already 18 megacities in 2000.
In principle, cities offer a more favourable setting for the resolution of social and environmental problems than rural areas. Cities generate jobs and income. With good governance, they can deliver education, health care and other services more efficiently than less densely settled areas simply because of their advantages of scale and proximity. Cities also present opportunities for social mobilization and women’s empowerment. Cities can be seen as dense networks of interaction that can produce multicultural awareness and tolerance, the potential for cultural and artistic creativity, new modes of living together .
On the other hand, poverty is now growing faster in urban than in rural areas. One billion people live in urban slums, a figure that is expected to double by 2030. Projections suggest this increase will be most dramatic on the least-urbanized continents, Asia and Africa. In poor countries overpopulated slums exhibit high rates of disease through unsanitary conditions, malnutrition and lack of basic health care. Over 90% of the urban population of Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda, three of the world’s most rural countries, already live in slums. Urbanization in the developed world produces its own contradictions: suburbanization and alienation, raced and ethnicised ghettoes, high crime rates, homelessness, the break-down of social services.
For media and communication scholars, the study of the city is a fascinating opportunity and challenge. The city is potentially a set of dense networks as well as a range of public sphericules, both singular and multiple. It is the place where communications of all kinds happen all the time and the location of the most intense communicative breakdowns and vulnerabilities. The city is communication and its absence. Wired in more ways than one, the city offers the potential for creative interaction and the production of tolerance. Planning and designing the cities of the future raise huge technological, logistical, legal and policy issues around resources, equality, gender balance, identity, change. The city also offers the possibility of financial rewards through contemporary popular culture; just think of the film cities of Bollywood and Nollywood and the number of locations (Seoul, Dubai, Manchester) vying to be mediacities.
It makes excellent sense that we engage with these issues in Istanbul. This is an old city that has endured many transformations over thousands of years and whose architecture and city design bear the imprint of Byzantine and Ottoman, multiple religious and secular, ancient and contemporary cultures, latterly as one of three European Capital of Culture in 2010.
It is a splendid location in which to discuss the past and future of the city and the role that media and communications can play in producing urban environments truly fit for creative human habitation. I look forward to seeing you there in July 2011!
Annabelle Sreberny, President, IAMCR
