Integrating the needs of people and governments is one key to the challenges of rapid urbanization, said SFI Professor Luis Bettencourt in a panel discussion on “Future Megacities and the Fate of Millions” at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
Bettencourt notes the multi-dimensional nature of urbanization, arguing that any solution must arise not from any single perspective but from an integration of information and the needs of policy makers and residents, especially of the world's slums.
He suggests that those engaged in urban planning expand their mission to encompass human development writ large, and urges policy makers to seek incremental, nuanced solutions rather than one-time policy fixes.
“There is no magic bullet that gets the process of human development underway,” he says.
Watch the discussion from the Aspen Ideas Festival (July 2014)
Bettencourt co-leads SFI's Neighborhoods, Slums, & Human Development project and SFI's Cities, Scaling, & Sustainability project.