LESSON 15.10 What are megacities?
LEARNING INTENTION By the end of this lesson, you should be able to: • identify the difference between a city and a megacity • locate megacities in the world • discuss how megacities are merging to create megaregions.
Tune in New York City is often referred to as the ‘city that never sleeps’.
FIGURE1 New York City
1. What do you think this means? Why do you think people talk of New York City this way? 2. List four major problems that are faced in cities like New York City.
15.10.1 Where are cities located? How is a city different from other urban areas such as towns and villages? A city is a large and permanent settlement, and is usually quite complex in terms of transport, land use and utilities such as water, power and sanitation. The image of the Earth at night ( FIGURE2 ) shows the electricity grids around the world. The brightest areas on the map are the most urbanised, but might not be the most populated. If you compare this image with FIGURE3 , you can make some comparisons. For example, there are very bright lights in western Europe (Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Austria) and yet more people live in China and India. Refer to your atlas to locate these countries. Most cities are near coastlines and transport routes. Some areas are still sparsely populated and dark, like Antarctica, the jungles of Africa and South America, and deserts in Africa, Arabia, Australia, Mongolia and the USA. Forests in Canada and Russia, and the mountains in the Himalayas and Mongolia, are also mostly dark.
464 Jacaranda Humanities Alive 8 Victorian Curriculum Third Edition
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