On November 15 2022, a baby girl named Vinice Mabansag, born at Dr Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila, Philippines, became – symbolically – the eight billionth person in the world. Of those 8 billion people, 60% live in a town or city. By the end of the 21st century, cities will account for 85% of Earth’s predicted 10 billion inhabitants.
Cities don’t only grow by the number of inhabitants. The more people they host, the more services (public transport, energy infrastructure, water supply) they need, the more governance they require and the more resilient their economy has to be. It might be surprising then to learn that there is no single definition of what a city actually is.
