AIVP DOC(k) - Port hypermetropolises outgrowing states
Channel: AIVP - Inspiring People of Port Cities
Date: 2019-10-21

We will not be talking about city ports in the next 20 years, but rather bigger territories, or hypermetropolises. 

The 19th century was the age of empire. The 20th century was the age of the nation state. The 21st century will be the of cities. Why? Today, over half of the world’s population lives in cities, and in 20 or 30 years’ time it will be two-thirds. 

Globalization of cities means a different kind of logistics and a different way of distributing goods than we have today. 

In order to feed their populations and provide them with all the well-being they need in terms of logistics and goods, cities increasingly need to reinvent themselves. 

The cities that do best will be port cities, because ports are a tremendous asset for a city, since they bring in goods. 

Cities that are connected to a port have a huge advantage over others. It’s no accident that 17 of the world’s 25 biggest cities are connected to a port hinterland. 

Cities that are most successful will be those that have that advantage of being connected to a port.

Take Africa - a continent of hope - which over the next 30 years is set to be demographically very significant. Take Lagos, in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy. Today, Lagos is one of the world’s great cities, with a population of 25 million. And in 20 years, Nigeria will be the 3rd biggest country in population terms, behind India and China and ahead of the USA, with 420 million inhabitants. In territorial terms, it straddles three countries. That’s what is known as “conurbanization”. It is now in Nigeria, of course, and by then it will have expanded to meet Accra, the capital of Ghana, and Abidjan, the capital of Côte d’Ivoire, barely a 35 minute flight away. 

So that hyperterritorial, hyperport, hypermetropolitan development has no boundaries. 

We have a political duty to imagine hypermetropolitan visions for the next 30 years, and that Europe - beyond being a continent - can only succeed if it becomes a continent of interconnected cities.

Speakers:
Carlos MORENO
Philippe MATTHIS