The statistics at this point are familiar. Since the 1960s, the world’s population has doubled in size, a growth that is for the most part urban and that occurs in the developing world at three times the rate as in the first world. Lagos’s population, to cite an example, has grown from 290,000 in 1950 to 18.5 million today, Mexico City’s has leapt from 1.6 million in 1940 to around 20 million, and Lima, with a population growth from 600,000 in 1950 to 7 million today, has joined the league of burgeoning South American capitals. In addition to projecting an even more accelerated population boom, demographers today estimate that in some fifteen to twenty-five years, 70 to 80 percent of the world’s population will reside in cities, and that even taking into account plans to improve urban conditions, almost a quarter of the world’s population will be living in city slums.1 What makes these numbers particularly meaningful is the economic and social informality that has accompanied the rural-urban emigration that has so transformed the third-world city. Informal sectors are growing at twice the rate as formal sectors, overtaking every aspect of city life and challenging us to rethink what a city is and what global politics will be.
