The Real Population Bomb: Megacities, Global Security & the Map of the Future

Shocking in description and crammed with detail, this book is about where and how geopolitics plays out in the twenty-first century. Drawing on the authors’ three decades of international field work and seasoned policy analysis, The Real Population Bomb hits like a pile driver. Its essential truths can no longer be ignored: we have never been here before in human history. The choices we make in this next decade will determine the fate of human societies. By 2025, twenty-seven cities will have populations greater than ten million and over six hundred cities will have populations greater than one million. Specific megacities, intimately connected to globalization, are posing huge security challenges—now. Liotta and Miskel focus intensely on effects these massive, underserved, and undergoverned cities have on international stability, human security, and environmental degradation, and offer strategies and solutions for mitigating those effects. Their stark, often stunning, portraits of major urban centers in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America illuminate how megacity Leviathans are redrawing the map of the future—in ways that affect us all. You may not agree with this book’s message. But it will prove difficult to forget.