I invite you to watch the above video with an open heart. Attend to your own curiosity as you watch it. Every one of us come to data dumps like this with our uniqueness and particular hermeneutics. This is is just one of the many reasons why you are so important. What do you see? What questions emerge in you? What invitation(s) do you perceive? etc.
While trying to articulatie one’s way of seeing the world is a lifelong process of discovery… currently my hermeneutic seems to be rooted in the question”: “What’s going on?” And this question of discovery opens up to more questions:
- “How might ‘this’ (in this case, rapid megacity expansion) be an opportunity to discover more of God’s Shalom?” Or to put it another way,
- “How might ‘this’ invite new expressions of loving God, one another, ourselves and creation?” Or still another way,
- “How might ‘this’ invite an even more faithful relationship with reality?“
A few years back – when I first encountered data like the above megacities growth projections – I was moved by two simple words. People & Place.
People
I was struck by the obvious reality that digit represents a living human being. This data model estimates that by 2035 Delhi will be a megacity of over 43,000,000 people.
As I imagine the experience of being born into a huge city living in that place as being irreducibly central to one’s formational experience of reality and sense of self… Or as I hold the many people choosing to relocate themselves from smaller cities, towns, or even rural areas with the hopes of a better life, and all challenges with finding belonging in a megacity… Or as I consider all those who end up in such places by no choice of their own: refugees of war, climate change, natural disasters, having been trafficked, or means. I am struck, by the need for robust systems of welcome, hospitality, holding memories and grief. I am struck by desperate need to earn money to fund a new more expensive life while trying to send monies back to support friends and family left behind. I am struck by the meaning making/discovering needs beyond economic survival.
Watch the speed of people moving into those cities 10’s of 100’s of thousands of people each year. Just imagine the experience of moving into such a massive city without a community! Not knowing how the systems and cultures of that place function.
It makes we wonder about the kinds of groups, and welcoming practices that will be needed to help new residents find belonging, meaning and to feel in any way connected.
Place
Now, think of the infrastructure of the place where you live… housing, roads, schools, mass transit, bridges, sewer systems, potable water, power grids, social services, hospitals, recycling/garbage, etc. What happens to a city’s infrastructure when its population growth way outpaces its rate of construction? Or the city can’t keep up with affordable and safe housing?
Very often when a city is in crisis mode, thoughtful, community informed, green, sustainable planning goes out the window. Think of how long it takes in a regular city to put up a new building. How does a city keep up with a million new residents every two to three years? What new adaptive forms of governance might we need to develop? How do we learn from and with creational systems of explosive proliferation that might expand our imagination for seeing, designing, and managing our urban systems?
These kinds of questions are part of what compels me to participate with groups like UN-Habitat, Urban Shalom Society, and Parish Collective.
Peace, dwight
