The editors of Town Planning Review (TPR) have selected the following paper as the Featured Article in TPR 96.6.
‘The urgency of planning megacities in the Global South in the next decade’, by Deden Rukmana and Nabilla Dina Adharina.
This article is available to read Open Access as part of LUP Open Planning.
When asked to describe the article and highlight its importance, author Deden Rukmana stated the following:
The urgency of planning megacities arises from the unprecedented pace and scale of urbanisation in the Global South. In the past three decades alone, more than 20 new megacities – defined as continuous urban areas with populations exceeding ten million – have emerged. Projections indicate that by 2030, 34 of the world’s 41 megacities will be located in the Global South. These vast urban regions are simultaneously engines of economic growth and centres of acute vulnerability, confronting challenges of spatial fragmentation, infrastructural deficits, environmental risks and persistent social inequality.
The absence of integrated and coherent planning across administrative boundaries, combined with weak institutional capacity at the local level, has exacerbated the challenges of congestion, informal housing and resource scarcity. As massive urban growth increasingly coincides with fragmented systems of governance, the governance and planning of megacities has emerged as a critical determinant of global sustainability and resilience.
We argue that three aims are especially urgent for addressing these challenges. First, planning frameworks must extend beyond fragmented jurisdictions, recognising that megacities often span multiple administrative boundaries and cannot be managed effectively through isolated local policies. Stronger metropolitan and regional approaches are therefore needed to align infrastructure, housing and environmental management across different scales of governance.
Second, urban data must be integrated across sources – particularly the United Nations’ World Urbanization Prospects and the Global Human Settlement Layer – to capture both population figures and the physical form of urban growth. Without such integration, planning risks relying on partial or misleading representations of urban realities, weakening policy responses to rapid urbanisation. This argument has become particularly salient with the release of the World Urbanization Prospects 2025 on 18 November 2025. The updated methodology introduces a more integrated approach by combining population figures with built-up area data – precisely the direction advocated in our paper. This shift represents an important step forward in capturing the true spatial extent and demographic scale of contemporary megacities, and it reinforces the need for planners and policymakers to engage critically with multiple data sources.
Third, drawing on David Harvey’s concept of the ‘spatial fix’, we emphasise the decisive role of the state in shaping megacity development, while also stressing the need to empower local governments if growth is to be inclusive and sustainable. The spatial fix highlights how state-led interventions can redirect capital and restructure urban regions, but if left unchecked these measures may exacerbate inequality and exclusion. Taken together, these aims frame megacity planning not as a narrow technical or administrative task, but as a pivotal arena where data, governance and equity converge to shape the trajectory of urbanisation.
Planning megacities in the Global South is urgent because their rapid growth exposes the limits of fragmented governance and weak local capacity. State intervention is vital for directing investment and urban expansion but without balance it may exacerbate inequality. Given the scale of megacities, institutional innovation is necessary for collaboration across regions and levels of government. Promoting integrated planning and cross-jurisdictional cooperation can transform state coordination into a tool for creating inclusive, sustainable and resilient megacities.
Our paper resonates strongly with today’s global challenges, as rapid population growth in the Global South fuels the rise of megacities that are becoming critical battlegrounds for sustainability. Cities such as Jakarta, Dhaka, Mexico City and Lagos face mounting environmental risks from flooding and land subsidence, while fragmented governance and limited local capacity complicate coordinated responses across jurisdictions. By linking these dynamics to global policy agendas, such as the New Urban Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), our paper highlights that megacity governance is not merely a local concern but a defining global priority.
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