What Facebook can tell us about megacity growth

Data scientists at Facebook compared users’ hometowns with their current homes to discern the 10 cities with the most “coordinated migrations,” where at least 20% of the population of one city has moved to another city.

Source. The top 10 destinations:

  1. Lagos, Nigeria
  2. Istanbul, Turkey
  3. Bogota, Columbia
  4. Bangkok, Thailand
  5. Accra, Ghana
  6. Hyderabad, India
  7. Kampala, Uganda
  8. Lima, Peru
  9. Chennai, India
  10. London, Great Britain

People will get excited about the big data, but the insight I drew was that urban politics and economics are woefully understudied in development.

One Response

  1. I wholehearted agree with you Chris in regards to the lack of academic attention devoted to urbanism in development. I completed a Masters in International Urban and Environmental Management at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and it is one of the very few programs with such a focus that I know of. Funnily enough, I found it impossible to get a job in this field as although some aid agencies such as World Vision are beginning to undertake work in urban areas, there is still a very poor understanding of what skill sets and knowledge is required to to work in the urban sphere. I now found myself working on agroforestry in Ethiopia, amongst other things, but hope to one day do some work on urbanism in Africa. I currently live in Addis Ababa and everyday I see facets of urbanism that need greater scrutiny and research if better development outcomes are to be achieved for urban communities.