Episode 01 The New Atlantis: Charter Cities

Archived audio: I’m at the airport in Lagos and electricity just went off for, this is five minutes and there’s still no lights at the airport—the international airport, Lagos. Wooo! Finally we got lights.

Tamara Winter: Lagos, Nigeria is one of the largest cities in the world. It’s home to over 14 million people and one of Africa’s main economic hubs. It’s the most populous city in the country with Africa’s largest GDP. However in Lagos, even basic services are unreliable.

Archived audio: Everything comes to life when there’s light. When there’s no light you can literally feel handicapped.

Tamara Winter: This isn’t a new problem in Lagos. An unstable power grid and political corruption make providing everyday utilities—like electricity—a struggle. In 2016, The Guardian reported on a neighborhood that went without power for five years because its residents refused to pay bribes. These kinds of challenges are not unique to Lagos or even to Nigeria. Across the developing world—from Jakarta to Kinshasa—cities are growing rapidly. New residents are pouring into cities that have neither the infrastructure nor the institutions to adequately serve them. In his 2005 book Planet of Slums urban theorist Mike Davis chronicled the rise of million-person cities in the developing world. He described the lives of the more than one billion people who live in the world’s slums. Booming populations of these fast-growing cities find themselves in harsh living conditions. Flooded streets. Poor ventilation. Little to no waste clearance. And few basic services. The absence of infrastructure makes life dangerous. Lack of access to sanitation and healthcare are directly responsible for high infant and maternal mortality. Communicable diseases—that have become a thing of the past elsewhere—run rampant. Despite these challenges, people across the developing world are seeking out the economic opportunities that cities provide.