At the beginning of the 20th centuries 2 cities exceeded a million people population, what is known as millionaire cities. Today there are over 300 of them. Here is a table with the 26 biggest of them:
By the beginning of the 21st century, the populations of world cities were expected to grow to record levels; Sao Paulo was expected to reach 26 million; Tokyo, 24 million; and New York, 23 million. However, as there is no universal agreement over what constitutes an urban area, there have been two different estimates of populations of major cities as predicted for the year 2000 (for example, Mexico City was predicted to reach 26.3 million according to one estimate, and 31 million according to another). More typically, there has been the extension of vast urbanized regions, for example in New England and on the Pacific coast of California, in which the next phase of suburbanization has occurred. It is thus possible to find under-urbanization, as in provincial Russia where industrial plants have been constructed without the infrastructure of housing and recreation facilities, over-urbanization, as in the Latin American and African centres of urban population, and rapid suburbanization (also known as deurbanization), as in the United States, where towns are linked into a common labour market by advanced transport and communication. This, along with rural migration, has involved a rapid rise in commuting from outer suburbs and new towns. The rapid development of both communication and production has speeded up the emergence of a global village.
Los Angeles is one of the leading manufacturing, commercial, transport, financial, and international trade centres in the United States. Manufactured goods include electronic equipment, clothing, processed foods, metal goods, chemicals, building supplies, and printed materials. The Los Angeles metropolitan area is a leading hub of the US aerospace industry, as well as a centre for film, radio and television (notably Hollywood film-making), and for the recording industry. The city contains the headquarters of many large corporations, research and development facilities, and financial institutions, with tourism an increasingly important part of the city's economy. The port of Los Angeles-Long Beach, which is situated on San Pedro Bay, handles more cargo than any other US port on the Pacific Coast. Although migrants that move to Los Angeles especially Mexicans have great expectations from this city of dreams as they call it but the state can’t support all these people. It’s a surprising big number the people that are homeless. Many of the foreigners are deported. If it’s a country to the borders of USA they will try again. But except these problems Los Angeles has got to deal with the great seismic activity in the local area.
Possible solutions that MEDC’s can give is council houses, jobs and education courses for the homeless so that they can rejoin the community and the active potential of the country. Actions like these take place in Los Angeles e.g. project “Step” that is aiming the purposes mentioned above. Solutions like these aren’t feasible to other countries and this is a push factor for people to leave the country. Another solution would be for the rich to move to edge cities so the suburbs are developed and poorer people can move in to the centre.
The fact is that housing has become difficult to the vast majority of the big cities. Although cities seem the only way out from the stagnancy of the country survival problems do exist for a great number and sometimes it’s worse in cities as it is thought that shantytowns and this image of poverty spoils the big luxurious cities and their tourism and as an outcome those people on the line of indigence are superseded.
