What Would It Take to Turn New York into a Megacity?

Something bizarre happened overnight: New York City's population grew to the size of Shanghai's, swelling from 8 million people to 24 million. It's like a natural disaster, but this tidal surge is made of human needs. Here's how we'll rebuild the city to make room for them all.

Though the rapid change is fantastical, the transformation isn't: New York's population is likely to grow by almost this much by the end of the century. All over the world, cities are making the transition from large cities to megacities of over 15 million people. So our thought experiment isn't about wanting to escape to the city planet Coruscant from Star Wars. It offers a glimpse of what the largest city in North America might actually look like in 2114.

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