Uneven Growth

In 2030, the world’s population will be a staggering eight billion people. Of these, two-thirds will live in cities. Most will be poor. With limited resources, this uneven growth will be one of the greatest challenges faced by societies across the globe.

Over the next years, city authorities, urban planners and designers, economists, and many others will have to join forces to avoid major social and economical catastrophes, working together to ensure these expanding megacities will remain habitable.

To engage this international debate, “Uneven Growth” – organized by Pedro Gadanho, MoMa's Curator, Department of Architecture and Design – bringed together six interdisciplinary teams of researchers and practitioners to examine new architectural possibilities for six global metropolises: Hong Kong, Istanbul, Lagos, Mumbai, New York, and Rio de Janeiro. Each team developed proposals for a specific city in a series of workshops that occured over the course of a 14-month initiative.

“Uneven Growth” seeks to challenge current assumptions about the relationships between formal and informal, bottom-up and top-down urban development, and to address potential changes in the roles architects and urban designers might assume vis-à-vis the increasing inequality of current urban development. The resulting proposals, exhibited at MoMA consider how emergent forms of tactical urbanism can respond to alterations in the nature of public space, housing, mobility, spatial justice, environmental conditions, and other major issues in near-future urban contexts.

November 22, 2014 – May 10, 2015
Uneven Growth:
Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities
curated by Pedro Gadanho
MoMA
11 West, 53 Street
New York