In the last two decades, the world has experienced phenomenal levels of urbanization. According to informed
estimates, in the near future more than half of the world’s population will live in cities, and that the number of
cities with more than five-to-ten million inhabitants will continue to rise. By its projections, the Berlin
Roundtables on Trans-nationality expects that by 2015, about 60 cities will have more than five million people
and megacities like Mumbai, Karachi, Mexico city, Lagos, Beijin, etc, are to reach an urban population of more
than 20 million. Interestingly, as the Berlin Roundtables further noted, “it is the global South that is creating an
image of an urban planet, which fundamentally challenges our Western, if not Eurocentric image of “the
city”(2008;1).