Imagine the usual environment and stresses of a standard city with say 2-3 million people in – very sizeable by any stretch of the imagination! Now picture the same environment and stresses in a city of 12-13 million people and this is very large. Actually, for many of us who do not live in these colossal giants, quite impossible to imagine.
Any city that has over 10 million people living within its metropolitan area is said to be a 'megacity'. These include Shanghai (China), Mexico City (Mexico), Johannesburg-Pretoria (South Africa), Dhaka (Bangladesh), New York (USA) and London (UK). While these megacities have had much attention focused on them by people and publications interested in cities, a recent television program by broadcaster Andrew Marr titled 'Megacities' has covered these and bought them to a prime-time audience.
While all megacities, all five featured in the program -London, Shanghai, Dhaka, Mexico City and Tokyo- all had different characteristics, benefits and drawbacks. However, for me, the most interesting comparison was between Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, and Tokyo, capital of Japan. Both cities are megacities and suffer from overcrowding and other pressures. Dhaka is a very fast growing city -with an extra 500,000 people moving into the city from the surrounding countryside every year, being a city with economically poor people in a poor country that is also at risk of flooding. Tokyo, on the other hand tend to have by-and-large a far more affluent population which until recently lay in the world's second richest economy behind the USA – though Japan has now been relegated to third place behind both the USA and China.
Before too much thought, and certainly my personal thought, was that the city with the most stressed inmates would certainly be Dhaka, due to the risk of flooding, trying to scrape enough money to live and indeed, living in self built house closely compact and near on-top of ones neighbors – even quite literally the case. On the other hand Tokyo would be stressful, of course as it is a megacity, but not to the same degree as Dhaka and that people would have more opportunities to relax due to greater personal wealth and facilities on offer. It seemed though that actually the opposite is true.
While under no circumstances do I want to suggest a romantic view of being economically poor- because in the 21st century there should be no such thing as poverty- I actually got the impression that the poorer people with the slum in Dhaka were actually happier than the richer people in Tokyo. The reasons for this are as follows.
Firstly the people of Dhaka had a very strong sense of community. People live with immediate and extended family in very small and confused spaces, in close proximity to neighbors and relatives. People seemed to talk and help each other out where where possible.
Secondly, in Dhaka, while people seemed to work very hand – and indeed many do work exceptionally hard to simply keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table; much of the work seemed to be of the hard physical labor variety that while very hard on the body, does not place mental stress on the mind that lead to psychological burnout.
People in Tokyo on the other hand, while more affluent, actually seemed far more stressed. While people live in very close proximity to one-another as in Dhaka -with people crammed into small apartment placed high above each other into the sky; unlike Dhaka, there did not seem to be the same neighborliness and personal interaction between people – especially between neighbors and strangers. People were living very mono-centric lives, living close to one-another but having little interaction.
With the nature of much employment in Tokyo – finance and other office work – stress tend to be psychological rather than physical stress on the body as with Dhaka. Alongside this, and something that was pointed out to Andrew Marr, was the impersonal nature of the city, an almost clinicalness – something that appeared to annoy Marr after only two days in Tokyo. Very small clinical apartments are one thing, but the 'rent a friend' scheme for people who have no friends just shows the loneliness that can exist in such a big city. It is ironic that a city of over 12 million inmates can have people who are so lonely!
Finally the most striking thing about Tokyo is its clockwork organization. On the surface this would certainly lead to less stress – with very rarely a late train and infrequent technological failures. We humans though, as a species crave different environments and experiences that change from day-to-day. And while delays and route-changes making us late every day would be unwelcome, slight daily change and the unexpected are essential for us. This is why I feel that despite all the cultural advances, Andrew Marr found Dhaka -along with Mexico City which was also focused up in the program- to be strangely less stressful. As I have already touched upon, Marr admitted himself that two days spent in Tokyo was enough and that he actually felt unnerved by the city impersonal nature of the city.
To conclude then, with anything in life including stress, the unexpected can actually happen. At first thought, I would have said that Tokyo would have been the least stressful city, with its clockwork transport system and modern hi-tech gadgets to help us in life. But actually, surprisingly, Dhaka appeared to be the less stressful of the two for Andrew Marr, large as a result of the social interaction and close bonds that exist in the city, more-so than in Tokyo – though it has to be said that life on the breadline in Dhaka is only slightly less stressful!
Both cities then are extremely stressful places to live and work by no-means should we romanticise poverty and deprivation. But it does go to show that sometimes we can have these hi-tech innovations designed to free us that actually cause us less free time and greater stress. This stress is of course multiplied in a megacity: mega-cities mega-stress!
