Urban planner and developer Jonathan Rose is author of The Well-Tempered City, which looks at the evolution of cities across history and modern times, and envisions the cities of tomorrow. Rose recently spoke with Mike Consol, editor of Real Assets Adviser, about his new book.

You make a point in the book that in 1952 only 30 percent of the world’s people lived in cities; now more than half of them do. And by the end of this century, that is going to grow to 80 percent of the world’s population living in urban settings. What is the gravitational pull of cities?

Rose: The pull of cities is opportunity. First of all, let’s understand where all this growth is coming from; the majority is coming from the developing world. The Western world is actually fairly urbanised. The United States reached a point of 50 percent of people living in cities around 1900, as people moved from