Connecting Cities: India

The 9th World Congress of Metropolis, to be held in Sydney in October 2008, is a great opportunity to generate research into the future direction of cities. With this in mind, the organisers of the congress have developed a number of research publications that explore new concepts related to cities as well as the emerging cities of India and China. In organising the Congress, we found that there was a network of researchers and commentators about cities across the globe who had very interesting issues to raise. While many of these will be presenting papers at the Congress, we also thought it would be useful to develop a series of publications that raise these issues in a provocative manner. The first of these books will be about networks—the concept of cities interacting across the globe. The second examines the spreading urban regions around many cities followed by publications that look in detail at the cities of China and India. The final book will examine the impact on cities of major events such as the Olympic games. Contemporary world urbanisation, particularly the rise of Chinese and Indian cities, means both opportunities and challenges for Australian cities. These publications put Sydney and other Australian cities in scenarios with global counterpart cities to benchmark their urban performance. The provocative topics are aimed to trigger fruitful debate in government, private sector and the general public regarding how to create better strategies for the future of Australian cities. We would like to thank all contributors, sponsors and research coordinators. Without their work, these publications could not have been possible. The influence of their contributions will be far reaching.