‘Oh wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
Oh brave new world, that has such people in’t’

A quote from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act V, Scene I,II. and the origin of the title of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel A Brave New World in which he mirrors Shakespeare’s intended irony where a utopian vision turns out to be quite the contrary alluding to the inherent paradoxes of progress.

From a data point of view, the twenty first century is witnessing urbanization at an unprecedented rate, never-before-seen in our history as city dwellers. According to United Nations data, population growth and urbanization are projected to add 2.5 billion people to the world’s urban population by 2050, predominantly in Asia and Africa. Not since the industrial revolution have the fundamental structures of habitat and work changed so rapidly with such profound implications.

From endless city skylines, ever increasing densities and energy dependencies, environmental pressures, excessive consumption, socio economic polarities, informal labor practices to the science fiction inspired architectural promises of the future with their brand ladened shopping malls, our brave new urbanism manifests the conundrum of progress.

This is an ongoing photo series beginning in 2011 exploring the rise of the twenty-first-century metropolis.