ThirstyFish

Istanbul is a transcontinental city spanning Asia and Europe. The tall financial buildings are on the European side of the Bosphorus. Look below for a crop.

Istanbul has a 2014 metropolitan population of about 14.2 million. For comparison, the population of New York City is about 8.4 million. It's also estimated that Greater Istanbul is home to 20 million people. Beside the the obvious problems of urbanization such as high rents, pollution, traffic, crime and inequality, supercities rely almost totally on importation of resources from long distances. What could possibly go wrong?

Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan, theorizes "The Predictability of Unpredictability". We can predict that certain events are unpredictable. But, harm and fragility increases with "size". We build fragile supercities and global economies based on predictable risks while totally ignoring unpredictable events. And, unpredictable events do happen; Almost four years later, Japan is still struggling with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.