Mapping city visions: integrating mega-projects in urban development

This policy brief explores the mapping of city visions in fast-growing cities in several emerging economies (Brazil, South Africa, India, Peru). As cities have to deal increasingly with both complexity and uncertainty in their development, they are concerned with the future pathways their cities can take. City visions on urban development portray idealized situations as goals for the future, and the maps portraying them are strongly idealized. To get behind these idealized versions of reality, policy makers need to understand how such visions are developed, by whom, and whose realities they reflect.