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News Alerts | Global Report warns of impending violence and chaos

Global Report warns of impending violence and chaos

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published Published on Nov 4, 2009   modified Modified on Nov 4, 2009


A UN Habitat publication warns that inequalities and worsening informal settlements (read slums) could lead to widespread violence and chaos in the cities and towns of the world. The newly-released report titled “Planning Sustainable Cities: Global Report on Human Settlements 2009” says that with almost 200,000 new dwellers flooding into the world cities and towns each day, there is an urgent need to check the mushrooming of such settlements. The problem is particularly severe in Asia, and some of the worst planned cities happen to be in India.

According to the UN report there are three trends that have implications for urban planning in the region: first, an increasing trend toward ageing marks the demographic profile; second there has been an accentuation of socio-economic class disparities and the emergence of a strong middle class; third, there is a change in consumption habits, particularly in increasingly wealthy cities such as Shanghai, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou (China); Mumbai, New Delhi, (India); Jakarta (Indonesia); Bangkok (Thailand); and Seoul (South Korea)

The report further reads:

Fifty-two per cent of the world’s 3.3 billion urban population live in cities and towns of fewer than 500,000 people. In developed and developing countries 54 per cent and 51 per cent of urbanites, respectively, live in such cities.

However, as city populations grow, so cities expand by consuming most of the previously separated towns and cities. In some cases this results in turning such areas into metropolises, and others into peri-urban entities. Either way, the process of urban sprawl is presenting a major challenge for urban planners and urban management worldwide.

The rate of influx means that a new city the size of Santiago (Chile) or Kinshasa (DR Congo) is being born every month. The report identifies inequalities in developed and developing country cities as being driven by factors that include current forms of urbanization, vast income disparities, social divisions, gender discrimination and even international migration. When comparing cities across the world, the report finds that some large cities in the US, for example Atlanta and New York, have as high a gini coefficient (an economic measure of income inequality) as Abidjan or Buenos Aires.

In her introduction, Anna Tibaijuka, the Executive Director of UN-HABITAT, points out that “future urban planning must take place within an understanding of the factors shaping 21st-century cities, such as the demographic challenges of rapid urbanization, rapid growth of small- and medium-sized towns and an expanding youth population in developing nations, and, in developed nations, the challenges of shrinking cities, ageing and the increasing multicultural composition of cities.”

The rapid growth of cities has given cause for “great concern”, which can only be overcome with innovative forms of planning and urban management. The report adds that because 17 per cent of cities in the developing world are experiencing annual growth rates of 4 per cent or more, “significant land and infrastructure development will have to take place to accommodate this growing population”.

In developing countries, new arrivals from the countryside settle in peri-urban areas of cities and towns of fewer than 500,000 people. There, they engage in informal businesses, transport and the provision of other services; and set up informal homes on areas prone to storms, floods, landslides and other natural disasters. These are just some aspects of daily life for the one million slum dwellers around the world.

In developed countries, international migration is driving urbanization; with ethnic or religious groups congregating in certain cities or within a section of a city. This continuing trend could lead to resentment and violence from the indigenous community.

Migration, whether within a country or from developing to developed world, is a major factor for urbanization and, in some places, leads to large slum populations. A staggering 62.2 per cent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s urban population live in slums, while the informal economy labour force accounts for around 60 per cent of urban jobs, and even a larger proportion of women’s economic activities. New forms of planning will be required to deal with these pressures.

Latin America and the Caribbean is no better, although there are significant differences among the countries of this group. Over 60 per cent or urban residents in Jamaica live in informal settlements and slums. Just 9 per cent of Chile’s population falls into this category. Overall, an estimated 70 per cent of new housing production in the group is informal, the Global Report says.

However, the report says that in Latin America some municipalities - for example Bogota in Colombia, Curiba, Rosario and Porto Alegre in Brazil - are developing “more strategic and proactive approaches” to planning and implementation, to deal with informality.

In 2005, in Eastern Asia urban slum population percentages were 36.5; 42.9 for Southern Asia; 27.5 for South-eastern Asia; and 24 for Western Asia. However, there are considerable variations in the subregion. In Cambodia the figure is 78.9 per cent and in Thailand 26 per cent.

Imposed structural adjustment and economic liberalization policies that emerged in the 1970s drove large numbers of formal-sector urban workers into the informal sector. However, increased competition from cheap imports is also a factor.

Informal manufacturing and services predominate in the entire Asian sub-region. On average, this activity accounts for 65 per cent of non-agricultural employment between 1995 and 2000.

Informality differs starkly in form in developed countries and those in economic transition. There is little informal settlement, presently, in Europe and North American cities, with the exception of tiny travellers’ settlements and some small-scale squatting in disused buildings. Some informal occupation and modification of formal buildings occurs in inner-city areas, especially by slum landlords and poor urban residents, among them recent migrants. The expansion of settlements into areas surrounding cities has also been observed, for example in the Veneto Plain in northern Italy. Here, agriculture and urban development has been closely related. Urban development areas have occurred through the cities of Venice and Padua, as well as through the largely uncontrolled expansion of numerous villages for artisanal industry, commerce and residential uses.

Employment in developed countries is in formal enterprises, and urban planning and regulation systems are strongly developed. Compliance with labour and development regulations is widespread and enforcement effective. However, economic liberalization since 1980s has been associated with the growth of various kinds of informal economic activity, unregulated wage employment to reduce costs, and moonlighting or self-employment that evades taxes. Estimates are that in the highly developed countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the informal economy accounts for about 16 per cent of value added.

Better approaches to urban planning and management are needed in the face of growing informality. Past approaches of formalizing informality have failed: it destroyed livelihoods and shelter, exacerbated exclusion and marginalization, the report says.

The Global Report assesses the effectiveness of urban planning as a tool for dealing with the unprecedented challenges facing 21st century cities and for enhancing sustainable urbanization.

According to the report, since 1975, there has been a fourfold increase in the number of recorded natural disasters, the highest of which was 801 disasters in 2000. Between 1996 and 2005, disasters accounted for over US$667 billion in material loss. Worldwide, the greatest increase in natural disasters has been in Africa, where a three-fold increase in natural disasters has been experienced in the last decade alone.

Urbanization Trends

Global Situation

• Population shift is one of the main factors affecting urbanization. Less than 5 per cent of the world’s population lived in cities a century ago. In 2008, for the first time in humanity, that figure exceeded 50 per cent. By 2050, it will have reached 70 per cent, representing 6.4 billion people. Most of this growth will be taking place in developing regions.

• Between 2007 and 2025, the annual rate of change in the urban population in developing countries is expected to be 2.27 per cent, and 0.49 per cent in developed regions. China’s urban population is expected to double from about 40 per cent of its national population during 2006 to 2030 to more than 70 per cent by 2050.

• In developed countries the level of urbanization reached the 50 per cent mark more than half a century ago; developing countries will only reach this level in 2019.

Asia

• Asia is home to some 3.7 billion people, which is more than 60 per cent of the world’s population. The region constitutes one of the world’s most rapidly urbanizing regions. The urban population increased from 237 million (17 per cent) in 1950 to 1.65 billion (41 per cent) in 2007. By 2050, it is expected that more than two-thirds of the population will be urban. Regional urban growth has been declining since the 1990s, from an annual average of 3.13 per cent to the present rate of 2.5 per cent.

• There are three trends that have implications for urban planning in the region: first, an increasing trend toward ageing marks the demographic profile; second there has been an accentuation of socio-economic class disparities and the emergence of a strong middle class; third, there is a change in consumption habits, particularly in increasingly wealthy cities such as Shanghai, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou (China); Mumbai, New Delhi, (India); Jakarta (Indonesia); Bangkok (Thailand); and Seoul (South Korea).

Further readings

http://www.unhabitat.org/documents/GRHS09/PR1.pdf

http://www.unhabitat.org/documents/GRHS09/PR2.pdf

http://www.unhabitat.org/documents/GRHS09/PR3.pdf

http://www.unhabitat.org/documents/GRHS09/FS1.pdf

http://www.unhabitat.org/documents/GRHS09/FS4.pdf

http://www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/GRHS_2009Brief.pdf

http://www.unhabitat.org/content.asp?cid=7263&catid=7&
amp;typeid=46&subMenuId=0

 

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