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6 years ago

Haphazard urban growth: Time to look at the future

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Governments in Africa and Asia must embrace and plan for rapid urbanisation or risk harming the future prospects of hundreds of millions of their citizens,  with knock-on effects worldwide, warns a study published by IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development) and UNFPA (the UN Population Fund) on August 06, 2010. It says, policymakers should heed lessons from Brazil whose failure in the past to plan for rapid urban growth exacerbated poverty and created new environmental problems and long-term costs that could have been avoided.

Urban population is expected to increase by 1.5 billion over the next 20 years, while the number of megacities will double. The UN predicts that by 2015, there will be 358 cities with one million or more people, and 27 'mega-cities' with ten million or more. Much of this growth will happen in developing countries. India is set to become the world's most populous country by 2050, with a population of nearly 1.6 billion people.

The stern reality is: the world population has risen seven-fold over the past 200 years. For the first time in history, a majority of the world's six billion people are living in cities. Between 2000 and 2025, the global urban population will double.

French Institute of Demographic Studies projected that by the end of this century, there will be 10 to 11 billion people on the planet. The world population will jump from the current 7.1 billion to 9.7 billion by 2050. In India, the same is expected to rise from 1.2 billion to 1.6 billion, while that in China will remain at the same level [1.3 billion].

The crucial role of cities as hubs of economic and technical innovation is an established fact. Cities matter because the productivity benefits they provide to knowledge-intensive business are important for regional and national prosperity. The lessons learnt from successful cases of city revival in Europe and city growth in other economies like China clearly illustrate the importance of human capital and creativity for cities to compete in a global market and help national economies to maintain their competitive edge. This awareness, no doubt, has been closely associated with the ongoing structural changes in most emerging economies.

Side by side, it should not be forgotten that urbanisation is not a curse, because it creates huge wealth and opportunities, enables better use of assets and generates new ones. Urbanisation - being a continuous and spontaneous process - is bringing about enormous changes in most developing countries in the spatial distribution of people and resource, and in the use and consumption of land. The unfortunate part is that though such process is strongly linked to development (social, technological and economic), many countries lack the appropriate policies and frameworks that can leverage it for increased development gains, and can guide it towards sustainable patterns. In a nutshell, these are not harnessed for development, and de facto urbanisation's challenges often seem to outpace the development gains. 

INNOVATIVE APPROACH : It is obvious that economic growth will increasingly come from the strength of innovative activities instead of factor accumulation as in the past. Recent researches also suggest that such innovative activities are concentrated in high-tech clusters of globally-linked cities. Over time, as the share of the rural sector in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) goes down, urban activities would take the lead in the very growth process, ably backed by the service activities (major components include business and creative industries with high value added). In fact globalisation (integration with the global economy and interdependence) and the emergence of the tertiary economy have raised the profile of cities in development, especially as innovation and foreign investment are attracted by the agglomeration economies offered by well-managed large cities.

Side by side, it is crystal clear that globalisation and urbanisation will bring enormous challenges as well as opportunities to both developed and developing countries in the near future. Douglass (2005) rightly noted that development is likely to be polarised in a limited number of urban regions, which shows and indicates that while convergence of production and income may happen across countries, divergence is likely to occur within each country, as globalisation will bring a concentration of activity to a few sites.  The emergence of mega-urban regions with the development of world cities and links among them is a strong possibility - the formation of trans-border regions, development of international corridors, and significance of international networking, among others.

Clearly, the near future of globalisation and urbanisation will bring enormous challenges as well as opportunities to both developed and developing countries. Noted urban planner Douglass rightly opined that development is likely to be polarised in a limited number of urban regions. That is to say, while convergence of production and income may happen across countries, divergence is likely to occur within each country as globalisation will bring a concentration of activities to a few sites. The emergence of mega-urban regions with the development of world cities and links among them is a strong possibility.  The formation of trans-border regions, the development of international corridors, and preponderance of international networking cannot be ruled out.

THE WRITING ON THE WALL: Following Mila Freire (World Bank), it may be noted that the main challenges include: (a) the need to keep urban planning and management flexible and ready to adapt to new developments in the economic or social front; (b) getting the best possible technical analysis; (c) pushing the agenda of excellence; (d) thinking big and long-term; (e) looking at the big picture - overall competitiveness, labour market, environmental quality, and standing with regard to capital and human capital; (f) engaging the private sector; (g) understanding and discussion with community leaders on how much resource local governments can offer; (h) establishing contracts vertically with the central government and horizontally with other municipalities.

There is an utmost need for integration of urban development in the national sustainable development policies. Such policies serve as enabling frameworks for transport corridors, job creation, and at the same time development (within and between) of cities. Plus, they can also empower local authorities to work more closely with the national government. The importance of developing national urban policies as levers for sustainable development remains beyond any shadow of doubt.

Clearly, successful national urban policies have the ability to yield multiple results: the identification of urban development priorities geared towards socially and economically equitable and environmentally friendly urban and national development; future development of the national urban system and its spatial configuration concretised through national and spatial plans for regional development; coordination and guidance of actions by national  functionaries vis-à-vis lower levels of government in all sectors; and, of course,  increased and well-coordinated private and public investments in urban development, which, in turn,  lead to consequent improvement of cities' productivity, inclusiveness, environmental conditions and people's participation in the development process.

Policymakers can learn much from the experiences of Latin American countries - especially Brazil - who have already gone through an early urban transition.

Dr B K Mukhopadhyay, management economist, is Principal of ICFAI University, Tripura, India.

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