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Many people living in large urban centres such as slums lack access to improved water, sanitation, security of tenure, durability of housing, and sufficient living area. This lack of access to basic services and livelihood leads to increasing risk of discrimination, social exclusion and ultimately violence.
The World Economic Forum recently observed, "Cities are evolving faster than ever and encountering unprecedented demographic, environmental, economic and social challenges. Sustainable urban development is the current global priority; however, most cities lack the capacity and resources to ensure that the city develops in a sustainable manner. Multi stake holder cooperation is essential to fill this gap and build transformation strategies to better shape urbanization outcomes and lead cities towards growth, well-being and prosperity for all."
One of the biggest problems that large urban centres face are the ever-growing solid waste.
The World Bank estimated that most city-dwellers will generate a waste pile of 2.20 billion tonnes a year by 2025, up 70 per cent from today's level of 1.3 billion tonnes. The cost of solid waste management is projected to soar to $375 billion a year, from the current US$205 billion. Thus, improving solid waste management, especially in the rapidly growing cities of low-income countries, is becoming a more and more urgent issue. Better waste management and recycling to combat greenhouse gas emissions that includes input from all of a city's stakeholders, including citizen groups and the poor and disadvantaged is the latest prescription, since the age old concept of "throwing away" trash has already received a farewell.
It has also been a stern reality that the question of urban wasteland receives least attention in many cases. World Bank rightly sees global garbage crisis. A giant wake-up call to policy makers everywhere - the world's city-dwellers are fast producing more and more trash in a "looming crisis" that will pose huge financial and environmental burdens, the World Bank has warned. The challenges surrounding municipal solid waste are going to be enormous, on a scale of, if not greater than, the challenges currently being experienced with climate change
It has rightly been observed that the growing pile of trash from urban dwellers is as daunting as global warming and the costs will be especially high in poor countries, mainly in Africa. China eclipsed the United States as the world's largest waste-maker even in as far back in 2004 - generated around 70 per cent of the trash in the East Asia-Pacific region. China, other parts of East Asia, parts of Eastern Europe and the Middle East have the fastest-growing production of municipal solid waste.
Recycling and other measures are, thus, required in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that come from inefficient solid waste management practices. On the part of the World Bank, it is strongly hoped that once the extent of this issue is recognised, local and national leaders, as well as the international community, will mobilise to put in place programmes to reduce, reuse, recycle, or recover as much waste as possible before burning it - and recovering the energy - or otherwise disposing of it.
PLANNED ACTIONS: THE ONLY WAY OUT: Side by side, it is not to be forgotten that urbanisation is not a curse in as much as the same creates huge wealth and opportunities, enables better use of assets and creates new ones. Urbanisation - being a continuous and spontaneous process - in most developing countries is bringing about enormous changes 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 word, these are not harnessed for development and de facto urbanisation's challenges often seem to outpace the development gains.
Obvious enough, 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 remain concentrated in high-tech clusters in globally-linked cities.
Following Mila Freire of the World Bank, it can be said 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 as far as capital and human capital is concerned; (f) engaging the private sector; (g) understanding and discussion with community leaders of how much limited-resource local governments can offer; (h) establishing contracts vertically with the central government and horizontally with other municipalities.
Clearly, successful national urban policies have the ability to yield multiple results: the identification of urban development priorities towards socially and economically equitable and environmentally friendly urban and national development. Also, there can be future development of the national urban system and its spatial configuration concretised through national and spatial plans for regional development and coordination and guidance of actions by national functionaries vis-à-vis lower levels of government in all sectors. Of course, increased and well-coordinated private and public investments in urban development, can in turn lead to consequent improvement of cities' productivity, inclusiveness, environmental conditions and people's participation in the development process .
The emergence of mega-urban regions with the development of world cities and links among them is the strong possibility for the formation of trans-border regions, the development of international corridors, and significance of international networking, among others.
We must seek to address major urban challenges and transition towards smarter, more sustainable cities in a rapidly urbanising world. Actions must be taken by government, the private sector and civil society to achieve sustainable urban development, and include best practices and innovative solutions from around the world.
Needless to say that there is no short-cut prescription. We cannot solve the problem of over-urbanisation overnight. Paying simultaneous attention on rural regions is the only way out backed by proper financing/supervision and updating of rules and regulations.
Dr B K Mukhopadhyay is a management economist.