Definition
The world is undergoing an unprecedented demographic shift, from rural to urban areas. Nearly all of this growth is happing in developing countries where, each month, more than 5 million people migrate to urban areas.
Today’s urban population is projected to reach 5 billion by 2030, with two-thirds of the global population living in cities. City leaders must move quickly to plan for growth and provide the basic services, infrastructure, and affordable housing their expanding populations need.
Urbanization is projected to keep growing, even in OECD countries. Urban issues are increasingly prominent on national policy agendas. Cities and metropolitan areas are major contributors to national economies and play a key role as nodes in global markets.
History
Urban Growth
One in every ten people lived in urban areas a century ago. Now, for the first time ever, most people live in cities. By 2050, the United Nations projects, almost three-quarters of the world's population will call urban areas home. The majority of this growth is centered in struggling, developing countries of the Global South, but cities in developed (or Global North) countries face increasingly complex challenges as well.
Around the world, unplanned urban expansion is multiplying slums, overburdening housing, transportation and infrastructure systems, stifling economic growth, and leaving millions vulnerable to new environmental and health threats.
Urban Decay
Motorized traffic, while
enhancing mobility for millions, monopolizes urban space and
degrades the daily life space of billions of city dwellers.
Fast expanding slums in the rising cities of Asia, Africa,
and Latin America — forcing many people to live in horrific
conditions, deprived of durable housing or safe water supplies
or sanitation — raise deep moral, environmental sustainability
and health issues. While the numbers are difficult to measure, it is clear that hundreds of millions now live in slums and that in many places conditions are deteriorating.
Causes
The rapid growth of urban areas is the result of two factors: natural increase in population (excess of births over deaths), and migration to urban areas. Migration is defined as the long-term relocation of an individual, household or group to a new location outside the community of origin.
Migration is often explained in terms of either “push factors” – conditions in the place of origin which are perceived by migrants as detrimental to their well-being or economic security, and “pull factors” – the circumstances in new places that attract individuals to move there. Examples of push factors include high unemployment and political persecution; examples of pull factors include job opportunities or moving to a better climate.
Key Figures
The World's Fastest Growing Megacities 2000-10
(population growth percentage / population)
From 1950 to 1960, 60% of the growth of megacities was in the developing world. Between 2000 and 2010, the developing world accounted for 90%. Out of the 28 biggest cities on Earth, only six are in the developed world.
1. Karachi, Pakistan - 80,5 / 20,88
2. Schenzhen, China (Est.) - 56,1 / 12,51
3. Lagos, Nigeria (Est.) - 48,2 / 12,09
4. Beijing, China (Est.) - 47,6 / 18,24
5. Bankok, Thailand - 45,2 / 14,54
6. Dakha, Bangladesh - 45,2 / 14,34
7. Guangzhou, China (Est.) - 43,0 / 17,69
8. Shanghai, China (Est.) - 40,1 / 21,77
9. Dekhi, India (Est.) - 39,2 / 22,83
10. Jakarta, Indonesia - 34,6 / 26,75
Impact
Basic needs
Food
Globally, agriculture has met the demands from this rapidly growing urban population, including food that is more energy-, land-, water- and greenhouse gas emission-intensive. But hundreds of millions of urban dwellers suffer malnutrition.
Water
The rapid growth of urban population triggering the explosion of “mega cities” in Asia, Latin America and Africa, is causing a breakdown in basic services, including water supplies and sanitation facilities.
Housing
Urban slums are settlements, neighbourhoods, or city regions that cannot provide the basic living conditions necessary for its inhabitants to live in a safe and healthy environment: durable housing of a permanent nature that protects against extreme climate conditions; sufficient living space, which means not more than three people sharing the same room; easy access to safe water in sufficient amounts at an affordable price, access to adequate sanitation in the form of a private or public toilet shared by a reasonable number of people; security of tenure that prevents forced evictions.
Transportation
Transport systems are the backbone of cities, metropolitan areas and rural regions and as such have a reciprocal interaction with land use systems, urban form and growth patterns, migration of people and industries and with the essential movement of goods and passengers that sustain economic growth. The efficiency of transport systems and their ability to serve regions and nations are highly dependent on land use, housing and real-estate, social networks, demographic trends, migration and regional labor markets, as well as strategies and policies for spatial and socio-economic development.
Prospects
Climate and Pollution
A 2011 study shows that many fastest-growing cities, especially those in the developing world, stand to suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change. Few urban areas are taking the necessary steps to protect their residents.
Crime
Social and cultural factors exacerbate or mediate crime. Urban crime and violence include poverty, unemployment, inequality, violence as reflected in the parental abuse, the rapid pace of urbanization, poor urban planning, design and management, growth in youthful population, and the concentration of political power, which facilitates corruption and city size and density
Health
When steady rural-urban migration connects places formerly isolated, the risks of spreading communicable diseases increase in developing countries. Primarily because only a minority of city dwellers are covered by health insurance, but rural migrants hardly at all.
Unemployment
Urbanisation leads to a deficit in jobs. Businesses and governments cannot produce enough jobs to meet the demand of a fast-growing population. The government loses money, reducing the amount of energy, health care, education, public transportation, waste management and physical security offered.
Outlook
Creating Sustainable Cities
The Urban Waterscape scheme combines rainwater harvesting with a recreational cityscape and demonstrates how recycling rainwater can be of benefit to the cities of the future affected by climate change. The idea is that rain falling on the square will be used on the spot.
Rethinking urban design, architecture, transport and planning we can turn our cities and urban landscapes into 'urban ecosystems' at the forefront of climate change mitigation (better transport, clean energy) and adaptation (floating houses, vertical gardening). Better urban planning will improve quality of life across the board and create new employment opportunities by enhancing the market for new technologies and green architecture.
In 2010 the sustainable development organization Forum for the Future released a report with six recommendations for sustainable urban mobility, or, more specifically, to help city-dwellers access the people, good services and information they need.
Arguably, urban sustainability should be about shaping and constructing places – old and new – that can flourish socially and economically now and into the future, and minimize negative impacts on the environment through careful resource use and adoption of new technologies. But places need people in order to flourish, which means urban sustainability needs to take account of urban citizens in their infinite variety – individuals, employees, voters, residents in neighbourhoods, members of organizations, communities of interest, as well as businesses of all shapes and sizes.
Urbanisation is the dominant market-shaping trend. By 2030 it is estimated that China will have 1 billion residents while India will have 590 million. These nations and others will demand products and services that enable development that is economically supportive, environmentally sensitive and spatially efficient. And those products and services may disproportionately emerge from firms located in cities, in mature economies and rising nations alike, which are first movers on sustainable development.
Miscellaneous
With the move to cities and global population growth, the term “smart cities” has cropped up often. Generally, the term has come to mean the data lying within a city’s environment. By using this data, the economic and environmental health of a single city could be improved, thus aiding productivity and overall ease of living. For cities to function and to accommodate larger numbers of people, “efficiency” will become the word of the next century. And data will power that efficiency.
It's easy to believe that humankind's earliest cities existed sustainably within the natural ecosystem, unlike modern megalopolises, fed and sustained by vast tracts of farm land and a global economy. But ... cities have been radically transforming the environment since at least 6,000 years ago.
Transition to Globalisation
The new phase of globalization is notable for the changes in human mobility. Although heightened flows of goods and capital as well as advanced communication, might have been expected to dampen human migration, the trend is in the opposite direction. The globalizing world is a world of cities and their hinterlands. As engines of growth, cities are becoming the focal points of national and global economies.
Half of the world's population today lives in cities. By 2015, almost 26 cities of the world are expected to have a population of 10 million or more. At least 6,000 tonnes of food must be imported every day to feed a city of this size. Low-income urban dwellers spend between 40% and 60% of their income on food each year.
Globalization > Demography > Size
Many "smaller" cities are facing urban environmental management problems where appropriate approaches are sought now, before the cities' urban environments deteriorate any further. The situation is even more acute, as data shows that slums are growing at an alarming rate and it is especially in the urban poor areas where the municipal solid waste management service is lacking behind the needs of the inhabitants.
Globalization > Environment > Waste > Household
During the past three decades, urban groundwater has emerged as one of the world’s most pressing issues. Explosive population growth, most prevalent in cities, has placed an inordinate demand on groundwater supply, prompting concerns for its long-term sustainability at a time when the quality of available groundwater resources is being increasingly degraded by anthropogenic activity.
Globalization > Economy > Foodstuffs > Water
According to a report published in 2007, air pollution in major cities may be more damaging to health than the radiation exposure suffered by survivors of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The study suggests high levels of urban air pollution cut short life expectancy more than the radiation exposure of emergency workers who were sent into the 19-mile exclusion zone around the site straight after the accident.
Globalisation > Environment > Pollution > Air
Transition to Political Tools
Pollution
According to a UN report released in 2011, more than one million lives could be saved each year if cities around the world adhered to United Nations guidelines on air pollution from cars and factories that can cause heart disease, lung cancer, asthma, and acute lower respiratory infections.
Political Tools > Global > UN > Policies > Environment > Pollution
Urban Sustainability
Given the challenge of urban poverty, with 1 billion slum dwellers projected to rise to more than 1.4 billion by 2020, UN-HABITAT is well aware that the private sector is not merely a part of the solution, but instead is a vital partner that must be engaged if the world’s cities are to achieve sustainability. The challenge is first and foremost to address the shelter and basic services needs of low-income segments in urban areas.
Political Tools > Global > UN > Policies > Social > Social Security
Transition to Political Actors
At a time of hyper-connectivity and transparency offered by the Internet
NGOs increasingly tackle issues that resonate transnationally, therefore needing transnational organizing. 21st-century NGOs are less bound by nation states. As issues travel and coalesce across borders, NGOs must adapt to new politics of scale in their organisation and engagement strategies. Joining various transnational networks, NGOs may operate next to state agencies, movement actors and academics and stay mostly independent in their choice of strategies for public outreach.
Sector > Civil Society > NGOs.
