Habitat II: Coping with looming issues of urbanized world
Habitat II: Coping with looming issues of urbanized world
JAKARTA (JP): The world is steadily becoming more urban, as people move to cities and towns. They search for employment and educational opportunities and higher standards of living, migrating from rural lands that can no longer support them.
Today, almost half of humanity lives in urban areas, and the urban population is growing two and a half times faster than its rural counterpart. By the year 2025 urban areas are expected to be home to more than two thirds of the world's people. Already the world is largely urban, and even in rural areas life is increasingly affected by the changes created by the growth of cities.
The increases of urban population in developing countries far exceed those in the more developed regions. Today, there are nearly two urban dwellers in developing regions for each one urban dweller in the more developed regions; by 2015 there will be more than three; by 2025, nearly four.
Rapid rates of urban population growth strain the capacity of national and local governments to provide basic services. Often, the resulting inability to keep pace causes human suffering, environmental damage and unsustainable patterns of development. Many intractable problems typically accompany rapid urban growth, such as poverty, unemployment, inadequate shelter, poor or nonexistent sanitation, contaminated or depleted water supplies, air pollution and other forms of environmental degradation, congested streets and overloaded public transport systems.
Concerned by these looming issues, the world's governments will convene for the Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) in Istanbul from June 3 to June 14, 1996. The conference is served by a preparatory process that includes efforts by governments, a system of national reports and development of an action plan for the future. Through an innovative system of exchanging information about the best practices in urban governance, participants will trade experiences concerning programs and policies that have been effective in solving urban problems.
Habitat II will build on the efforts of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, which made stabilization of world population growth a priority. Habitat II will further the ICPD's pledge by considering the underlying cause of urban growth: rising populations. At Habitat II, governments will also discuss many of the problems caused by rapid urbanization, including the difficulty of providing basic services such as water, electricity, sewage, housing, health care and transport.
Pressure
Controlling the pressure on cities by stabilizing population growth will require progress toward the goals pledged in the Cairo conference. At the core of the ICPD goals is the empowerment of women through education and access to employment and health care. Governments also agreed to achieve sustainable development by stabilizing world population through extending life expectancy, reducing infant and maternal mortality, providing education for all, and extending reproductive health care to all by 2015. Governments pledged to achieve these goals while sustaining dynamic urban growth. The ICPD goals are vital not just for cities but also for human development in general.
One major area of concern about the growth of urban populations is the already high incidence of urban poverty. Today, there are at least 600 million people in urban areas who cannot adequately provide for their basic needs in shelter, employment, water and health. It is estimated that approximately one half of the populations of several of the cities in some of the world's poorest countries are already living below official poverty levels.
While the proportion of the poor has decreased in a number of the world's regions, as the population has increased in size, the absolute number of the urban poor is increasing. At the same time, in Asia, the incidence of urban poverty has been decreasing since the mid-1980s in a number of countries, which clearly indicates that something can be done.
Urbanization can offer many benefits to developing societies. Cities provide exceptional opportunities for entrepreneurship, creativity and the generation of wealth. Education, health and social services in cities are typically more superior to those in rural areas. However, when the rate of urbanization exceeds the pace at which the city can support its inhabitants, problems occur.
The majority of the world's cities suffer from inadequate sewage facilities, poor drainage, insufficient solid waste disposal and poor air and water quality. These problems are common among cities, and to a great extent the burden of solving them falls on municipal authorities. The Habitat II process is focusing world attention on these challenges and promoting discussion on how to address them.
Suggested approaches include development of partnerships between private firms and governments to solve problems, as well as sharing information on which solutions have worked best, in the hope that they will be adopted in other localities as appropriate. Water supply is among the most serious problems facing the cities of developing countries.
Problems related to water supply are city-specific, and the challenge for each city will be to understand the unique geographical, topographical and meteorological conditions in which it is placed and to plan accordingly. Most sewage systems, like most water supply systems, were constructed to meet the needs of the colonial populations of the core cities. Because of the rapid growth of cities in developing countries, the challenge will be to meet expanding sewerage needs in the coming decades.
Many of the options that used to exist for low-income urban dwellers are disappearing, such as the availability of unused public land and low-density central-city neighborhoods. While the demand for land is growing, the supply in most cities of the developing world is both genuinely and artificially limited. It has been estimated that rapid urbanization is likely to lead to a doubling of the built-up urban areas in most developing countries over the next 15 years to 20 years.
Since land is essential for urban growth, devising equitable and efficient land development policies is one of the major challenges facing planners and policy makers in the world's large cities. To meet these challenges, governments will have to maintain or create policies and mechanisms that involve participation by all sectors of the community.
Habitat II will encourage governments and local authorities to embark on partnerships with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations and industry to improve management of cities. In this way, Habitat II will help to create opportunities for citizens to participate in local decision- making processes, creating innovative solutions to urbanization issues.
Several sectors are already actively involved in addressing population issues. For example, an Indonesian NGO, Yayasan Kusuma Buana, has successfully operated urban clinics that offer family planning information and services such as prenatal care, immunization, and general maternal and child health services and information. These clinics cater to people of low to moderate income, complementing the government clinics, which mostly serve the poor, and the private clinics and hospitals used by wealthy Indonesians. Patients pay a modest fee, and delayed-payment plans are offered.
The many problems facing cities today underscore the fact that cities are the locus of the most rapid population growth in human history. Aside from posing problems, however, growing human numbers also offer hope. People are innovative, and Habitat II is helping them to focus on areas where improvements are needed.
Dense urban living offers many economies of scale; in principle, more people can live at a higher standard of living while consuming fewer resources per capita. In the end, improving social and economic conditions for all people in urban environments can make the largest contribution to sustainable development, especially in the developing world, where needs and growth are greatest.
-- United Nations Information Center