Uphill challenges facing megacity management

Megacity Management in the Asian and Pacific Region Edited by Jeffry R. Stubbs and Giles Clarke Published by The Asian Development Bank Manila, 1996 Volume one (541 pages) Volume two (398 pages)

JAKARTA (JP): The population of the Greater Jakarta Area (Jakarta-Bogor-Tangerang and Bekasi), already the fifth largest metropolitan area in the world, will increase from almost 20 million at present to 23.22 million by 2000. That will be more than one fourth of Indonesia's total urban population of around 90 million by then.

Managing such a megacity to make it productive, efficient and environmentally sustainable obviously poses complex challenges.

Megacities (with a population exceeding 10 million), are characterized by high population densities, pressures on environmental services, traffic congestion, proliferation of slums, and obviously have the most severe problems.

As President Soeharto observed in his National Day address last month, the various social problems in the cities could easily erupt into conflict.

Soeharto warned of the impact of the massive demographic movement, and of the emergence of social problems like criminality, extortion, impatience, decadence and degradation of the environment.

These problems are examined in a two-volume book Megacity Management in the Asian Pacific Region published recently by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank.

The book, based on a regional seminar on the same topic in Manila late last October, projects that 17 of the 27 megacities to emerge in the world by the year 2015 will be located in Asia's developing countries.

The seminar discussed 29 papers: overviews, issue and theme papers, case studies, city overviews, and country studies, including a city study on Jakarta and a country study on Indonesia.

The book, edited by Jeffry R. Stubbs, an urban development specialist, and Giles Clarke, a staff consultant, both of the ADB, predicts a rapid demographic and massive economic transition from rural to urban economies.

It does not give policy recommendations on how to curb urbanization -- unavoidable because of the close correlation between higher incomes and urbanization -- but rather explores new ways and means of improving megacity management.

However, the 86 urban development officials and experts from 25 countries who took part in the seminar also observed that megacities, apart from their problems, contribute significantly greater shares of national gross domestic product than their populations would suggest.

This trend therefore calls for more concerted efforts to address the issue of productivity.

The seminar discussed the management of megacities from six most fundamental aspects: Institutional dimensions, environments, transportation, land, private-sector participation and financing.

The 950-page book should become a basic reference for urban planners and development officials because of the wealth of data and analysis it contains.

The ways in which the seminar was organized and its agenda was structured is reflected in the comprehensive report derived from the seminar's proceedings.

The 29 papers supplemented each other well and provided the seminar participants with a wealth of information for discussion of megacity management.

The city overviews concentrated on the experiences in urban development in eight megacities of the developing world and of two in the developed, Tokyo and Toronto.

These city overview papers enabled the seminar participants to highlight current and emerging urban development and management trends and to identify best practice.

The four country studies on India, Indonesia, Japan and China highlight the correlations between urban and national development planning and development.

The six theme papers, supplemented by seven case studies, identified critical issues and examples of innovative practices, and made recommendations for new policies on urban pollution, transportation, land, public-private partnerships, privatization of public services and infrastructure financing.

However, the book does not simply contain the reprints of those papers. It also sums up the conclusions agreed on in the six themes and the final recommendations prepared by six working groups.

Recommendations

The book sees the right institutional framework as essential. Centralized administration is seen as grossly ineffective. It therefore strongly recommends the devolution of responsibilities, resources and power to city administrations.

The provision of free public services is argued to be inefficient, and user fees and privatization of public services are suggested.

Traffic congestion breaks down the economics of scale of a megacity, and adversely affects its economic productivity. Congestion imposes high costs in terms of resources consumed and potentially productive time wasted.

The control of congestion should therefore be central to a sustainable transport policy. The best strategy is the provision of a first class alternative to the car through a rail-based mass rapid transit system, and discouraging car use in city centers at peak times, through road pricing, supplemented by controls on parking, and car-sharing.

Land management is also crucial. The main issue, according to the book, is how responsive the supply of land is to demand as seen from the perspective of the city administration, real estate developers, businesses and households, notably the urban poor.

An efficient land market requires good information on supply and price. Hence, a good land information base is essential for clear property titles, efficient and transparent land transactions, better evaluation of land policies and efficient location decisions by investors.

The book also sets out in details the lessons from megacities which have successfully juggled private-sector participation, financial-resource mobilization, and a healthy environment.

As the massive urbanization which began in the second half of the 20th century will continue unabated, urban planners, legislators, professionals, researchers and students of urban development all have their work cut out. Megacity Management in the Asian and Pacific Region will be a good reference work for them.

-- Vincent Lingga