Uphill challenges facing megacity management

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