Urban growth: Preparing for the inevitable

AT 18, Janice Banaag is already a mother to a new-born infant. She and her daughter live with husband Joel, a pedicab driver, under a bridge in a slum community in Tondo, Manila where some 130 families crowd each other for space that they can call home.

Widespread teenage pregnancy, according to a video report on the Philippines by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), contributes to rapid population growth that only perpetuates poverty in Manila’s crowded slums.

The story of Janice and her fellow Tondo slum dwellers is a fitting video supplement to the UNFPA’s recently released 2007 Report on the State of World Population, which heralds the unprecedented scale of urbanization in the developing world in the next few decades generally attributed to natural increase.

In 2008, for the first time in history, the UNFPA report says that more than half of the world’s population, some 3.3 billion people, will be living in urban areas. This number is expected to swell by almost five billion by 2030.

Though a global phenomenon, urbanization — the increase in the urban share of total population — will see overwhelming increases in urban population between 2000 and 2030 primarily in Asia, from 1.36 billion to 2.64 billion; Africa, from 294 million to 742 million; and in Latin America and the Carribean, from 394 million to 609 million.

With a steady growth in the percentage of urban population since the 1950s, the Philippines follows the global trend of urban growth. Data in 2005 show that 12.9 percent of the population live in metropolitan Manila, a number that is expected to swell to 13.3 percent by 2015. In 2000, the country had 46 million urban dwellers compared to 35 million who lived in rural areas.

As an inevitable reality, urban growth does bring with it ills as the current concentration of poverty, slum growth and social disruption in cities. But the report counsels about turning it into something positive, harnessing its potential for development. No country in the industrial age, after all, has ever achieved significant economic growth without urbanization.

And while policymakers have long discouraged migration to prevent urban growth, current trends show that this may not work after all. The UNFPA report underlines two main points: poor people will make up a large part of urban growth, and currently, most urban growth comes from natural increase, rather than migration.

With these givens, the report calls for positive action on three initiatives:

• Respecting the right of the poor to migrate to the city, abandoning attempts to discourage migration and prevent urban growth;

• Adopting a broad and long-term vision of the use of urban space by providing minimally serviced land for housing and planning in advance to promote sustainable land use;

• Beginning a concerted international effort to support strategies for the urban future.

Prioritizing poor people

Crucial in this direction is the battle to halve extreme poverty by 2015 as embodied in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as it will be waged in urban slums, where a billion people live, 90 percent of them in developing countries.

The slums are homes to the hopes and aspirations of millions of urban migrants, who, like the Banaags, even when faced with the bleak prospect of extreme poverty still prefer their urban life from the life they left behind.

Since the poor will make up a large percentage of urban population, the UNFPA report says it is counterproductive to treat them as an invisible sector of society, adding that it is both wise and imperative to prioritize their needs.

The report also calls for improving sociodemographic information, particularly focused on gender as the standard of living in urban slums — overcrowded, airless, polluted, dangerous, unhealthy — breeds more victims among women, children, and the elderly.

Sustainable use of space

As the population grows, space becomes a commodity. But while urban growth has been assumed to be detrimental, density may be harnessed as a tool rather than as a disadvantage, according to the report.

Policymakers, the report says, will have to accept urban growth as the norm to be better equipped to address issues on poverty such as housing. UN-Habitat has made it clear that the many difficulties faced by the poor are, to a greater extent, linked to the quality of shelter. Hence, lack of adequate shelter is the first issue that needs to be addressed.

The report also sees urban and regional planning, which accepts urban growth rather than discouraging it, is a key to unlocking the potential of urbanization. In this regard, the UNFPA calls for providing minimally serviced land — land that is accessible by wheeled transportation and with easy access to water, sanitation, waste disposal and electricity.

For the poor to be able to advance themselves, a roof over their heads and a livable address are suggested as vital starting points. Secure tenure, access to street, water, sanitation, waste disposal and power must be provided so that they can eventually build houses of their own. Though not a perfect and easy solution, this, the report says, is the most workable policy to address sustainable use of space.

Climate change

Aside from land cover use, another space-use issue deals with climate change, which, the report says, will affect poor countries more severely, especially on issues relating to health and water supply.

The report takes note of environmental challenges from the conversion of natural ecosystems and agricultural lands to urban areas; and the impact of climate change on the supply, distribution, and access to fresh water. As a consequence of climate change, an anticipated energy demand for greater air conditioning could contribute to air pollution. The rise in sea level will affect coastal dwellers, could wipe away low-elevation coastal zones, home to 13 percent of the world’s urban population.

The best defense in mitigating the effects of climate change, the report says, is long-term thinking and proactive planning — with governments and civil society working hand in hand to provide workable policies that extend beyond current needs.

What the UNFPA report urges is preemptive action, and rightly so, before it is too late.

Download the 2007 State of World Population report here.