A Report by the UN Population Fund
By Lisa Schlein and Joe De Capua
June 28, 2007
For humanity’s sake, developing world must prepare for soaring urbanization. In
2008, the world reaches an invisible but momentous milestone: for the first time in
history, more than half its human population, 3.3 billion people, will be living in
urban areas. By 2030, this is expected to swell to almost five billion. Many of the
new urbanites will be poor. Their future, the future of cities in developing countries
throughout the world, the future of humanity itself, all depend very much on
decisions made now in preparation for this growth. While the world’s urban
population grew very rapidly (from 220 million to 2.8 billion) over the 20th
century, the next few decades will see an unprecedented scale of urban growth in
the developing world. This will be particularly notable in Africa and Asia where
the urban population will double between 2000 and 2030: that is, the accumulated
urban growth of these two regions during the whole span of history will be
duplicated in a single generation. By 2030, the towns and cities of the developing
world will make up 81 per cent of urban humanity. The United Nation Population
Fund, UN agency, says in a new report that humanity will have to undergo a
“revolution in thinking” to deal with a doubling of urban populations in Africa and
Asia. The UN continues to say that the number of people in African and Asian
cities will grow by 1.7 billion by the year 2030. And worldwide, the number of city
dwellers will reach five billion or 60 per cent of the world’s population. The report
‘State of the World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth’
says globally, all future population growth will take place in cities, nearly all of it
in Africa, Asia and Latin America. “What’s more, the growth marks “a decisive
shift from rural to urban growth, changing a balance that has lasted for millennia.”
The United Nations also warns that a doubling of urban populations in Africa and
Asia by 2030 will have harmful consequences if governments do not prepare now
for the coming growth. In this year's State of World Population report, the UN
Population Fund says this unprecedented wave of urbanization offers potential
opportunities or dismal failures. The report explains that next year, for the first
time in history, more than half the world's population will be living in cities. It says
that by 2030 almost five billion people will be urban dwellers. It says the
populations in African and Asian cities will have doubled. The populations of
those cities will be greater than the number of people living in China and the
United States combined. 1 Until recently, rural settlements were the epicenter of
poverty and human suffering. All measures of poverty, whether based on income,
consumption or expenditure, showed that rural poverty was deeper and more
widespread than in cities. Urban centers on the whole offered better access to
health, education, basic infrastructure, information, knowledge and opportunity.
Such findings were easy to understand in view of budgetary allocations, the
concentration of services and the other intangible benefits of cities. Poverty,
however, is now increasing more rapidly in urban areas than in rural areas but has
received far less attention. Aggregate statistics hide deep inequalities and gloss
over concentrations of harsh poverty within cities. Most assessments actually
underestimate the scale and depth of urban poverty. Hundreds of millions live in
poverty in the cities of low- and middle-income nations, and their numbers are sure
to swell in coming years. Over half of the urban population is below the poverty
line in Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Chad, Colombia, Georgia,
Guatemala, Haiti, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Sierra Leone and
Zambia. Many others have 40 to 50 per cent living below the poverty line,
including Burundi, El Salvador, the Gambia, Kenya, the Kyrgyz Republic,
Moldova, Peru and Zimbabwe. Many other nations would be included in this list if
their poverty lines made allowance for the real costs of non-food necessities in
urban areas. Urban mismanagement often squanders urban advantages and the
urban potential for poverty reduction. Although urban poverty is growing faster
than in rural areas, development agencies have only recently begun to appreciate
that they need new interventions to attack its roots. Chief of the UN Population
Fund's Resource Mobilization Branch, Jean-Noel Wetterwald, says the urban
explosion can be managed if governments prepare for it. But if they put their heads
in the sand, he says, the future prospects will be frightening. "Urbanization is
unavoidable," he said. "You cannot stop it. So, it is better to prepare for it and,
rather than concentrating on measures to avoid or to exclude people from cities,
make sure that they have access to services such as health and schools. And this is
what we are saying. The concentration of people concentrates the problems you
face, but it also concentrates the solutions available to you." The report says the
speed and scale of urban growth will require a revolution in thinking. It notes the
number of people living in cities in Africa and Asia is increasing by about one
million every week. It warns global action must be taken now to help cities prepare
for growth and head off economic and social problems before it is too late. The
report says more than half of the world's current population of 6.7 billion people
will be concentrated in cities by next year. While mega-cities of 10 million or more
will continue to grow, it says most people will live in mid-size cities of 500,000
people or less. The UN stresses that most urban growth results from natural
increase, that is people being born in the cities, rather than from migration. It says
policy makers can reduce the pace of growth by supporting measures such as
poverty reduction initiatives that include education, particularly of women and
girls, and health measures such as reproductive health, pre-natal care and family
planning services. 2 Jean-Noel Wetterwald tells most of the people living in
developing cities are poor and half of their populations are under age 25. He says
these young people have special needs. "We have to make sure that we have proper
education services in place because if this is not the case, then you will see what
urbanization can offer at its worst, which is criminality, illiteracy and all these
evils," he added. The report says cities are great places and should not be viewed
negatively. For example, people can more easily access basic services there than in
rural areas. While cities may have poverty, they also offer an escape from poverty.
It notes no country in the industrial age has ever achieved significant economic
growth without urbanization.
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