urbanization problems

Urbanization has been the dominant demographic trend, not only in the Asia-Pacific region,but also in the entire world, during the last half century. With the high pace of social andeconomic development in Asia and the resulting growth of city and town population, lack ofinfrastructure, congested traffic, environmental degradation and a housing shortage becamethe major issues faced by cities and towns in their sustainable development

Rapid Urbanization 'Poses Major Problems and Challenges'
as written By Robert Dobias
ISTANBUL, TURKEY (4 May 2005) - An estimated US$40 billion per year is needed for urban infrastructure investments to meet the demands of the explosive urbanization of Asia during the past four decades, a seminar heard yesterday.

"In the mid-1960s, only one person in five lived in towns and cities," said Bindu Lohani, Director General of ADB's Regional and Sustainable Development Department at an ADB seminar on Financing the City - Asia's Cities: Problems and Opportunities.

"Today it is one in three, and by 2020, it will be one in two."

The seminar, moderated by ADB Vice President Geert van der Linden, was the first of a series of three yesterday on the problems and opportunities presented by the projected growth of Asia's urban centers, held on the eve of the opening of ADB's Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors in Istanbul.

Mr. Lohani explained that city growth has been largely unplanned and uncontrolled, with a plethora of problems ranging from inadequate water supply to festering slums. Despite this, he says, cities are the engines of national economic growth, citing Bangkok, which generates about one-third of Thailand's gross domestic product (GDP).

"New financing modalities must be employed, such as sub-sovereign lending, local currency bonds, and providing a strong role for the private sector," said Mr. Lohani.

ADB, for its part, will be undertaking a number of activities to strengthen its support to cities in Asia. This will include providing more investments using innovative approaches, helping cities to improve governance, building enabling environments that allow fuller participation from the private sector, strengthening stakeholder participation, and ensuring the sustainability of projects.

Kadir Topbas, Mayor of Istanbul, echoed the importance of cities to the overall national economy, saying that Istanbul accounted for fully 3% of Turkey's GDP.

Yet Istanbul, a city rich in culture and history, needs to substantially upgrade its transportation and water infrastructure. Each of these programs will cost the city an estimated $4-5 billion.

"We need to learn from the experience gained by other cities," he said. "Networking among city officials from Asia and elsewhere is vital both to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and to identify new and successful ways of doing things."

One major problem, highlighted by Freddie Tinga, Mayor of the City of Taguig in the Philippines, is that cities have to fiercely compete for limited financial resources. To gain an advantage, he said that a city's "product" must be perceived by the investment community as worthy of their attention.

Market frameworks can be used as an effective tool for improving cities, but, explained Bradford Gentry from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, who spoke on market frameworks for improved urban environmental performance, using the water sector as an illustration, a number of elements are necessary to make this work.

First, the city's governance framework must be well established. "City administrators need to create space for increased private investment by providing clarity and predictability over time, but opportunities also must be made available to leverage public investment," he said.

Incentives for improved performance, such as providing effective oversight and enforcement of standards, are another essential element. Mr. Gentry cautioned city leaders that they will make mistakes, but encouraged them to learn from these mistakes and keep experimenting.

An essential component in building a city, added Mayor Tinga, is the meaningful participation of stakeholders in developing the city.

"Major city development initiatives will only work when the people of the city are fully informed participants," he said, at the same time giving credit to ADB for insisting that stakeholder involvement be included as an integral part of ADB's assistance to Taguig development and thereby demonstrating to city officials the fundamental importance of local participation.

In other word Urbanization problem can be seen in ab nitio.

Now the Problem Focus - Challenges of Urbanization

Environmental Implications
It should be noted that urban growth has a number of positive impacts on the environmentand human well-being, i.e. higher population densities man lower per capita costs ofproviding energy, health care, infrastructure and services. Also, urbanization hashistorically been associated with declining birth rates, which reduces population pressure onland and natural resources. Despite all these positive impacts, almost all major cities of theregion are increasingly plagued by environmental problems. Some major aspects are asfollows:
a) As a direct result of urbanization, great threat to health and safety in cities comes fromwater and air pollution, especially at the households and community levels. Whileambient air pollution impairs the health of almost all urban residents in many cities,indoors air pollution is particularly hazardous for women and children of low-incomehouseholds who are regularly exposed to higher concentrations of air pollutants fromcooking and heating sources in poorly-ventilated housing. Waterborne diseases arefound most commonly in low-income neighborhoods as a result of inadequate sanitation,drainage and solid waste collection services. Health risks, especially to the poor, arealso posed by pesticides and industrial effluents.
b) The productivity of many cities is adversely affected by traffic congestion and waterpollution. The loss in productivity includes the total productive time wasted in traffic and the associated increase in the costs of operating and maintaining vehicles. Therising costs of treating polluted water for industrial and domestic purposes aredamaging the productivity of urban economies. Fisheries are also being severelyharmed by water pollution.
c) Uncollected and improperly handled solid waste can have serious health consequences.They block drainage systems and contaminate groundwater at landfill sites. In manycities, particularly those in Pacific island countries, it is difficult to secure land forwaste disposal facilities, especially onshore landfill sites. Most cities in the region arealso unable to manage the increasing amounts of hazardous wastes generated by rapidindustrialization.
d) Conversion of agricultural land and forest, as well as reclaiming of wetlands, for urbanuses and infrastructure, are associated with widespread removal of vegetation to supporturban ecosystem and put additional pressure on nearby areas that may be even moreecologically sensitive. Groundwater overdraft has led to land subsidence and a higherfrequency of flooding, particularly in the lowest-lying and poorest areas.
e) Urbanization in coastal areas often leads to the destruction of sensitive ecosystems andcan also alter the hydrology of coasts and their natural features such as mangroveswamps, reefs and beaches that serve as barriers to erosion and form important habitatsfor species.

Urbanization does not have only local environmental impacts but also large so-called‘ecological footprints’ beyond their immediate vicinity.

Intensive and extensive exploitation of natural resources to support urban economy includes excessive extraction ofenergy resources (including fuelwood), quarrying and excavation of sand, gravel and buildingmaterials at large scales, and overextraction of water. These all contribute to degradation ofthe natural support systems and irreversible loss of critical ecosystem functions, such as thehydrological cycle, carbon cycle and biological diversity, in addition to conflicts with ruraluses of such limited resources. Other effects can be felt further afield such as pollution ofwaterways, long-range air pollution that impact on human health as well as on vegetation andsoils at a considerable distance.PovertyThe growth of large cities, particularly in developing countries, has been accompanied by anincrease in urban poverty which tends to be concentrated in certain social groups and inparticular locations. Pollution especially affects the poor live at the urban periphery, wheremanufacturing and processing plants are built and where environmental protection isfrequently weak. Environmental sensitive sites such as steep hillsides, flood plains, dry landor the most polluted sites near solid waste dumps and next to open drains and sewers areoften the only places where low-income groups can live without the fear of eviction. The poorest groups thus suffer the most from the floods, landslides or other disasters thatincreasingly batter the cities of developing countries.Waste Recycling - New Challenges of SustainabilityWaste generation in urban areas continues to increase world-wide in tandem withconcentration of populations and increase in living standards, and has reached tounmanageable levels in many localities. High proportion of the waste could be recycled, notsimply to reduce the amount of waste to be disposed of. The practice also provides anopportunity to generate income for the urban poor, to prevent environmental damages ofwaste dumping, and further to demonstrate less material- and energy-intensive consumptionpatterns. Promotion of sustainable consumption should have the far-reaching benefit offostering domestic enterprises and pushing the production sector towards sustainablepathways. There is a need to develop an integrated approach where the public, private andcommunity sectors work together to develop local solutions promoting sustainable wastemanagement of material recycling.



Causal Factors behind Urbanization
1 General
The major reasons for increasing urban population are rural to urban migration, includinginternational migration to a lesser extent, and the re-classification or expansion of existingcity boundaries to include populations that were hitherto classified as being resident outsidethe city limits. These are estimated to contribute about 60 per cent of the region’s urbangrowth, while natural increase counts for some 40 per cent.

2 Rural -Urban Migration
Primary driving forces of rural-urban migration include the opportunities and services offeredin urban areas — especially jobs and education, while in some cases, conflict, landdegradation and exhaustion of natural resources in rural areas are also important.The patterns of rural-urban migration may be city-specific, reflecting, among other things,changes in the city’s economic base, labour market and age structure. They also reflectsocial, economic and political changes within the region and nation and are influenced byeconomic factors in the surrounding and distant rural areas, such as landowning structure,agricultural practices and crop prices, and overall rural productivity. Most evidencesuggests that increasing the income and level of education of rural populations acceleratesmigration and this phenomenon, coupled with the greater access to urban areas, has led to aninevitable increase in rural populations seeking employment opportunities in urban areas.

3 Links to Globalization
The steady increase in the level of urbanization reflects the fact that the size of the world’seconomy has grown many times and has also changed from one dominated by relativelyclosed national economies or trading blocs to one where most countries have more openeconomies and where production and the services it needs, including financial services, areincreasingly integrated internationally. These trends appear to be strengthening, reinforcedespecially by the freer and faster flows of information and knowledge under the impact ofnew information technologies. Technology has increased the already dominant economicrole and importance of urban areas worldwide, indicating the growing importance of cities inthe global economy.

4 Mismanagement
It is often pointed out that many urban environmental problems are the result of poormanagement, poor planning and absence of coherent urban policies rather than ofurbanization itself. The problem of urbanization has significantly been exacerbated byinappropriate incentive systems, such as the “growth-first” strategy adopted by theGovernments of many countries in the region, especially in developing countries.

An Outline on Policy Responses and Tools to manage Urbanization
A variety of options in terms of policy responses and tools to cope effectively with theurbanization transition has been proposed and discussed for several decades. These options may be categorized in the following four strategic steps.
a) National planning to control urbanization to manageable levels
b) Regional / Urban planning to guide urbanization to manageable situation
c) Intra-urban management to cope with urbanization problems
d) Participation, Partnership and Governance

"Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where urbanization is associated with negative economic growth," says former South African President Nelson Mandela. "This adds to the enormity of the problems of urbanization in a region that is exactly most in need of growth and development to end and reverse its marginalization on the world stage."

A half decade ago, some of the unique urban problems of Africa were recognized at the Second UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat-II), held in June 1996 in Istanbul, Turkey. It adopted a global "Habitat Agenda," affirming that adequate shelter is a human right and acknowledging "the critical situation and needs of Africa and the least developed countries." Participants cited Africa's high rate of rural-to-urban migration, wars that have spurred massive population displacements and the severe decay of urban infrastructure. In June 2001, the UN General Assembly held a special session in New York called "Istanbul + 5." It looked again at the particular challenges facing urban centres in Africa and other parts of the world and reviewed the various programmes that have been initiated so far.

Urbanization and poverty
The African ministers also forecast that the continent will experience unprecedented urbanization over the next quarter century. Since most African cities simply are unprepared to accommodate the additional population, this will lead to a further "mushrooming of squatter settlements of high densities and inadequate or no services."

Already, Africa's urban population is growing at an average annual rate of 4 per cent, the highest of any world region. For some individual cities, it is significantly higher. Currently, Africa is still the most rural continent, with only about 38 per cent of its population living in cities and towns. But within the next three decades, more than half of all Africans will be in urban centres.

According to some analysts, Africa's urban problems have been worsened by the economic policies adopted by many governments during the 1980s and 1990s, largely at the urging of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The initial privatization programmes often led to reduced formal sector employment, as did trade liberalization, which contributed to the failure of many local businesses unable to compete with cheap imports. Without steady jobs, many residents have been unable to afford adequate shelter.

"Homelessness does not mean that there are no homes," notes Ms. Tibaijuka.
It exists because people "don't have employment to have access to homes."

finally,the developmental trends of China's industrialization and urbanization were good during the period of the tenth five-year plan. During the ninth five-year plan China's industrialization process evolved from the first phase to the second phase of middle-stage industrialization. Compared with industrialization, China's urbanization has developed more rapidly. In the future, China's industrialization and urbanization will face many problems, including lack of capability to self-innovate in industrial technologies, significant limitations in natural resources, heavy pressure from employment and population migration to nonagricultural sectors, an imbalance in development among regions, an imbalance in quality and quantity of urbanization development, lack of coordination of urbanization and industrialization, significant numbers of employees of village and township enterprises "waiting for urbanization," and farmers migrating to cities for employment. These are profound problems requiring resolution. Continuously promoting China's industrialization and urbanization will become more costly and difficult. During the period of the eleventh five-year plan, China will undertake important projects, such as promoting China's capacity for self-innovation, optimizing the industrial structure, transforming the means of economic growth, coordinating development among regions, cities, and rural areas, increasing migrant-worker income, promoting urban-management levels, and developing tertiary industries.