Last week, the United Nation's Population Fund (UNFPA) released their "State of the World Population 2007" report. This year's edition of the annual publication, entitled "Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth," addresses urbanization and its impact on global society. Appropriately, the report arrives as humanity nears the date when, for the first time in history, more humans will be living in cities than in rural areas. The authors present this watershed event, which demographers predict will occur sometime in 2008, as the most important trend in human development.
The vast majority of these new urban dwellers will live in developing countries, and they will be poor. This will present major challenges for the nations least prepared to meet the inevitable strains of urban growth. But while the authors do dedicate time to the oft-repeated perils of increasing urbanization, they also use the report to highlight the promises of urbanization.
Percentage of Population Residing in Urban Areas
Source: UNFPA 2007
According to the report, cities are major sources of poverty, environmental degradation, and societal disarray. However, the UNFPA claims that urbanization also offers solutions to many of these issues. In fact, commonly held "myths" often obscure the true nature of the phenomenon of urbanization, leading to misguided policymaking on the issue. Examples of these misperceptions include:
- Urbanization is inherently bad. Rather, the report notes that "no country in the industrial age has ever achieved significant economic growth without urbanization."
- Most urban growth is occurring in mega-cities. Despite the high profile of megalopolises like Mexico City or Nairobi, the greatest urban growth will take place in cities of less than 500,000 inhabitants.
- Rural-urban migration is the main driver of urbanization. While millions of rural residents are moving to cities across the world, most urban growth is actually the result of natural increases in existing urban populations.
- Rural-urban migration should be controlled. According to the report, trying to stem the tide of rural-urban migration is not only extremely difficult, it is counterproductive. Instead, migration can actually be good for the cities and economies it enters. UNFPA notes that, "the urban poor are increasingly recognized as being essential to the economy of cities and to national development."
- City growth inevitably hurts the environment. Instead, if managed correctly, cities can create a smaller net environmental impact, healthier living conditions, and higher standards of living than low density rural areas.
Urban Population, by Size Class of Settlement
Source: UNFPA 2007
According to the report, recognition of these somewhat counterintuitive facts will naturally lead to better and more sustainable urbanization policies. Principal recommendations offered by the report include:
- Accept the right of the poor to live in cities and abandon efforts to discourage rural-urban migration.
- Provide basic infrastructure services like water, sanitation, electricity, and transport for all types of housing developments. Meeting the land needs of the poor will thus help produce communities, not slums.
- Begin a broad international effort, comprised of governments, NGOs, and population specialists, that will provide policy options and information on what direction future urban growth can and should take.
By better understanding the nature of urbanization and by working to meet the recommendations listed above, the UNFPA hopes to help current and future generations avert the dangers of the coming urban boom, and instead seize the opportunities that urbanization provides for public health, the economy, and the environment.
RELATED LINKS:
United Nations Population Fund
EarthTrends
