UN-Habitat launches harmonious cities report

On a day when the UK press reported that a 16 year old was chased down a street, beaten and stabbed to death, simply because he was “from another part of town”, the UK launch of a report promoting harmonious cities (‘State of the world’s cities 2008/2009' UN-Habitat) could not be more timely.

Launching the report in London, Anna Tibaijuka, UN-Habitat’s Executive-Director, said that whilst there are massive problems of deprivation and inequality, these are by no means restricted to developing countries. As the housing loans crisis in the USA has demonstrated, it is now clear that issues of housing finance are global and that the poor have been left to cope on their own for too long. Sustainable urbanisation needs to provide pro-poor, inclusive approaches to urban management and development.

Summarising key findings from the report, Eduardo Moreno presented a range of data on l social, spatial, and environmental aspects. Much play was made at the launch on data relating to income inequality, though as David Satterthwaite, one of the launch panel stated, we need to consider inequality and deprivation within a broader framework to include aspects such as access to public services, health and educational facilities.

Despite their higher incomes levels, the report demonstrates that cities in the USA are as unequal socially as many in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, which contain the highest level of social inequality in the world. Whilst European cities are relatively equal in social terms, it is impossible to deny that we have a long way to go before we can claim to have created harmonious cities.

In campaigning on behalf of cities, UN-Habitat faces a dilemma. If it celebrates cities and urban life, it can be accused of being in denial of the manifest problems faced by 1 billion people – 1 in 3 of the world’s urban residents - living in slums, many without basic tenure security, clean water or sanitation. On the other hand, if it focuses too much on the scale and complexity of the problems, donors and national governments may just bury their heads in the sand and hope that rural development programmes will curb urban growth. Of course, this overlooks the fact that although 3 million people are being added to urban populations globally every week, rural-urban migration is not the main cause of growth in many cities and has been replaced by increases within existing urban populations. Whilst urban issues are undeniably complex, they can be addressed by bringing the residents into the decision-making process and improving governance at national and local levels.

Another challenge addressed by the report is that of climate change. Nearly 400 million people are considered to be at risk, mostly in developing countries like Bangladesh which are vulnerable to sea level rise.

Cities are also major consumers of energy, with buildings representing a higher proportion than industry or transport in high-income countries and cooking one of the major consumers of energy in low-income countries. Whilst cities are justifiably blamed for contributing to CO2 emissions, the report demonstrates that this is related more to consumption patterns than urbanization per se. For example, Sao Paulo produces one tenth of the emissions of San Diego, with a population ten times bigger. Cities in Europe are making progress in clean energy, whilst those in the USA continue to be the worst polluters, due largely to urban sprawl and private motorised transport.

Improved building design, more efficient land use and friendly, efficient public transport offer the greatest scope for improvements. Clearly, if cities are currently part of the problem, the report makes it clear that they have to be part of the solution.