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Mike Jenks
developing countries. It is hoped that this volume will go some way towards
filling that gap, presenting policies and local and strategic issues, and suggesting
the extent to which there is commitment to, and success in achieving, sustainable
urban forms in the developing world.
World cities, world problems?
The last decade has been remarkable for the vast array of literature, and intensity
of debate, about cities and their global impact. Problems of sustainability,
stemming from Brundtland (WCED, 1987) and the Rio Earth Summit (UNCED,
1992), have concentrated the minds of governments and research organisations
around the world. Cities have been seen as the cause of environmental
degradation and resource depletion, casting an ecological footprint across the
globe, far beyond their immediate regions (e.g. Girardet, 1996; Wackernagel et al.,
1997). More often than not, cities are seen as problematic—congested, polluting,
with poor housing, collapsing infrastructure, crime and poverty. Yet it is cities that
drive economies and it is within them that innovation occurs and an increasing
part of global output is produced. Soon, over half the world’s population will live
in cities, the majority in the developing countries.
Over the past five years the world has seen a 2.5% growth in urbanisation, but
that varies between the more developed regions (0.7%) and the less developed
regions where the growth has been 3.3% (UNFPA, 1999). In 1999, 47%, or 2.8
billion, of the world’s population lived in cities, and this is set to increase by
around 60 million people each year. The expectation is that by 2030 ‘nearly 5
billion (61 per cent) of the world’s 8.1 billion people will live in cities’ (UNFPA,
2000, p.25). Of the urban population, for every one person now living in cities in
developed countries, there are two in the cities of the developing world. Within 30
years this proportion is predicted to rise to 1:4, indicating that 90% of the growth
in urbanisation will be in developing countries.
In these countries the expansion of urbanisation is occurring on an
unimaginable scale. Very large cities—the megacities with populations of over
10 million people—are becoming commonplace. New York and Tokyo were
the only megacities in 1960, but by 1999 there were 17. In another 15 years
projections suggest there will be at least 26 such cities, 22 of which will be in
developing countries, and 18 of these in Asia (UNFPA, 1999). However, the
most aggressive growth appears to be in the cities of between 1 and 10 million.
From the 270 ‘million cities’ in 1990, by 2015, various predictions show, there
may be between 358 to 516 of these cities (UNCHS cited in Hall and Pfeiffer,
2000; WRI, 1996).
It is questionable whether these statistics necessarily represent a problem.
The very size of the cities and the high proportion of the world’s population
living within them will inevitably concentrate problems. These will include
the intensive use of resources such as land, water and energy, the overstretching
of infrastructure, poor sanitation and health, and social and
economic inequalities. Yet there are wide disparities within and between them.
Affluent lifestyles and profligate use of land, both in developed and
developing countries, result in a disproportionate use of resources and urban
forms that are often unsustainable (Jenks et al., 1996, p.4). However, it is
particular industries and commercial enterprises within cities or outside them
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