rural-urban dynamics_report.pdf - Khazar University

GLOBAL MONITORING REPORT 2013 URBANIZATION AND THE MDGS 131
experiencing rapid urban growth (Alpert,
Shvainshtein, and Kishcha 2012).
Emissions from burning fossil fuel include
fine particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5),
carbon monoxide, nitric oxides, and sulfur
dioxide, which can cause allergies, respiratory
problems, cardiovascular disease, and
cognitive deficits. The impacts are significant.
In the Russian Federation, a conservative
estimate suggests that annual health
damages from fossil-fuel burning amount to
$6 billion (Markandya and Golub 2012). The
social cost of transport in Beijing is equivalent
to 7.5–15 percent of its gross domestic
product (GDP), with about half of that
stemming from air pollution (Creutzig and
He 2009). The largest share of these costs
comes from increased mortality. Globally,
acute respiratory infections associated with
air pollution cause about 20 percent of all
under-five mortality (Mehta et al. 2011). In
the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,
a country of about 2 million people, an estimated
1,300 premature deaths are caused by
air pollution every year. Beijing, Cairo, Delhi,
Dhaka, and Karachi each see an estimated
3,500 to 7,000 premature deaths annually
from cardiovascular disease stemming from
air pollution (Gurjar et al. 2010). Karachi has
the highest overall mortality related to air
pollution, at 15,000 a year. That is close to
the excess mortality of 13,000 deaths caused
by the “Great Smog” in London in 1952, evidence
that many cities in today’s advanced
countries have gone through similar stages of
excessive pollution. Managing environmental
quality alongside enhancing urban productivity
is critical as a means of avoiding significant
costs down the road.
Cities can accelerate both economic
and social progress when complementary
improvements are made along two fronts:
• Job creation, investment, and growth,
which depend on the density of cities
and their links with the rural economy.
Enhancing job opportunities in cities
requires careful thought about coordinating
improvements in land management,
housing, transport, communications,
and infrastructure (World Bank 2013b).
Urbanization generates an increase in the
demand for land, and a clear definition of
property rights along with robust systems
for assessing land values is key for land
redevelopment. Urbanization has to be
combined with the development of reliable
and affordable public transit to physically
connect people with jobs. Complementary
improvements in communication and
interregional transport can make it easier
to integrate neighboring rural areas into
the urban economy.
• Expansion of basic services, such as those
reflected by the MDGs, across cities and
rural areas, so that people are “pulled”
to cities by the opportunities there, rather
than being pushed from the countryside
in search of basic services they have been
denied. Improvements in basic services
such as water, sanitation, education, and
health are essential for improving living
standards and workers’ health and education
everywhere, as Colombia did when
it systematically improved basic service
levels across the country in rural and urban
areas alike. In 1964, only half the residents
of Bogotá and other large cities had access
to water, electricity, and sanitation; today
there is nearly universal access in cities
of all sizes, a convergence that took more
than 40 years (Samad, Lozano-Gracia, and
Panman 2012).
Many developing countries have been
unable to provide a coordinated package of
physical infrastructure and social services
(box 3.1). In part, that is because many of
these services are network goods that households
and communities cannot provide on
their own. Even where the service can be supplied
by each individual household or a community,
as with sanitation, there are substantial
externalities, where the benefits of service
improvements spread beyond the household
or community that made the investment.
As a consequence, individual households
and communities are likely to underinvest
in these services, setting up a classic role for
public policy of ensuring that basic services