state of the world's cities 2012/2013 - United Nations Sustainable ...

State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013on average, more than double the growth of the urbanpopulation. Similar urban trends can be observed in otherparts of the world. For instance, in Mexico, the urbanFACTLatin America and the Caribbean will be nearly 87 per centurban in 2050, by which time the annual average paceof growth in the urban population is expected to slow down to0.3 per cent. Some cities already see their populations shrinking.Latin America and the Caribbean stands out as the only regionwhere migration between urban areas is a significant determinantof urban population growth, accounting for nearly 50 per cent anddue to several factors, chief among them the pursuit of prosperity.policyLatin American cities must become more productiveand generate local jobs, improve transportinfrastructure and living conditions, short of which they will faceprospects of population decline due to higher mobility from cityto city. They must reduce entrenched inequalities while improvingquality of life and environmental protection. More prosperouscities must articulate better their strategic advantages withnational economic policies and enhance their creative capital toincrease prosperity prospects.policyEven though the region is more urbanized than Europe,GDP per capita (PPP) was nearly three times lowerthan the European Union’s in 2010. The main reasons includechronic inequalities and mass poverty, insufficient infrastructure,poor public services, inadequate connectivity, poor governanceand fragile institutions.policyAgainst this background, cities must accommodatedemographic and spatial expansions, with aconcomitant development of well-devised urban structures thatwould reduce transport and service delivery costs, optimize landuse and support the deployment and/or protection of open spaces.policyBetter connectivity, mobility and accessibility and wellplannedintegration of land-use, density and transporthave the potential to reduce energy consumption drastically,making cities more sustainable.FACTMost urban plans and regulatory regimes in the developingworld have been incapable of preventing the conversionof rural land to urban use in city peripheries. as a result, thereclassification of settlements from ‘rural’ to ‘urban’ has becomethe second most significant determinant of urban population growthand expansion in the developing world today.physical expansion of all urban areas over the last 30 yearswas estimated to be at around 7.4 per cent on an annualaverage basis, outstripping population growth by a multipleof nearly four. 14Cities are becoming endless expanses, with highdegrees of fragmentation of the urban fabric thatresult in vast interstitial open spaces. At the periphery,residential neighbourhoods are characterized by lowdensitydevelopments which, along with under-usedspaces and fragmented built-up areas in the intermediatecity-rings, are contributing to dramatic reductions inresidential densities.Novel Urban/Regional Configurations andProsperityCities large or small have increasingly come to mergetogether to form new spatial configurations that typicallytake three principal forms: mega-regions, urban corridorsand city-regions. Each on its own spatial scale, thesethree forms seem to act as nodes where global andregional flows of people, capital, goods and informationcombine and commingle, resulting in faster growth, bothdemographic and economic, than that of the countriesBox 1.2.1Novel configurations: A typologyMega-regions surpass mega- and meta-cities by populationand economic output, combining large markets, skilled labourand innovation and amalgamating several cities within theorbit of the overall region.Example: Japan’s Tokyo-Nagoya-Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe region,with a population close to 60 million.Urban corridors, a number of urban centres of varioussizes are connected along transportation routes in lineardevelopment axes that are often linked to a number of megacities,encompassing hinterlands. New developments in somefringe areas experience the fastest growth rates and the mostrapid urban transformation. Example: in Malaysia, the KualaLumpur-Klang corridor along the Klang Valley.City-regions take on a larger scale than large cities,expanding beyond formal administrative boundaries to engulfsmaller ones as well as semi-urban and rural hinterlands,and even merge with other intermediate cities, creating largeconurbations that eventually form city-regions.Examples: São Paulo, Brazil; Cape Town, South Africa;Bangkok, Thailand.30