STATE OF THE WORLD'S CITIES 2012/2013 Prosperity

Treating Quality of Life as a By-product
UN-Habitat survey results show that the more committed
the city is to promote quality of life, the more the chances
that the effects will be broad-ranging. There is a clear
positive association between a high degree of commitment
to address quality of life and the possibility of designing
specific policies. Unfortunately, the opposite also applies,
and many cities treat quality of life as a by-product or an
‘after-effect’ of policy interventions. Even where some cities
perform well under other dimensions of prosperity, they
fail to deliver better quality of life. Abidjan, Dakar, Dar
es Salam and Kampala illustrate well this situation: they
feature moderate or weak values in the “City Prosperity
Index”, but rank even much lower for quality of life, which
goes to show that this dimension cannot be considered as an
indirect component of any urban policy agenda.
A number of studies have shown that the various
determinants of quality of life generate complex interactions
and diverse causal relations. Sometimes, efforts to promote
one element can have unexpected detrimental effects
on other elements; for example, prioritizing economic
growth per se can result in negative environmental
impacts. In other cases, positive linkages between
these determinants are quite obvious; for instance, the
provision of green open spaces brings health benefits to
the population. In some other cases, the relationship can
be less evident; for example, individual housing choices
may have environmental impacts that affect quality of
life in different ways. 10 All too often, cities do not clearly
perceive the complexity of these interactions and assume
that interrelations will always be positive. Several cities
in Asia and the Arab States that are experiencing high
economic growth are mostly focusing on infrastructure
development in the pursuit
POLICy Cities
that focus
only on economic
development and
provide services that
are not public goods,
may leave the urban
poor, migrants, ethnic
minorities and other
vulnerable groups with
serious difficulties to
pay for the improved
services, reducing the
possibilities for them to
enjoy quality of life.
of higher productivity and
therefore higher incomes,
assuming that this will lead
to better quality of life in
the long term. Generally,
that is what happens,
since economic growth
increases purchasing power
and demand for goods
and services including
education, entertainment,
financial services and
housing, which, in turn,
not only create new
61
Quality of Life and Urban Prosperity
employment opportunities
but also contribute to
higher quality of life. But
there may also be negative
consequences.
However, UN-Habitat
policy analysis shows that
most surveyed cities in the
developing world have
no clear policies, actions
and reliable procedures
to deliver and expand
quality of life to the whole
population. With the
exceptions of Singapore,
Davao, Ho Chi Minh
City and Chon Qing in
Asia, Fort-de-France and
Medellín in Latin America
and the Caribbean, and
Doha in the Arab States
(whose commitment to
quality of life was highly
commended), experts
took a critical view of the
42 other cities on that
count. They found public
administrations to be
generally inefficient and
with poor incentives to
devise specific quality of
life policies for lack of adequate financial resources, trained
staff or political interest.
Positive exceptions can be found, such as Cebu,
Singapore, Dubai, and Ho Chi Minh City, where, in the
words of a local expert, “investing in human resources is
considered to be the best way of seizing more opportunities
and turning them into wealth and quality of life to make the
city more prosperous”. 11 Social equity
FACT and quality of
life go hand in hand. In
practice, though, any
policies and actions
aiming to expand
societal well-being
largely depend on
the political will of
governments and the
degree of participation
of civil society
organizations and, in
particular, their degree
of autonomy when it
comes to advocating,
upholding and fighting
for the rights of all.
When a city
POLICy focuses solely
on economic prosperity, it is
very likely that the benefits
and improvements in terms
of quality of life may not be
geared to the urban poor,
particularly in those cities
where corruption and poor
governance are endemic.
In Cebu, a local expert argues that
“it is not only a matter of expanding the pie (i.e., economic
FACT
Experts in 60 per cent of surveyed cities in Africa
and Arab States and slightly more than 40 per cent
of cities in Asia and Latin America believe that corruption and
poor governance conspire against local prosperity and quality
of life.