Cities at the forefront

Population Reports, Summer, 2001 by Don Hinrichsen, Richard Blackburn, Bryant Robey

Cities in the developing world are at the forefront of the global struggle to achieve better living standards. How urban residents and their governments meet the challenges of rapid population growth and development will largely determine the kind of world that lies ahead.

Marina Lupina and her two children live in one of Manila's largest slum areas, in a shack built from discarded waste next to a refuse-clogged canal. They have no running water, no electricity, and little furniture--a bed where all three sleep, a table, and three chairs. Her husband disappeared after the second child was born. By selling recycled cloth, Marina earns just enough to buy rice, fish, and clothing. Like millions of others in the big cities of developing countries, she has come for a better life. Despite her poverty, she believes that she and her children have more opportunity in the city than if they had remained in the countryside.

Within five years half the world's population will live in cities. By 2030 the urban population will reach 4.9 billion--60% of the world's population (28) (see Figure, p. 2). Nearly all population growth will be in the cities of developing countries, whose population will double to nearly 4 billion by 2030--about the size of the developing world's total population in 1990.

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"The explosive growth of cities in developing countries will test the capacity of governments to stimulate the investment required to generate jobs and to provide the services, infrastructure, and social supports necessary to sustain livable and stable environments," warns an assessment of expert opinion prepared by the US National Intelligence Council in 2000 (16). Developing countries also will face intensified environmental problems due to urbanization.

How can living conditions improve for the millions of people densely packed into cities without destroying the natural resource base on which improved living standards depend? Meeting the challenges posed by rapid urbanization could be as important for the future as addressing rapid population growth itself has been over the last 50 years.

Developing World Becoming Urban

The developing world has been predominantly rural but is quickly becoming urban. In 1950 only 18% of people in developing countries lived in cities. In 2000 the proportion was 40%, and by 2030 the developing world will be 56% urban (2, 28). While the developed world is more urban, estimated at 76% urban in 2000, developing countries have much faster urban population growth--an average annual growth rate of 2.3%, which far exceeds the developed world's urban growth rate of 0.4% (28).

Rapid urban growth in developing countries reflects substantial migration to cities from rural areas and also natural population increase (the net effect of births minus deaths) among city residents. On average, of these two sources of urban population growth, natural increase plays the greater role. Among developing countries, excluding China, for example, an estimated 60% of urban growth between 1960 and 1990 was from natural increase and 40% from in-migration from rural areas and the expansion of urban boundaries (2).

Some cities, however, are growing two or three times faster than the country's overall population, reflecting massive migration to cities (7, 10). For example, Dhaka grew in population by an average of nearly 7% per year from 1975 to 2000 compared with an annual average of 2.1% for Bangladesh as a whole. In the same period, the population of Lagos grew at an average of 5.6% per year compared with 3% for Nigeria as a whole (28, 31).

Megacities. More and more people of the developing world live in "megacities," or cities of at least 10 million people. In 1975 only five cities worldwide had 10 million or more inhabitants, of which three were in developing countries. The number will increase to 23 by 2015, all but 4 of them in developing countries. By then, Bombay, Dhaka, Lagos, and Sao Paulo each will have over 20 million residents (see Table, p. 3) (28). Also, by 2015 an estimated 564 cities around the world will contain 1 million or more residents. Of these, 425 will be in developing countries (2).

The Urban Dilemma

The rapid growth of cities in developing countries presents a dilemma. Cities historically have been centers of industry and commerce and magnets for millions of people. Today, however, the sheer size of cities and the rapid, continuing influx of urban migrants cast doubt on their ability to continue providing improved standards of living.

While there is no evidence that a threshold population size exists beyond which "cities generate more negative than positive effects for their countries" (2), in many cities the rapid pace of population growth and enormous size of the population have overwhelmed the capacity of municipal authorities to respond. Over 600 million people in the cities of developing countries cannot meet their basic needs for shelter, water, food, health, and education (6). Recent migrants to cities are particularly vulnerable, often clustered in slums with little access to jobs or services (9).