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Roundup: World Faces Challenge of Urbanization
With "adequate shelter for all" and "sustainable development of human settlements" as main goals, the world has had to deal with all aspects of growing urbanization in recent years.
Compared to 1950 when New York City was the only metropolitan area with a population of over 10 million, there are 19 such cities today, with the number expected to reach 23 in 2015, 19 of which located in developing countries, according to United Nations studies.
Today, 40 percent of the population of developing countries already lives in cities. By 2020, that figure could rise to 52 percent. Latin America has 75 percent city dwellers, far above Africa and Asia where only one third of the people live in urban areas.
With an explosive demographic change foreseen for the next quarter century, Asia is expected to host 153 of the world's 358 cities with more than one million inhabitants by 2015. Of the 27 megacities with over 10 million inhabitants, 15 will be in Asia.
The growing tendency of urbanization has added difficulty to combating poverty when one billion city dwellers already live in slums or without adequate shelter or access to basic services.
Taking into account the unequal conditions in developed and developing countries, poverty in cities in the developing world is deeper and more widespread. A child born in a city in a least- developed country is 22 times more likely to die by the age of five than his counterpart born in a city of a developed country, U. N. experts say.
City dwellers in Africa use only 50 liters of water per person per day, but in highly industrialized countries almost 100 percent of households are connected to piped water, with average water consumption of 215 liters per person daily, U.N. statistics show.
In developed countries, the process of social exclusion marginalize many low-income and minority households, urban crime and the decline of peripheral housing estates undermine the social cohesion of many communities.
In North America, problems of residential segregation and discrimination in housing markets, particularly in larger cities, persist despite recent economic growth.
The AIDS crisis is also having an impact on human settlements. With over 2 million sub-Saharan Africans living with AIDS and another 3.8 million infected with HIV, less resources are available for urban development.
In addition, more and more households are headed by grandparents or by children when their family members fall victims of the disease.
The U.N. General Assembly is scheduled to hold a special session from June 6-8 to review the progress in meeting the goals set at the second U.N. conference on human settlements (Habitat II) in Istanbul in 1996, so as to formulate new initiatives for the implementation of the Habitat agenda for adequate housing and sustainable urban development.
Experience-sharing is expected to feature the session with mayors from various countries prepared to speak at thematic discussions on shelter, poverty eradication, environmental management, economic development, governance and international cooperation.
The challenge facing the international community is to make globalization and urbanization work for all people, instead of leaving millions behind, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said. Time will tell how serious are different sections of the society in dealing with the issue.
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