Global Policy Forum

By Mithre J. Sandrasagra

The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) launched its first reports on urban conditions and trends Monday, stressing that more than 1.2 billion of the world's population of 6 billion live in inadequate housing.

"For the first time, the city, rather than the country, is used as the basic unit of analysis," said Secretary General Kofi Annan during the reports' release. The 126-page 'State of the World's Cities Report 2001' and its 344- page sister publication 'Cities in a Globalizing World: Report on Human Settlements 2001' depart from a longstanding tradition of country-level analysis and instead monitor the realities faced by urban populations. Pointing out that "the world's urban areas are now home to more than half of humankind - 3 billion people," Annan stressed that "sustainable urban development is one of the most pressing challenges facing the human community in the 21st century."

Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, Habitat's executive director, said, "Homeless people are living in cardboard boxes on sidewalks of gleaming corporate skyscrapers, whose budgets exceed those of many countries."

The central challenge faced by the global community is how to make both globalization and urbanization work for all the world's people, instead of benefiting only a few, added Jay Moore, a principal contributor to the State of World Cities report. Moore added that liberalized trade and finance, without proper safeguards, have made urban populations everywhere more vulnerable to external shocks. He highlighted the suffering of poor people in Bangkok, Thailand as a result of the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and 1998.

The Report on Human Settlements argues that technology-driven options for growth and development - which spur globalization - have led to divided cities where the lines of stratification between people, places and groups are becoming more magnified.

Tibaijuka lamented, "We are back to where Charles Dickens was 150 years ago when he wrote 'A Tale of Two Cities'."

Cities are hubs of dynamism, change and opportunity but also places of exploitation, disease and unemployment, Annan said.

The reports cite studies showing that while some groups have improved their housing conditions, a disproportionate share of the world's population - particularly in poor countries - has seen its housing situation deteriorate. In Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Rwanda, for example, real incomes have fallen, the cost of living has gone up, and the number of poor households has grown, particularly in urban areas. Municipalities in highly industrialized countries obtain an average of 2,906 dollars per capita in revenue per year. This figure is almost 200 times the average revenue obtained by African municipalities, which raise a meager 14 dollars per capita per year. According to Habitat, in Africa, only one-third of all urban households are connected to potable water; in Asia and the Pacific, a mere 38 percent of urban households are connected to a sewerage system; in Europe, the processes of social exclusion marginalize many low income and minority households; and in North America, problems of residential segregation, discrimination in housing markets and affordability persist, particularly in larger cities, despite recent economic growth.

The reports argue that traditional goals of urban planning and development, aimed at supporting cities as engines of economic growth, are too narrow.

"Planners must begin to consider the feminization as well as the urbanization of poverty," Tibaijuka said, emphasizing that, "the majority of the world's poor are women."

Moore added, "We have not developed institutions well or fast enough to govern or run our cities" even as urban centers have grown to house half the world's population, up from two percent in 1800.

"Policies must focus on capacity building, especially at the local level and in civil society," Tibaijuka concluded.

The Habitat reports were released to coincide with a review, beginning here Wednesday, of progress since the Second World Conference on Human Settlements was held in Istanbul in 1996.

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