Citywards ho!
IT is definitely a small world that we live in today, and Damocles' sword never shone so ruthlessly before. This fact has been highlighted by the startling revelations in the recently released The State of World Population, 1996. Within 10 years, more than half the people of the global village will become city dwellers, comprising 3.3 billion of the 6.59 billion urbanites. states the report. The report examines "the causes of urban growth and the implications of expanding urbanisation" that would inevitably face neo-urbanites.
This may not necessarily be a "bad" development, assured Wasim Zaman, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) representative, while releasing the report. "But it is also true that in developing countries some 600 million of today's 1.7 billion urban residents do not have the means to meet their basic needs for shelter, water and health," he said.
Zaman stressed that poverty will threaten the growth of urban future; for the poor, their environment will emerge as overcrowded, violent and unhealthy, where millions of urban children may be at the risk of being school drop-outs and becoming victims of labour exploitation, sexual exploitation, unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases (STD). In the foreword to the report, UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali says, "To be sustainable, development should be better balanced between rural and urban areas, and among small, medium-sized and large cities."
The report pinpoints increased mobility as one of the major features of rapid urbanisaton. Migration, in fact, accounts for some 40 per cent of the citywards exodus, where the effects of international migration (although insignificant by comparison with internal movement) would have more serious implications.
Apocalypse now While the report touches upon all the issues confronting urban life, it makes some startling statements: "The emerging viruses (on which another UN report was carried in Down TO Earth, Vol 5, No 2) are the only most dramatic examples of rural diseases establishing themselves in urban areas." Hectic urbanisation is projected to lead to a deadly apocalypse whereby several infectious diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, antibiotic-resistant infections and STDS / HIV / AIDS, etc would wreak havoc on communities in the developing world. Already, India has seen a resurgence in the onslaught by the first three.
The possible threats to urban health conditions are more or less unknown to rural surroundings, most important among them being air and water pollution - the direct result of industrial activity, transportation and cooking exhausts. The neo-urbanites will thus be exposed to hazards which their natural immune system is unaccustomed to, making them much more susceptible.
The report states: "The demands of the urban future will test the pledges made by the world's governments at the series of global conferences on social development, which started in 1992 and concludes in June 1996 with the International Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat ii) in Istanbul. Meeting their universally agreed goals is vital for the future of cities and for all prospects for human development."
It also says: "Among the most specific goals are those of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo in 1994). The 1CPD aims at achieving primary goals of providing universal primary health care including reproductive health care, family planning and sexual health by 2015, closing the gender gap in education and providing education for all by then , and ensuring equality and autonomy for women as essential for dynamic urban growth."
Interestingly, the report documents the composition and distribution of the World's largest cities that have undergone dramatic changes over the past 45 years. Bangalore, Mumbai, Calcutta and Delhi are among those metropolises 'projected to become megacities by AD 2015, registering a more than three per cent growth rate per annum between I @90 and AD 2000. Zaman specifies, "By the year 2000, it is projected that Mumbai will be the second largest city of the world and there will be three Indian cities with population of 10 million and over."
Focus on Eve
Several recent studies, according to the report, show that a growing proportion of the rural-urban migration patterns comprises women; and if individuals migrate, they do so as "part of a complex family and community process". It is evident, then, that the gender factor plays a significant role in determining migration streams. But this aspect remains somewhat elusive - "obscured by conceptual problems and measurement difficulties".
The report discusses the policies, strategies and issues for improving the cities, which have been further refined by the ongoing Habitat ii conference which has focussed on shelter for all; it was attended by a representative of the NGO Waste Wise from Bangalore in India which presented an alternative approach to solid waste management.
The ICPD'S main concerns are families and children, health and environment, population distribution, urban management and ensuring access to information. The UNFPA strategies encompass improved family planning and health care for all, and advocates empowerment of women. But questioning Turkey's right to hold the conference, 35 NGOS organised an Alternative Habitat ii to highlight problems not adressed by the official event.
The urban future is feared to carry several risks towards our physical environment and natural resources, for social cohesion and human rights. However, considering the opinion Of sociologists, that cities - already accounting for 60-80 per cent of the GNP of many developing nations - could serve as hubs of human creativity, this growth could open up a lot of developmental avenues.
Despite the speculated setbacks, the phenomenal urban growth is seen as a very heartening "secular shift in societies and economies, on a scale never experienced before", asserts the report. The need of the hour is a cohesive society where women's role will be well-defined. To meet existent needs and anticipating new ones would be the crux of the agenda in building a "civic society", it envisions.