13. NEW DIRECTIONS FOR HUMAN SETTLEMENTS: ADDRESSING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

Summary

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Over the last two and half decades, the focus of human settlements policies in most countries in the South has shifted several times. In the 1970s, the focus was on housing the urban poor. This was to be achieved largely through national government programmes for upgrading in illegal or informal settlements and for sites and services and core housing programmes that were meant to be affordable by low income households. By the mid-1980s, the limitations of this approach had become evident; these are now generally well known and they were reviewed in the last Global Report on Human Settlements. Their main shortcoming was the inability of governments to reach sufficient people through such approaches, largely because these did little to address the more fundamental constraints regarding the supply of land, housing finance and building materials and the provision for infrastructure and services. In addition, improvements arising from upgrading projects were often not maintained either by the communities upgraded or by their local authority while serviced site projects often proved inappropriate to the needs of lower income groups. The adoption of the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 in 1988 promoted a shift in focus and propelled the `Enabling Approach' and the related idea of `Partnerships' to the forefront of human settlements policy. The latest shift in policy focus has been towards the concept of `Sustainable Development.' This was the central theme and message of Agenda 21, which was adopted in Rio de Janeiro in May 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). However, as this Chapter will describe, the enabling approach also has great relevance to promoting sustainable development.

Earlier chapters described how these shifts in policy focus have been against the background of an increasingly urbanized world where within the next ten years or so, more than half the world's population will live in urban areas. An increasing proportion live in large cities, including some of unprecedented size. Given this background, and the recent policy changes mentioned above, the main challenge in the next two decades is how to manage the development of human settlements in a rapidly urbanizing world in such a way as to satisfy the social, economic and environmental goals of sustainable development, overcome the limitations of past human settlements policies, and satisfy the growing demand for democratic governance at all levels of society.

13.1 A Rapidly Urbanizing World: Cities As Solutions

Moving Away from a Negative View of Cities

Cities have long been blamed for many human failings. Capital cities are often blamed for the failures or inadequacies of the government institutions located there. The wealthiest cities are often blamed for the inequalities in income that the contrasts between their richest and poorest districts make visible. Cities in general and industrial cities in particular are blamed for environmental degradation. Images such as "exploding cities" and "mushrooming cities" are often used to convey a process of population growth and urbanization that is "out of control". Cities are often blamed for corroding the social fabric. Within the current concern for "sustainable development", cities are often cited as the main "problem."

Yet this Report, in surveying the evidence, found little substance to these criticisms. These criticisms forget the central role that cities and urban systems have in stronger and more stable economies that in turn have underpinned great improvements in living standards for a considerable portion of the world's population over the last few decades. As Chapter 3 described, average life expectancy, worldwide, grew by more than 12 years between 1960 and 1992 while in many countries, it grew by 18 or more years. Chapter 1 showed the close association between urbanization and economic growth and the fact that urbanization is not "out of control;" it also showed the high concentration of the world's largest cities in the world's largest economies. The tendency to consider "rapid urbanization" as a problem forgets that the world's wealthiest nations also underwent periods of rapid urbanization and that the rate of increase in the level of urbanization in countries in the South is rarely larger than that experienced in earlier decades by countries in the North. While it is true that many cities have grown very rapidly, this is largely a reflection of the rate at which their economies grew.

The attempts to imply a link between "exploding cities" and "rapid population growth" in the South ignore the fact that those who live in or move to cities generally have smaller families than those living elsewhere and that the countries with the largest increase in their level of urbanization over the last 20-30 years are also generally those with the largest falls in population growth rates. Chapter 1 also noted that cities are not "mushrooming"; indeed most of the world's largest cities have long histories and a high proportion of the major cities that do not are in North America and Australia. This hardly suggests that the appearance of major new cities is associated with poverty.

Many cities certainly have a high concentration of poverty and Chapter 3 described how the scale of urban poverty and its depth in terms of the deprivation, ill-health and premature death it causes have been greatly under-estimated. But worldwide, the scale and depth of poverty in rural areas remains higher, if sometimes less visible. In general, the higher the level of urbanization in a country, the lower the level of absolute poverty.

Anti-city polemic also obscures the real causes of social or ecological ills. It fails to point to those responsible for resource overuse and environmental degradation and fails to perceive the great advantages (or potential advantages) that cities offer for greatly reducing resource use and wastes. It is not cities that are responsible for most resource use, waste, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions - but particular industries and commercial and industrial enterprises (or corporations) and middle and upper income groups with high consumption lifestyles. Most such enterprises and consumers may be concentrated in cities but a considerable (and probably growing) proportion are not. In the North and in the wealthier cities or regions of the South, it is the middle or upper income household with two or three cars living in rural areas or small towns or low density outer suburbs of cities that has the highest consumption of resources - generally much more so than those with similar incomes living within cities.

The positive role and advantages of cities

Cities have the potential to combine safe and healthy living conditions and culturally rich and enjoyable lifestyles with remarkably low levels of energy consumption, resource-use and wastes. The fact that cities concentrate production and population gives them some obvious advantages over rural settlements or dispersed populations.

The first advantage is that high densities mean much lower costs per household and per enterprise for the provision of piped, treated water supplies, the collection and disposal of household and human wastes, advanced telecommunications and most forms of health care and education. It also makes much cheaper the provision of emergency services - for instance fire-fighting and the emergency response to acute illness or injury that can greatly reduce the health burden for the people affected. The concentration of people and production may present problems for waste collection and disposal, but these are not problems that are insuperable, especially where a priority is given to minimizing wastes. Chapter 8 also noted the long-established traditions in many cities in the South which ensure high levels of recycling or reuse of wastes on which government's solid waste management can build. Within the largest cities, the concentration of population can make the treatment and disposal of sewage problematic given the volume of excreta and waste water that needs to be disposed of. But this is rarely a major problem in smaller cities and towns - where most of the world's urban population live. There are many examples of the successful and safe utilization of sewage for intensive crop production. There are also an increasing number of examples of effective sanitation systems that do not require high volumes of water, including some that require no water at all (although water is always needed for hand washing and personal hygiene in general). The techniques for enormously reducing the use of freshwater in city homes and enterprises, including recycling or directly reusing waste waters, are well-known, where freshwater resources are scarce - although it is agriculture, not cities, that dominate the use of freshwater in most nations.

The second advantage that cities provide is the concentration of production and consumption, which means a greater range and possibility for efficient use of resources - through the reclamation of materials from waste streams and its reuse or recycling - and for the specialist enterprises that ensure this can happen safely. Cities make possible material or waste exchanges between industries. The collection of recyclable or reusable wastes from homes and businesses is generally cheaper, per person served. Cities have cheaper unit costs for many measures to promote the use of reusable containers (and cut down on disposable containers) or to collect chlorofluorocarbons from fridges and other forms of cooling equipment.

The third advantage is that a much higher population concentration in cities means a reduced demand for land relative to population. In most countries, urban areas take up less than one percent of the national territory. The entire world's urban population would fit into an area of 200,000 square kilometres - roughly the size of Senegal or Oman - at densities similar to those of high class, much valued inner city residential areas in European cities (for instance Chelsea in London). In most cities around the world, there are examples of high quality, high density residential areas and Chapter 9 noted the increased popularity of housing in the central districts of certain cities, as governments controlled private automobiles, improved public transit and encouraged a rich and diverse street life. Although unchecked urban (or more often suburban) sprawl is often taking place over valuable agricultural land, this can often be avoided. And as Chapter 12 noted, in many cities in the South, the scale of urban agriculture is such that a significant proportion of city-consumption of food is also produced within the city. This chapter also pointed to the many advantages of urban forestry.

The fourth advantage of cities in climates where homes and businesses need to be heated for parts of the year is that the concentration of production and residential areas means a considerable potential for reducing fossil fuel use - for instance through the use of waste process heat from industry or thermal power stations to provide space heating for homes and commercial buildings. Certain forms of high density housing such as terraces and apartment blocks also considerably reduce heat loss from each housing unit, when compared to detached housing. Chapter 12 also noted the many measures that can be taken to reduce heat gain in buildings to eliminate or greatly reduce the demand for electricity for air conditioning.

The fifth advantage of cities is that they represent a much greater potential for limiting the use of motor vehicles - including greatly reducing the fossil fuels they need and the air pollution and high levels of resource consumption that their use implies. This might sound contradictory, since earlier Chapters described how most of the world's largest cities have serious problems with congestion and motor-vehicle generated air pollution. But cities ensure that many more trips can be made through walking or bicycling. They also make possible a much greater use of public transport and make economically feasible a high quality service. Thus, although cities tend to be associated with a high level of private automobile use, cities and urban systems also represent the greatest potential for allowing their inhabitants quick and cheap access to a great range of locations, without the need to use private automobiles.

Cities are also among societies' most precious cultural artifacts. This can be seen in the visual and decorative arts, music and dance, theatre and literature that develop there and in the variety and diversity of street life evident in most cities. In most cities, there are buildings, streets, layouts and neighbourhoods that form a central part of the history and culture of that society. Some of the most lively expressions of popular culture are evident in many of the poorer areas in cities - both in art and in music. Many cities or particular city districts demonstrate how cities can provide healthy, stimulating and valued housing and living environments for their inhabitants without imposing unsustainable demands on natural resources and ecosystems.

Cities are also places in which the "social economy" has developed most - and where it must prosper, not only for the benefits it brings to each street or neighbourhood but also for the economic and social costs it saves the wider society. The social economy is a term given to a great variety of initiatives and actions that are organized and controlled locally and that are not profit-oriented. It includes many activities that are unwaged and unmonetized - including the work of citizen groups, residents' associations, street or barrio clubs, youth clubs, parent associations that support local schools and the voluntary workers who help ensure that a preventive focused health care system reaches out to all those in need within its locality. It includes many voluntary groups that provide services for the elderly, the physically disabled or other individuals in need of special support. It often includes many initiatives that make cities safer and more fun - helping provide supervised play space, sport and recreational opportunities for children and youth. It may provide formal or informal supervision or maintenance of parks, squares and other public spaces. But it includes enterprises and initiatives that have paid workers and sell goods and services - for instance local enterprises which combine social as well as commercial aims, owned by people within a defined locality or who share other forms of common interest. It also includes initiatives to support such enterprises - for instance the many community enterprise development trusts set up in recent years and the local-exchange trading systems that are now in evidence in more than 20 countries - see Box 13.1.

Box 13.1: Local exchange trading systems (LETS)

Many cities have various forms of community exchanges operating within particular localities. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Local Exchange Trading Systems became increasingly popular as formal systems by which people in any locality or neighbourhood could exchange goods and services without money. These serve to, in effect, increasing the purchasing power of those involved and the range of goods and services they can afford while also retaining value within the locality.

LETS schemes function by publishing a list of goods and services offered for sale by its members, priced in particular units of account set up by that scheme. This allows members to exchange goods and services with no money changing hands. As a member provides goods or services to another member, so they run up credit that is recorded by the scheme. A member that "purchases" these goods or services has a debit that is then paid off by providing goods or services to another member. All members receive regular statements to keep them informed of their position.

There are LETS groups in many countries - including more than 200 LETS groups in the UK and close to 200 in Australia. Some have grown to a considerable size - for instance one in the Blue Mountains in Australia has 1000 accounts involving more than 2000 people. A survey in the UK found that the average membership is 70 and that groups tend to double in size in a year until they reach a membership of around 250, when their growth rate slows down. In this same survey, 25 percent of members were unemployed, and 12 percent worked part time. Over a third of the LETS have businesses as members - rather than individuals.

SOURCES: Graham Boyd, "The urban social economy", Urban Examples, UNICEF, New York, 1995; and Long, Peter, Lets Work; Rebuilding the Local Economy , Grover Books, Bristol, 1994, 179 pages.

The social economy within each locality creates a dense fabric of relationships that allow local citizens to work together in identifying and acting on local problems or in taking local initiatives. Its value to city life is often enormous, but this is often forgotten by governments and international agencies, as it is almost impossible to calculate its value in monetary terms. A considerable proportion of the economic growth in the wealthier countries in recent decades has come from shifting functions from the social economy where their value was not counted in economic terms (and not recorded in GNP statistics) to the market economy. Energies once invested in developing and maintaining family and community relationships and in building or supporting local initiatives and institutions had to be redirected to earn sufficient income to pay the taxes that then funded government responses to the problems the social economy had helped address or keep in check - for instance structural unemployment, insecurity, vandalism, crime and a sense, among many low-income households and youth, of being excluded from social and political processes.

The role of governance

Perhaps the single most important - and difficult - aspect of urban development is developing the institutional structure to manage it in ways that ensure that the advantages noted above are utilized - and also done in ways that are accountable to urban populations. Most of the problems described in this Report in terms of very poor housing, lack of piped water and provision for sanitation and drainage, the lack of basic services such as health care, the serious and often rising problem of urban violence, the problems of traffic congestion and air and water pollution arise largely from a failure of government institutions to manage rapid change and to tap the knowledge, resources and capacities among the population within each city. Indeed, governments have often helped destroy or stifle the "social economy" in cities that is so central to their prosperity and to the capacity of the inhabitants in each locality to identify and act on their own priorities.

Making full use of the potential that cities have to offer requires "good governance". The evidence of the 1980s and early 1990s is that "good governance" can bring major economic and social gains, and much less environmental degradation. This can be seen in the extent to which such critical social indicators as infant mortality and life expectancy vary between countries with comparable levels of per capita income or between cities of comparable size and prosperity. As Chapter 3 described, for nations with relatively low incomes per person, "good governance" at the level of a city or nation can deliver a 10 to 15 year increase in levels of life expectancy above the average. There is also no contradiction between high social achievement and good economic performance; indeed, the link may be that high social achievement is associated with better than average economic performance.

"Good governance" can also be assessed in the extent to which city, regional and national governments ensure that people within their boundaries have safe, sufficient water supplies, provision for sanitation, education and health care. Although, in general, the proportion of the population with access to these rises, the wealthier the city and the higher the country's per capita income, there is great variation in performance between nations and cities with comparable levels of per capita income. In most nations, there has also been a failure to consider the economic costs - as well as the immense social costs - of not ensuring basic service provision to their populations.

A successful city is one where the many different goals of its inhabitants and enterprises are met, without passing on costs to other people (including future generations) or to their regions. It is also one where the social economy is allowed to thrive. But in the absence of "good governance", as Chapter 4 described, cities tend to be centres of pollution and waste. Even when pollution levels are much reduced in the city - as they have been in most cities in the North - this is often because environmental costs are being passed onto other regions - for instance through acid rain and water pollution and dumping wastes generated within the city outside its boundaries. City enterprises and households can also pass on costs to future generations through over-use of scarce resources and through their contributions to greenhouse gas emissions. Worldwide, city-based enterprises and consumers account for a high proportion of all resource use. They also produce a high proportion of all wastes, including toxic and hazardous wastes and air and water pollution.

In the absence of "good governance", cities can be unhealthy and dangerous places in which to live and work. Each household and enterprise can reduce their costs by passing their environmental problems of solid and liquid wastes and air pollution onto others. At least 600 million urban dwellers in the South live in very poor conditions - many of them in illegal settlements - with very inadequate provision for water, sanitation, drainage, garbage collection and other basic services. Meanwhile, in the absence of a planning framework, city expansion takes place haphazardly and often with urban sprawl over the best quality farmland. Hundreds of millions of low income households live in illegal or informal settlements that developed on land ill-suited to housing - for instance on floodplains or steep slopes with a high risk of landslides or mudslides. They live here because these are the only land sites which they can afford or where their illegal occupation will not be challenged, because the land site is too dangerous for any commercial use. Hundreds of millions of city inhabitants have been forced to find or build homes in illegal settlements, where the threat of forced eviction is always present.

13.2 Sustainability in Human Settlements Development