1. Urban Growth and
Megacities

2. • Every second, the urban population grows by __ people.
• In Africa and Asia, the urban population is expected to _____
between 2000 and 2030.
• The poor pay more. A slum dweller in Nairobi –Kenya- pays __
to 7 times more for a litre of water than an average North
American citizen.
• 828 million people live in slum conditions, lacking basic services
such as drinking water and sanitation. This number is increasing
by __ million each year to hit a total of 889 million by 2020.
• 62 % of the sub-Saharan Africa urban population and __ % of
the urban population of south-central Asia lives in slums.
• One of ____ urban dwellers does not have access to improved
sanitation facilities.
• ___% of the urban dwellers in the developing world does not
have access to piped water at home.
double 43 5 27
4 6 2

3. Megacities
Bangalore Kinshasa Rio de Janeiro
Bangkok Lagos Santiago de Chile
Beijing Lahore Sao Paulo
Bogota Lima Seoul
Buenos Aires London Shanghai
Cairo Los Angeles Tehran
Calcullta Manila Tianjin
Chennai Mexico Tokyo
Chicago Moscow Wuhan
Delhi Mumbai
Dhaka New York
Hong Kong Osaka
Hyderabad Paris
Istanbul Rhine-Ruhr North
Jakarta
Karachi

5. • ‘;k;lk’;lk

6. Two areas of focus:
Urban Trends
• Global urbanisation
• Wealth of cities
• Slum dwellers
Urban Divide
• Economic Divide
• Spatial Divide
• Opportunity Divide
• Social Divide

7. Convergent Urban Growth Patterns
• Much of worlds
demographic growth
over the next 30 years
will be concentrated in
urban areas.
• Urban population
expected to grow at an
annual average rate of
1.5 between 2025-2030.
• By 2050 urban dwellers
likely to account for 86%
of population in
developed countries,
67% in developing
countries.

8. Nairobi, Kenya Sao Paulo, Chongqing, China
Brazil

9. City-regions and urban corridors

10. Hong Kong-Shenzen-Guangzhou mega-region

11. Hong Kong-Shenzen-Guangzhou mega-region

12. Urban corridors: Delhi to Mumbai

13. Klang Valley conurbation

14. Beijing to Tokyo via Pyongyang and Seoul

15. City regions: São Paulo

16. Suburbanization
• Triggers for
suburbanisation:
– Regulation crisis, poor
planning control, improved
commuting technologies,
traffic congestion, lack of
public amenities.
• Urban Sprawl
– Horizontal spreading
– Dispersed urbanization

17. Los Angeles

18. Urban Sprawl
• Four dimensions:
– Population widely scattered in low-density
developments
– Residential and commercial areas that are
spatially separate
– Network of reads characterized by
overstretched blocks and poor access
– Thriving activity hubs
• Implications:
– Increased cost of public infrastructure
– Inefficiency of transportation
– High energy consumption
– Loss of farmlands
– Degradation of environmental resources.

19. San José – Costa Rica

20. Wealth of Cities
• The transition from low-income to
middle-income country status is
almost always accompanied by a
transition from a rural to an urban
economy.
• In some countries, such as Korea,
Hungary and Belgium, it takes
only a single city to contribute the
more substantial share of national
wealth
• Cities have become major hubs of
economic activity, both within
individual countries and as
contributors to the global
economy.

21. Land, Population and GDP of Selected
Cities as a Share of the Country Total

22. Cities and Global GDP

23. Urbanization and Poverty
Poverty Ratio relative to National Poverty line by degree of urbanization
1998-2007

24. Slum Dwellers
• Growth in urban populations in
developing countries is often,
strongly associated with urban
poverty, many assume that urban
growth in the poorest countries
would be synonymous with slum
growth.
• A number of countries have, to a
significant extent, managed to
curb the further expansion of
slums and to improve the living
conditions prevailing there.

25. Urban Population Living in Slums
1990-2010

26. Change in Slum proportions in
Africa 1990-2000

27. Change in slum proportions 2005-
2010

28. Change in slum proportions 1990-
2000

29. Change in slum proportions 2005-
2010

30. Slum proportions 1990

31. Slum proportions 2010

32. Cities with slums or „Slum cities‟
• No universal prescription
for slum improvement..
• Rapid urban growth
without a proportional
increase in basic urban
infrastructure can only
widen the urban divide,
as it leads to further slum
expansion.

33. Kibera, Kenya

34. Korail slum in the Dhaka,
Bangladesh

35. „Reclassified villages‟
• The prevalence of slum households
varies dramatically across the cities
of the developing world.
• Slums in the cities of man sub-
Saharan Africa have become
notorious for the extent and intensity
of their deprivations
• macro-level programmes must be
associated with micro-level schemes,
including micro-credit, self help,
education and employment. Housing
services may be available, but
families will use them only if they are
affordable.

36. South
Africa

37. The Urban Divide
• Cities are divided by invisible
borders.
• Fragmentation of society.
• In diverse urban landscapes,
sharp contrasts abound
across neighbouring streets,
buildings, public spaces,
gardens, markets or offices.
• In places, these urban
components merge and blend
into one another; in others,
they are separated by walls,
doors, symbolic features or
geographic factors such as
topography, rivers or lakes.

38. Mumbai: A city divided

39. Slum targets
• Over the past 10 years, the
proportion of the urban
population living in slums in the
developing world has declined
from 39 per cent in the year
2000 to an estimated 32 per
cent in 2010
• UN- HABITAT estimates that in
developing countries, 22 million
people have been lifted out of
slum conditions every year over
that decade, through slum
upgrading or prevention.

40. Social and cultural divides
• A divided city is also one that
fails to accommodate poorer
residents, regardless of the
cultural richness they might
lend to the city as a whole.
– Hip-hop groups in Africa
and Americas
– Samba schools in Sao
Paulo
– Tribus urbanus in Quito

41. Rio de Janeiro
Mexico City

42. The Spatial Divide
• Socio-economic clustering.
• The poor, unable to afford land or
shelter in the limited areas of the
city that are fully serviced, have
access only to the least desirable
and most densely developed
spaces
• When slum areas are physically
isolated and disconnected from
the main urban fabric, residents
become cut off from the city.

43. Employment Restrictions
• Mexico, 20% of workers
spend more than three hours
commuting to and from work
every day.
• Rio de Janeiro, some workers
sleep on beaches during the
week, saving commuting time
as well as transportation costs
that consume at least 20 per
cent of their wages.
• Dhaka and Mumbai, slum-
dwelling workers are often
found sleeping on the
pavement, travelling home
only for weekends and
holidays.

44. Social Exclusion and
marginalization
• Mumbai: 50 per cent of
slums have no access to
primary schools, a
percentage that is even
higher in the informal areas
on the outskirts of the city.
• Chittagong, the number of
primary schools for wealthy
households is on the
increase, while many
children in distant slums
have almost no access to
education.

45. Crime
• Long distance commuting
in dark, underserved
areas increases the risk of
crime.
• São Paulo, for instance,
the number of homicides
in some isolated
neighbourhoods has been
reported to be more than
five times as high as in
the safest districts.

46. Social Divide
• Hunger and malnutrition
caused by inequitable
distribution of largely available
food resources.
• Disease adds to economic
pressures on the poor, and so
do the costs of children‟s
schooling – although
education is known for
improving general health and
reducing poverty.

47. Poverty and hunger: The nutritional
divide
• Many country reports and
publications from international
agencies indeed show higher
rates of malnutrition in rural than
in urban areas.
• Hunger can be found in urban
areas, too.
• In urban areas, the higher
purchasing power of the rich
contributes to inflation of food
and health care costs, making
these unaffordable for the poor.
oo.

48. Environmental Diseases
• Poor sanitation, combined
with unsafe water supply
and lack of hygiene, claims
the lives of many slum
dwellers every year.
• Sanitation is the primary
factor that protects water,
air, soil and food from
contamination, and thereby
reduces the risk of
disease.

49. Overcrowding
• High-density
accommodation in slums
and squatter settlements, or
poor-quality housing in
general, intensifies the risk
of disease transmission.
• In an overcrowded slum
area, pit latrines expose
more children to diarrhoeal
diseases compared with a
non-overcrowded rural
area.
Nairobi, Kenya

50. Waste Management
• Properly managed solid waste
can clog storm drains, cause
flooding, result in garbage
heaps and provide breeding
and feeding grounds for
mosquitoes, flies and rodents.
• The combination of
environmental hazards
surrounding solid waste can
lead to injuries and easy
transmission of bacterial
diseases and parasitic
infections.

51. Indoor Air Pollution
• It is estimated that indoor air
pollution is responsible for
some three million deaths
every year.
• Women who cook in
enclosed quarters using
biomass fuels and coal are
at risk of chronic bronchitis
and acute respiratory
infections, as are their
children, who are often
exposed to significant indoor
air pollution alongside their
mothers on a daily basis.
• Indoor air pollution is a
“quiet” and overlooked killer.

52. Modern environment of disease
• Modern environmental health
hazards have become major
contributors to the
environmental diseases
affecting the African continent.
• The major such hazards
include water pollution from
environmental degradation
and industrial operations,
urban air pollution from motor
vehicles, radiation hazards,
climate change, and emerging
or re-emerging infectious
diseases.

53. Things to consider:
• How is urban growth changing?
• What are the characteristics of modern
day cities?
• What are the human side effects of urban
growth?
• What are the environmental impacts of
urban growth?