Worldwatch Institute,  State of the World: 2007
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2007, 250pp.)

When international development efforts began in the late 1940s sparked by President Truman’s “Point Four” program of technical assistance, the general image of the world’s poor were the villages of India, China, Africa, and Latin America. Many development activities were linked to increased rice and wheat crops. Irrigation and better water use were issues high on the development agenda. Awareness of the growth of cities has been slow.

In 1977, the United Nations organized the first UN Human Settlements Conference (Habitat I) which raised the choice if urban growth would be a spontaneous chaotic process or a planned one designed to meet the needs of a growing urban community. By and large, the choice has been for chaos and neglect. As Anna Tibaijuka, Director of the UN agency Habitat points out in the Foreword “Of the 3 billion urban dwellers today, it is estimated that 1 billion are slum dwellers… Though urbanization has stabilized in the Americas and Europe, with about 75 percent of the population living in urban areas, Africa and Asia are in for major demographic shifts. Only about 35 percent of their populations are urban, but it is predicted that this figure will jump to 50 percent by 2030. The result is already there for all to see: chaotic cities surrounded by slums and squatter settlements.”

Thus more than in the past, the quality of life will be determined by the world’s cities. As Christopher Flavin, the president of Worldwatch Institute notes “Urban centers are hubs simultaneously of breathtaking artistic innovation and some of the world’s most abject and disgraceful poverty. They are the dynamos of the world economy but also the breeding grounds for alienation, religious extremism, and other sources of local and global insecurity…The face of twenty-first century cities is often that of a small, malnourished child living in a vast slum in a city such as Abidjan, Kolkata, or Mexico City, not far from the newly built opera houses, gleaming office buildings, and automobile-choked highways that are now common even in poor countries.”

Our ability to meet the needs of the urban poor is one of the greatest humanitarian challenges of this century. Yet our understanding of cities and the livelihood patterns of their populations is limited. This lack of knowledge constrains the ability of international institutions, governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to act intelligently. One result of this lack of knowledge, as the report points out “is that there is no simple model of how to spur economic growth — not to mention sustainability — in cities. By comparison, it is an axiom of rural development that raising agricultural productivity is an ingredient of economic growth…Development that moves people toward sustainable patterns will surely need investments based on understanding who lives where in growing cities and how they earn their living.”

On the one hand, cities are sources of wealth. Cities play a role in creating wealth, in attracting investments and harnessing human and technical resources for gains in productivity. On the other hand, the current concentration of poverty, slum growth and social disruption in cities paints a threatening picture.

Nevertheless, one of the hopeful signs of urbanization is the degree of self-organization by the urban poor. Much of the slums are outside of government control. There are few services. If needs are to be met, the urban dwellers must organize themselves to create urban gardens for food, exchanges of services, and informal employment. As the report stresses “The urban poor, generally excluded from decision making, are the greatest untapped source of ideas about improving their cities and lives.” There are many signs of hope as people organize themselves to meet their basic needs. We all need to find ways of unleashing the potential of urban growth.

Rene Wadlow