World's big cities set to become even more crowded
This will put great strains on infrastructure and the environment,
and presents a major challenge to city planners, developers and mayors
who gathered here this week at MIPIM, the world's leading annual real
estate event, to look for the best way forward.
"The future of the world lies in cities," London's mayor Boris
Johnson told a packed auditorium at the opening day of MIPIM Monday.
He was among leaders taking part in a "mayor's think-tank" here, who
say they are increasingly starting to work together in looking for urban
development initiatives to improve the quality of life for their
citizens.
"We have to keep putting the village back into the city because that
is fundamentally what human beings want and aspire to," Johnson told the
crowd, adapting a famous statement made by India's Mahatma Gandhi that
the future of India lay in its 70,000 villages.
"Cities are where people live longer, have better education outcomes,
are more productive," Johnson noted, adding that cities are also where
people emit less polluting carbon dioxide per capita.
In 1900, around 14 percent of the world's population lived in cities,
by 1950 this had risen to 30 percent and today is 50 percent. Currently,
there are more than 400 cities with a population over a million, 19 of
which have over 10 million inhabitants, Robert Peto, president of the
Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), told a conference here.
Much of this surge in the next 40 years will occur in cities in
emerging countries such as China, India, Asia, Latin America and Africa,
all of which are growing very fast, Tony Lloyd-Jones, Reader in
International Planning and Sustainable Development at the University of
Westminster in London, told AFP.
A recent study by Citigroup published in Britain's Daily Telegraph
newspaper forecast that mega-cities expected to have the fastest growing
economies by the middle of the next decade include London, Chicago,
Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, Mexico City,
Shanghai, Buenos Aires, Mumbai and Moscow.
"There is a massive explosion of urbanism and this will have a major
impact on communities, businesses, economies, and, specifically, our
environment," underlined RICS's Peto.
Increased urbanisation, however, also concentrates risks as many big
cities are in earthquake and flood zones. And climate change is likely
to intensify these risks, Fouad Bendimerad, president of the seismic and
megacities initiative in the Philippines, told a MIPIM conference.
Eight to 10 major cities around the world are under continuous threat
of earthquake, including Istanbul in Turkey, Bendimerad noted. And it
could take considerable time before expertise in building and planning
resilient cities is developed, he noted. Key issues for dense cities
over the coming years will include sustainable development, transport
and energy use, Lloyd-Jones told AFP. "Obviously, with the price of oil
going up, the pressure is on to conserve fuel and energy," Lloyd-Jones
emphasised. This means that cities need to become more efficient in
terms of transport infrastructure and investment in public transport is
one of the keys to achieving that, he added.
Some cities are already taking steps in this direction, like London,
host city for 2012 Olympic Games, which is building new river crossings
ahead of that event.
Where they can feel secure
And the city of Melbourne in Australia plans to create denser
residential areas along transport corridors, increasing the use of solar
power and recycling more onsite.
In Brazil, the city of Curitiba's highly successful program 20 years
ago to expand the metropolis along very fast bus routes could also
inspire other countries, Lloyd-Jones suggested.
This urban explosion is already having a big impact in China, experts
here noted. |