With half the world’s population living in cities, and with this projected to rise by 70 per cent by 2050, it is feared that some 2 billion people are likely to reside in substandard housing and slums, writes JANE MWANGI

The outgoing Director of UN-Habitat Dr Anna Tibaijuka said in a recent  interview with the UN News Centre that just over half the world now lives in cities but by 2050, over 70 per cent of the world’s people will be urban dwellers. By then, only 14 per cent of the people in rich countries and 33 per cent in poor ones will live outside cities.

It is in light of this situation that the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set out “to make significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers”, a paltry 10 per cent, given that the world already has 1 billion slum dwellers.

And the number of slum dwellers in the developing world has shot up in the last 10 years to an estimated 827.6 million in 2010, adding some 55 million new residents to the global figure.

The Millennium Declaration that saw UN member states pledge to achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020 and to halve the figure by 2015 is a pipe dream in a majority of Third World countries.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the highest prevalence of slums.

The world urban campaign, dubbed ‘Better City, Better Life’, seeks to promote a vision of sustainable urbanisation. This ‘new kid on the block’ aims to celebrate innovations for sustainable urbanisation, recognising stories of change of cities around the globe, listening to urban voices and what people are doing to improve city life.

The components of the vision include access to housing, land, infrastructure, basic services and finance. The initial test phase on the selected 100 cities will culminate in a 100 Cities Summit in 2011 after which the platform will be open to broader participation.

UN-Habitat reported that the city of Wujin in China has become the first Chinese city to join “The 100 Cities Initiative for Sustainable Urbanisation”.  UN-Habitat’s state of the world cities report attempts to bridge the urban divide by starting with 100 best cities in the world and then proclaim their ideas to burgeon the word to more and more cities in order to multiply to 1,000 cities and beyond.

URBANISATION

UN-Habitat in its bi-annual flagship report, The State of the World’s Cities 2010 themed Bridging the Urban Divide, says that the ‘shock’ of rapid, irreversible urbanisation catches many cities unprepared, especially in the developing world. The trickle-down effect between the opulent milieu vis-a-vis slums still remains elusive, more so in the developing counties with populations ranging from under 10,000 in Africa to about half a million in Latin America.

Growing numbers of people are living in slums without power, water, sanitation, health access or other basic services. The broad dynamics is fourfold – economic, social, political and cultural – the report says.

Indeed, in spite of the Millennium Development Goals set by world leaders, even if deemed to be farsighted in a bid to liberate a major fraction of humankind from the fetters of extreme poverty, illiteracy and disease - time remains to be the main assessment of their realisation.

As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon famously articulates, “in short, they adopted a blueprint for a better world – and pledged to spare no effort in fulfilling that vision. While the world has reason to celebrate, there is no room for complacency.”

In his introduction to the MDG’s report 2009, Ban Ki-Moon states that despite the progress achieved, the world and its leaders cannot afford to turn their backs on the poor. On her part, Tibaijuka seems to echo the same sentiments:

“The urban divide stands out as one of the major paradoxes – some would say scandals - of this early 21st Century. Today’s urban divide is largely an outcome of the biases and inadequacies of the three main tiers of government – central, local and municipal.”

The World Cities Summit 2010, organised by the Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC), in Singapore in July 2010, under the theme Livable and Sustainable Cities for the Future focused on the challenges related to urban planning, infrastructure financing, public housing, waste management, urban biodiversity and climate change.

It attracted 25 ministers, as well as 45 mayors and governors from 20 countries, including China and Australia. The summit reinforced the fact that 227 million people have moved out of slum conditions since 2000, against the backdrop of challenges posed by rapid urbanisation, the financial crisis and climate change.

UN-Habitat’s move towards combating urban poverty in Eastern and Southern Africa is further bolstered under a programme that seeks to assist member states to realise Millennium Development Goal 7, Target 11, also known as the “Cities without Slums” target: by strengthening institutional arrangements, building partnerships, supporting improvement of conditions of people living and working in slums in select cities in Eastern and Southern Africa.

INFRASTRACTURE

Unplanned settlements, which host between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of the total urban population in the region, lack basic services and infrastructure, including adequate water, sanitation and roads.

In the case of northern Uganda, which is still making the transition back to normal life after two decades of conflicts that displaced up to 2 million people, upbeat progress is visible in urbanisation. An unknown but significant number of displaced people have settled in the major urban centres, particularly around the towns of Gulu, Kitgum and Lira. UN-Habitat work in northern Uganda has its focus on helping communities meet the huge demand for new housing, to recover from the scars of conflict, and to help populations adapt to urbanisation in environmentally

sustainable, economically productive and socially inclusive ways.

In early 2010, UN-Habitat constructed 64 teachers’ houses at 16 rural schools in the District of Lira.  Dar-es-Salaam City Council and the three municipalities of Ilala, Kinondoni and Temeke are taking comprehensive steps to address the challenges of unplanned and unserviced settlements on a citywide basis, working with the urban poor and the private sector with a goal to achieving a Dar- es-Salaam without slums by 2015. The project is a partnership between CIDA, French Co-operation, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), UN-Habitat and World Bank and will cost $770,000.