“Seek first to understand, and then to be understood.”
| URBAN WORLD WATCH |
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| Monday, 31 March 2008 | |
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China’s urban transition causes growing inequality
The word transition perhaps best describes China: the world’s most populous country is transitioning from a predominantly rural society to an urban one. China’s urbanization process in the last two decades has been extraordinary: the urbanization level in the country has nearly doubled from 25 per cent in 1987 to roughly 42 per cent in 2007; it is estimated that by 2030, 60 per cent of the country’s population will be urban. While urbanization has led to unprecedented economic growth it has also caused massive inequalities. Join the debate on world cities Please add your comment
These changes have brought positive outcomes: China has experienced rapid economic growth for more than 15 years, and the country has been able to lift half a billion people out of poverty in the last 30 years – a remarkable achievement that no other nation has accomplished at the same speed or scale. The country has also improved the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, particularly in urban areas. China’s transitions began with the implementation of a set of progressive policy reforms that started with the restructuring of the agricultural sector at the end of the 1970s, in a period usually referred to as the “agricultural reform” that spanned eight years. It was followed by a second period known as the “urban reform” that started in 1985 and is still continuing. This second period has been characterized by rapid industrialization, the reorganization of state enterprises, increased trade openness, enactment of subsidies and tax exemptions in the export sector, and the gradual liberalization of the country’s financial markets. The changes in China have also had negative effects: decreases in rural-urban inequalities during the agricultural reform rose again because priority was given to coastal and urban areas. China has now attained some of the deepest disparities between rural and urban areas in the world, with urban per capita incomes three times those of rural areas. Regional inequalities are also growing, often among towns and cities within in the same region, as rural non-agricultural opportunities become concentrated in a few areas, and as some urban areas grow more rapidly than others. As a result, China’s national Gini coefficient has increased rapidly in recent decades, growing from 0.30 in 1978, the year the reforms began, to 0.38 in 1988 and 0.45 in 2002, reflecting increased inequalities between rural and urban areas and among regions. Today, China has the highest level of consumption inequality in the Asia region, higher than Pakistan (0.298), Bangladesh (0.318), India (0.325), and Indonesia (0.343), among others. At the urban level, income inequalities are growing as a result of a combination of factors: increases in manufacturing activity, and growth in the service industry and high tech sectors, bringing disproportionate rewards to the most skilled workers; the adoption of capitalintensive industrial development that is creating a limited number of well-paid new jobs; and the emergence of real estate, insurance and communication sectors that are creating highly remunerated jobs. At the same time, the decline of state-owned enterprises has resulted in layoffs and an increase in the number of unemployed people, who, together with informal workers and rural residents, are facing serious problems in joining the new urban labour market. Cities with high levels of income inequality include Shenzhen (0.49), Zhuhai (0.45), Yichan (0.42), Daquin (0.41), and above all, Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of China, which has the highest Gini coefficient not only in China, but in all of Asia (0.53). In general, however, urban inequalities within Chinese cities tend to be relatively low compared with rural areas and with other cities in Asia. In modern China, lack of full-time employment means not only the loss of a job and income; in many cases, it also means exclusion from social services, such as education, health, retirement benefits and social security. Less than 15 years ago, social services were provided free of charge by the state or at highly subsidized rates, but now the government is abandoning work-protective policies that are impacting vulnerable populations. For instance, the state paid 66 per cent of all individual health-care costs in 1988; in 2002, the state paid just 22 per cent. The allocation of social housing has also been dramatically reduced. As a consequence, the proportion of expenditures related to education and health has more than doubled for both mean-income households and the poorest 20 per cent of households. China’s new economic reality impacts both income and social inequality throughout the country. In China, urban incomes do not accurately reflect levels of inequality, as urban residents have access to a variety of services that are not as easily accessible to rural residents.78 In Shanghai, for example, salary-based income accounted only for 65 per cent of the city’s total income, while 25 per cent was drawn from subsidies in housing, health care and education, and 10 per cent from irregular economic benefits such as second jobs, business sidelines and illegal forms of income. The opportunities for rent seeking, or gray income, widen the gap between the privileged and underprivileged and erode the resource base of the state welfare distribution. In addition, new mechanisms of housing allocation through real estate companies are creating new forms of spatial or area-based marginalization that further accentuate income and social inequalities. Most studies on income inequality in China also include only those urban populations that are registered under the Hukou household registration system, which excludes rural migrants (commonly referred to as “floating populations”) who only have temporary residential status in cities The migrant population in China is roughly 150 million, and is considered not only the biggest migrant population in the world, but also the most mobile. Most migrants come to cities in search of jobs, which are often unstable, and live under temporary and inadequate housing conditions. Ignoring migrants in the studies of overall income distribution therefore distorts levels of urban inequality in China. For instance, a study in the capital city of Beijing – a key destination in recent domestic migration flows – shows that the migrant population increased from 0.32 million in 1985 to 1 million in 1995 and 3.3 million in 2003, representing approximately one-third of the capital’s total population. One of the few studies of the Gini coefficient in Beijing found that the coefficient values increase from 0.22 to 0.33 when migrants are included. Similar variances of approximately 12 points are found in other cities that are destinations of recent domestic migrations, with the Gini coefficient increasing from 0.402 to 0.418 when rural migrants are included. In these cities, the migrant population accounts for some 12 per cent of all urban employees and represents nearly one-fifth of the urban population. Rural-urban and intra-city disparities, are therefore, emerging as consequences of China’s urban and economic transition. Please add your comment PREVIOUS................................!!! The world’s first ecological city to be built in Abu DhabiAbu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi broke ground on Masdar City, the world's first zero-carbon, zero-waste, car-free city. The milestone event was marked by the laying of a virtual cornerstone by the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. In conjunction with the groundbreaking, Masdar CEO Dr Al Jaber announced a total development budget for the city of US$22 billion. Of that investment total, Masdar ("the source" in Arabic) will contribute $4 billion to develop the city's infrastructure. The remaining $18 billion will come through direct investments and the creation of various financial instruments to raise needed capital. An essential driver for the development of the city is carbon finance. Carbon emissions reduced by Masdar City will be monetized under the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism. In addition to full-time residents, Masdar City will seek to attract and encourage collaboration between experts in sustainable transportation; waste management; water and wastewater conservation; green construction, buildings and industrial materials; recycling; biodiversity; climate change, renewable energy and green financial institutions. Masdar will maximize the benefits of sustainable technologies, such as photovoltaic cells and concentrated solar power, through an integrated planning and design approach. By implementing these technologies, Masdar City will save the equivalent of more than US $2 billion in oil over the next 25 years, based on today's energy prices. The city will also create more than 70,000 jobs and will add more than two per cent to Abu Dhabi's annual GDP. "We are creating a city where residents and commuters will live the highest quality of life with the lowest environmental footprint," Al Jaber said.
Islamabad to become Pakistan’s ‘green city’ A bright future forecast for India’s largest cities New Delhi, : The contribution of India’s urban population to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is forecast to grow by 16 per cent and touch 70 per cent by 2011. Currently, urban population is contributing some 60 per cent in the GDP. Cities like Mumbai and Bangalore would become major epicentres for large-scale economic activities for domestic and overseas businesses, India’s industry association Assocham said. Metro areas and large townships in next five years would have ample of infrastructure and adequate input access to industrial renaissance. This would result for higher urban per capita income which would rise by minimum of Rs 10,000 (US$250) per annum and touch Rs 36,000 per annum by 2011, they authors of the paper 'Urban India: Growth, Opportunities & Difficulties' explained. The major cities including metros will offer a large variety of job opportunities to a large number of job seekers and qualified professionals in areas such as IT, ITeS, manufacturing, services and biotechnology. Cities to profit will include Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Haryana, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Uttar Pradesh, Kolkata followed by other emerging states like Kochi, Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Dehradun and Jaipur. With almost 300 million Indians living in towns and cities, India’s urban population comprises some 28 per cent of the total population and accounts for more than 90 per cent of the government revenues. China urged to concentrate urbanisation on mega cities Beijing,: The scale and pace of China's urbanization promises to continue at an unprecedented rate. If current trends hold, China's urban population will expand from 572 million in 2005 to 926 million in 2025 and hit the one billion mark by 2030. In 20 years, China's cities will have added 350 million people—more than the entire population of the United States today. By 2025, China will have 219 cities with more than one million inhabitants—compared with 35 in Europe today—and 24 cities with more than five million people. For companies—in China and around the world—the scale of China's urbanization promises substantial new markets and investment opportunities. At the same time the expansion of China's cities will represent a huge challenge for local and national leaders. Of the slightly more than 350 million people that China will add to its urban population by 2025, more than 240 million will be migrants. This growth will imply major pressure points for many cities including the challenge of managing these expanding populations, securing sufficient public funding for the provision of social services, and dealing with demand and supply pressures on land, energy, water, and the environment. The policy choices that China's leaders make at national and local levels can alter the shape of urbanization significantly. Analysis by McKinsey & Company finds that an urgent shift in focus from solely driving GDP growth to an agenda of boosting urban productivity – achieving the same or better economic results with fewer resources – is not only an opportunity but a necessity. By moving in this direction, China would cut its public spending requirement by 2.5 per cent of GDP or 1.5 trillion renminbi a year, reduce SO2 and NOx emissions by upward of 35 per cent, halve its water pollution, and deliver private sector savings equivalent to 1.7 per cent of GDP in 2025 mainly through reduced natural resource consumption. McKinsey’s analysis suggests that China should tailor policies that would shift urbanization toward a more “concentrated” shape of urbanization. This pattern of urbanization could produce 15 mega cities with average populations of 25 million people or spur the further development of 11 urban “clusters” of cities, each with strong economic networks and combined populations of 60-plus million. McKinsey finds that concentrated urban growth scenarios could produce 20 per cent higher per capita GDP than that yielded by China's current urbanization path, would have higher energy consumption but also higher energy efficiency, and would contain the loss of arable land. Concentrated urbanization would also have the advantage of clustering the most skilled workers in urban centers that would be engines of economic growth, enabling China to move more rapidly to higher-value-added activities. Australia’s state capitals experience record growth Last year Australia’s state capitals grew faster than at any time since the 1980s. The cities grew by a combined 1.6 per cent to reach 13.4 million. The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) also show that within the next 20 years Melbourne is likely to overtake Sydney as the country’s largest city. ABS demographer Andrew Howe said that it was the biggest surge in capital city growth for 20 years. “The last time the capital cities combined grew by more than 1.6 per cent was in 1987-88,” he detailed. The Bureau also revealed that the growth was partly due to immigration. “Last financial year, 178,000 more people entered Australia than left. And most overseas migrants, at least when the first arrive, reside in a state capital," Howe said. Darwin was the fastest growing capital city last financial year, expanding by 2.6 per cent to 117,395 people. Perth came in second (growing 2.3 per cent to 1.55 million) followed by Brisbane (up 2 per cent to 1.86 million). In terms of actual numbers, Melbourne increased the most, growing by 61,719 people, or 1.6 per cent, to 3.81 million. Sydney, on the other hand, grew by just 51,995 people, or 1.2 per cent, to 4.34 million. "Over the past few years the population of Melbourne has increased by more than Sydney has," Mr Howe said. In total Australia’s population grew by 316,000 to 21 million. Dredging to prevent Jakarta from flooding Jakarta, Some 40 per cent of the Indonesian capital city of Jakarta is between one to one and a half meters below sea-level. Add to that an ever-growing population, densely-populated residential areas, rapid infrastructural development, a diminishing number of green areas and catchments, plus six months of near-constant rain - and you have a recipe for flood disasters which literally paralyze the city. The severity of floods in the Indonesian capital has become a national issue given the huge financial losses it incurs and the impact it has on communities in the Greater Jakarta area. The provincial government of DKI Jakarta (Pemda DKI) is embarking on an extensive flood management initiative with the support of the World Bank, in which 13 rivers will be dredged during the first phase of the project’s implementation. The river dredging is part of a short-term action plan, and goes by the Star Wars-inspired acronym of JEDI – the Jakarta Emergency Dredging Initiative. JEDI will be carried out over a three-year period using state-of-the-art equipment from the Netherlands. “It is hoped that the dredging measures could return Jakarta floods to the previous cycle of once every 25 years,” said Risyana –a one-time bureaucrat with the Department of Public Works that joined World Bank Indonesia in the early nineties. In his presentation, Risyana stressed that dredging will still leave some parts of North Jakarta prone to flooding, but overall would help reduce the flooded areas in Jakarta by up to 70 per cent. Many of the seminar participants questioned the social impact of the action plan, given the large numbers of people that live along river sides. Fellow panelist El Khobar MN Msc, a civil engineering lecturer at University of Indonesia, believes that the intensive dredging approach would lead to mass evictions. “Pemda DKI should socialize these plans from now,” said El Khobar. The lecturer also believes that more needs to be done to educate inner-city dwellers of their environmentally-hazardous behavior. “I once asked a neighbor not to toss his household garbage into a nearby river, and he was deeply offended,” said El Khobar. “My neighbor understood that tossing garbage into sewers would clog drainage, but didn’t realize that the same rules applied to rivers until I politely explained that to him.” (Report by World Bank) Indian cities encouraged to switch to solar power New Delhi, India is planning to convert some 60 cities into ‘solar townships’ which run increasingly on renewable energy. A spokesman for the ministry for new and renewable energy said that until recently the focus had been to promote renewable forms of energy in villages which were not connected to the power grid, the government was now drawing up a list of cities with populations of 500,00 to 5 million which would be given financial and technological support to use renewable sources for their growing energy needs. "Over the years, renewable energy has been looked upon as a downmarket and less reliable option for the villages. But just as Europe and America are shifting cities which consume high energy to renewable sources, we too want to do that," the spokesman explained. Energy demands in many Indian cities are rising by more than 15 per cent. The government believes that it is now the right time to push them to adopt more sustainable power supplies. Under the plan, municipalities will look at current energy usage and project growth over the next 10 years. “The government, besides providing funds, will also help with technical support to to see where power consumption can be reduced and move towards more renewable forms of energy,” the ministry added.
Tokyo, : Tokyo Metropolitan Government has announced its intention to continue the development of a commercial airliner to serve urban centres in East Asia through pooling technology from throughout the region. TMG claims that the project will foster a greater sense of Asian identity by ending dependency on aircraft from western manufacturers. The project was initiated by the Asian Network of Major Cities 21, with Delhi, Jakarta, Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Tokyo city governments participating. If taken to completion and launched onto the commercial market, the new plane would be the first built in Asia since the Japanese YS-11, which was retired from service in 2006 after 44 years. Announcing the decision, the headquarters of Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said that the plane would meet growing demands for air travel between Asian cities and would see greater cooperation between regional economies under Japan's leadership. It was also noted that Canada and Brazil had also begun to successfully supply the market for small to medium-sized aircraft.
Australian cities to receive fast access to government Sydney, : Australia’s federal government will be setting up a major cities unit to coordinate its dealings with the country’s urban centres. Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese said the unit would become the single contact point for local and state governments and the private sector when discussing the planning and infrastructure needs of cities. “Operating within the infrastructure department, it will avoid the complexities of dealing with a myriad of separate departments,” he said. The minister told a infrastructure conference that there needed to be a point within the government bureaucracy where regions and cities could go to make representations about the range of urban infrastructure issues affecting them. "Currently our cities deal with a myriad of federal government departments which affect their economic, social and environmental outcomes. A more coordinated and integrated approach is needed. The unit will not only deal with the major capital cities, but also with large regional centres such as Geelong, Newcastle and the Gold Coast,” Albanese explained.
Progress in the world’s cities will decide the future of Planet Earth
If global development priorities are not reassessed to account for massive urban poverty, well over half of the 1.1 billion people projected to join the world’s population between now and 2030 may live in under-serviced slums, says a report published in January 2007. Additionally, while cities cover only 0.4 per cent of the Earth’s surface, they generate the bulk of the world’s carbon emissions, making cities key to alleviating the climate crisis, notes the report.
The report ‘State of the World 2007’ by the Washington-based World watch Institute further points out that as recently as a century ago, the vast majority of the world’s people lived in rural areas, but by sometime during 2008 more than half of all people will live in urban areas. Over 60 million people—roughly the population of France—are now added to the planet’s burgeoning cities and suburbs each year, mostly in low-income urban settlements in developing countries. |
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URBAN WORLD WATCH
Dec 18 2008 17:09:35 This thread discusses the Content article: URBAN WORLD WATCH
http://www.geocities.com/mbbs889/pose.jpg Modern Review of Quondam Planning Process: Despite of enormous achievements, India ails from its urban areas peaked from the unrest of continuous phase of developmental vexations. A number of authorities are present to decide the fate of the same parcel of land, as a result of which, huge amount of land is still not developed. Continuous feats to enforce certain laws did not help the situation. Planning and Development of the country depends upon a systematic approach and organisation; keeping records of each ontogeny; and, a toothsome enforcement of updated laws. Tardy implementation of unsuitable and old laws in areas where an old plan still holds importance, Planning Departments without enough Planners, is a self-colored base for unplanned and unauthorized development. At present, it can be said that Planning is focused in some areas only, and rest of the country is, as a result, undeveloped. If it remains so, as of it is now, India will remain a developing country for yonks to come, despite of its progress in other orbits. A sustainable development is the underlying challenge, as India is treaty in the Millennium Development Goals, so is the need to start effacing the battleground of all, cistrons, responsible for unauthorized development. Conservation of natural resources with the help of updated laws; the infrastructure and environmental implications will require careful planning and management. The organisational framework required for governance could be very different than what we have at present, limited as it is within a city - municipality model. The development of indicators to be used as tool to define the carrying capacity in respect of each of environmental resources comprise assessing waste assimilative capacity and socio-economic capacity of the urban region to support urban population. The existing building regulations do not encourage use of low-cost building materials. They emphasize specifications rather than performance. The resulting dwellings with conventional materials as specified in the regulations are quite expensive. Although an amended National Building Code takes account of these problems, it is yet to be enforced at the local level. There is a need to adopt cost effective technologies by upgrading traditional technologies and local materials as well as using modern construction materials. Use of such building materials and technologies can enable substantial cost savings. The increasing population in India revs up the importance of existing and updated planning concerns. As for the magnitude, in 1901, only 25 million people constituting 10.84 per cent of population lived in urban areas in India. In the 100 years since then, the urban population has grown 12 times and it is now around 285 million people constituting 28 per cent of the total population. In the following 20 years (2001-21), the urban population will nearly double itself, according to the World Urbanisation Prospects (the 1996 Revision), the urban population in the year 2025 will rise to 42.5 per cent (566 million). The considerable ‘illegal development’ (illegal layouts, un-authorized constructions, slums) in many towns is a frightening reality that threatens the future of urban areas and the credibility of main plan documents and regulations. Participate Globally, first participate Nationally ! Request by Arvish ! |
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Dec 18 2008 17:10:35 Arvish wrote:
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