Foreword - Anna Tibaijuka

-Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director, UN-HABITAT

State of the World 2007 Home Page

When I first came to UN-HABITAT with a background in agricultural economics and international trade negotiations, I brought my own set of professional and personal prejudices. Like many other development theorists, I felt that although urban development was important, rural development was the first priority. Like many people of my generation in Africa and around the world, I thought of urban areas as a necessary evil. Though they were economic centers, cities led to overcrowding, pollution, and, inevitably, slums.

I had given little thought to the possibilities, even less to the problems and process of urbanization. However, in the years since I became Executive Director of UN-HABITAT I have traveled far and wide. I have experienced firsthand the appalling results of rapid chaotic urbanization.

In city after city, I have been stranded in traffic jams; I have visited men in hospitals suffering from preventable diseases caused by industrial pollution; I have seen slum dwellers living in conditions that do not bear describing and met young women who were raped on their way to the closest public toilet shared by over 500 people; I have walked through flattened terrain that once housed whole communities destroyed by floods and other natural disasters. Whereas in 1950 New York and Tokyo were the only cities with more than 10 million people, today there are 20 megacities, most of which are in the developing world. As cities sprawl, turning into unmanageable megalopolises, their expanding footprint can be seen from space. These hotbeds of pollution are a major contributor to climate change.

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.

Of the 3 billion urban dwellers today, it is estimated that 1 billion are slum dwellers. What is worse, if we continue with business as usual that figure is set to double by 2030. If ever there was a time to act, it is now.

Though cities are important engines of growth and provide economies of scale in the provision of services, most of them are environmentally unsustainable. In addition, in this age of increasing insecurity, with more than 50 percent of their residents living in slums without adequate shelter or basic services, many cities are rapidly becoming socially unsustainable.

The U.N. General Assembly first explicitly cited its concern at the “deplorable world housing situation” in 1969, and it declared human settlements a priority for the twentyxvii fifth anniversary of the United Nations in 1971. The next year, the first U.N. conference on the human environment, in Stockholm, marked a conceptual shift from global environmental degradation to its causes— largely urbanization and the impact of human settlements.

In 1977, the Secretary-General of the first U.N. Human Settlements Conference (Habitat I), Enrique Peñalosa, asked “whether urban growth would continue to be a spontaneous chaotic process or be planned to meet the needs of the community.” Yet the urban agenda never received the full attention it deserved. For decades now, donors have given priority to rural development. The Human Settlements Foundation, established at the same time as UN-HABITAT to fund slum upgrading, was never financed. Perhaps this was because in 1977, only one third of the world lived in urban areas.

Today, urbanization is being taken increasingly seriously. In 1996, at Habitat II, 171 countries signed the Habitat Agenda, a comprehensive guide to inclusive and participatory urban development. In 2000, concerned about the number of people who were being marginalized by the rapidly globalizing economy, world leaders committed themselves to the Millennium Development Goals. Many of these address the living conditions of the urban poor, in particular Targets 9 and 11 within Goal 7 on environmental sustainability.

In 2001, the General Assembly passed a resolution that promoted UN-HABITAT from a center into a full-fledged U.N. program and called on UN-HABITAT to establish the World Urban Forum as a think tank on all things urban.

With more than 10,000 delegates, the third session of the World Urban Forum, in Vancouver in 2006, proved that people are increasingly concerned about the future of human settlements. Ministers and mayors, industrialists and slum dwellers, all recognized that their combined efforts are required to overcome the urban crisis.

As we struggle to change our cities, authors and journalists are ever more critical. Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Jacob Riis, and Edward Mayhew were instrumental in improving the urban policies of their day. Today, researchers and authors of reports like this State of the World 2007 help sensitize the larger public to the major issues of our time.

Surprisingly, there was no commonly agreed-upon definition of slums until 2003, when the United Nations published Global Report on Human Settlements: The Challenge of Slums. Where there was a lack of information about urban indicators, there is now a network of Global Urban Observatories. The World Bank, with UN-HABITAT, has established the Cities Alliance that coordinates donor activity in urban areas, particularly in slum upgrading. The United Nations has also launched major campaigns to promote security of tenure and better urban governance.

The political machinery is finally beginning to recognize urbanization. In 2006, the United States Senate held it first hearing on African urbanization, while the British Parliament held its first debate on urbanization in developing countries. United Cities and Local Governments, founded in 2004, has become a legitimate partner in the international arena.

These kinds of international, regional, and local political institutions help create legitimacy for change; more important, they provide a locus for interventions. If our campaigns of advocacy and awareness do not translate into action, we will have failed.

There are signs of hope. There are more and more best practices showing what measures can be taken to improve housing conditions for the urban poor while enforcing environmental laws. Many cities in Southeast and South Asia, in particular, are beginning to reduce the share of their people living in urban poverty. Though all Habitat Agenda partners have contributed to this improvement, it has been spearheaded by central governments and local authorities. Their political will has spurred increased investment in making cities and towns sustainable.

As an African, living in the world’s fastest urbanizing continent, I am aware that we need to persuade everyone—from presidents to ordinary policymakers—of the urgency of urban issues. The Commission for Africa, of which I was a member, highlighted urbanization as the second greatest challenge confronting the continent after HIV/AIDS. As we move into the urban age, we have to change how we see the world, how we describe it, and how we act in it.

Fortunately, the leaders of Africa have taken note. At the Maputo Summit in 2003, the African Heads of State adopted Decision 29 reiterating their commitment to sustainable urbanization, an agenda that was subsequently encouraged by Joaquim Chissano during his term as President of the African Union. In Nigeria, concerned about the country’s urban problems, President Olusegun Obasanjo personally set up the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.

In his inaugural address in 2006, President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania emphasized the need for well-managed cities as a basis for national development. To coordinate urban issues at the regional level, African ministers recently established the African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Development. At the same time, AFRICITIES has been at the forefront of organizing local authorities on the continent.

This is just the beginning. As I walk through the slums of Africa, I find it hard to witness children suffering under what can only be described as an urban penalty. I am astonished at how women manage to raise their families under such appalling circumstances, without water or a decent toilet. The promise of independence has given way to the harsh realities of urban living mainly because too many of us were ill prepared for our urban future. Many cities are confronting not only the problems of urban poverty, but the very worst of environmental pollution. From Banda Aceh to New Orleans, whole communities are being wiped out through no fault of the innocent victims.

We will, all of us, bear the responsibility of a world gone wrong. If we continue as usual, a disastrous future beckons: whole cities swamped by slums, whole societies destroyed by climate change.

Working at UN-HABITAT and with other agencies worldwide, I hope that together we can correct the past failures of urban planning. I hope that the work of organizations like the Worldwatch Institute will motivate more people to take up the cause of environmentally and socially sustainable cities. We are warned, it cannot be business as usual.