How fast must we build houses and infrastructure to cope with population growth? Experts predict urbanisation trends.
African countries must create the same amount of urban space between now and 2025 as has been created since the beginning of the process of urbanization, according to Jean Marie Cour, a development consultant addressing a United Nations University workshop in Cape Town recently.
Between now and 2050, the world population will increase from six to nine billion individuals, and the urban population will double from three to six billion.
"The prosperity and stability of the world will depend to a great extent on the way in which we act now to deal with this extraordinary change. There will only be sustainable development if we are able to manage this peopling process," Cour said.
More than 40 researchers from around the world are participating in the project workshop, titled "Beyond the tipping point: African development in an urban world". The project is funded by the United Nations University's World Institute for Development Economics research (UNU-WIDER) and jointly directed by Jo Beall, Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis and Ravi Kanbur. Isandla Institute is the local host for the workshop.
In his address, Cour painted a picture of a continent experiencing profound change of "unprecedented speed and size".
"The population has increased tenfold within a century," he said. "That means migration, urbanisation and the densification of settlement patterns. And coupled with that is opening up of the region to the world economy, to globalisation and the influences of society outside the region.
"We should know how to deal with the challenges. But the problem, and it is a serious one, is that our development paradigms are not adapted to the regions where they are being used," Cour explained.
"The usual development economics models ignore space, and ignore populations and population dynamics. The imperatives of the people in the process are ignored, so no wonder we are so poorly equipped to deal with urbanisation issues."
Cour proposed the use of a new demo-economic and spatial framework which aims to take into account the long term structural changes in the urban space, including factors such as the dual economy which is common in most of Africa.
Paul Mukwaya, a Phd student in the Department of Geography in Uganda's Makerere University, brought the rapid change that the continent is experiencing into sharp focus.
"Urbanisation is irreversible, and a powerful current that is flowing the world over," he said. "And Uganda is one of the world's least urbanised countries. The growth of urbanisation is just 100 years old, unlike our neighbour Kenya which has seen urbanisation for the past 500 years because of much earlier contact with foreigners."
The country is rapidly catching up - the rate of urban development, at 5.1% per annum, is one of the highest in the world.
"We need a strong urban planning policy,"Mukwaya argued. "Without it we will see the increasing marginalisation of the urban poor."
Mukwaya described his country's planning track record as "part malfunctioning, part wobbly, part-incomplete and part non-existent. Most importantly, welfare and poverty indicators have not shown marked improvements (in absolute terms) over the last 50 years for the urban population."
The situation in South Africa is markedly different, according to Dr Alison Todes of the University of the Witwatersrand's School of Architecture and Planning.
"By 2001 between 57 and 68% of South Africans were living in the cities. And in the nine major cities the growth rate is declining. Our highest rate of growth was 3.45% between 1946 and 1970. Between 2001 and 2007, it dropped to 2.5%," she said.
Nevertheless, the displacement from rural areas has been significant.
"There's been a large scale movement of black people from commercial farms since 1994," Todes pointed out. "As many as 2,4m people have been displaced - about 1m of whom were evicted. That's higher than the number of forced removals under apartheid.
"About 67% of these people have landed up in the urban areas, many in small towns whose capacities are overstretched. Others are in backyard shacks or in informal settlements near the larger urban centres."
In spite of this, it is not migration or urbanisation that is fuelling the growth of the South African urban centres.
One factor is the trend towards smaller households and the splitting of family groups. In 1996 the average household was about 4,5 individuals. By 2005, a Unisa study reported that this figure had dropped to 3,69. Youth migration is a factor in this decline. It is no longer unusual for unmarried people to move from place to place on their own. The families that result are often workerless, headed by single mothers, dependent on social grants, trapped in metro poverty pockets.
"Can our cities cope?" Todes asked. "Bulk infrastructure even in the larger cities, is now reaching capacity. In addition, infrastructure has been insufficiently maintained. And it's not just about the urban poor: Cities also confront the demands of a growing middle class in a context where public transport and other elements in the public realm have been poorly developed."
