The Economist, Christmas for Turkey, November 30, 2010 Click here outlined how important cities have become and how certain cities have been ranked as performing better than others.
"CITIES are the great engines of growth in the world economy. Istanbul, with income growth of 5.5% and employment growth of 7.3% over the past year, is currently the world's best-performing city, according to a new report by the Brookings Institution and the London School of Economics".
"The report ranks 150 cities from across the globe according to growth in gross value added per person (a proxy for income) and employment. The 150 metropolitan areas represented just 12% of the world's population but accounted for 46% of the world's GDP in 2007. Some cities have plunged in the rankings since the "Great Recession". Dubai and Dublin, the second and sixth best-performing cities respectively between 1993 and 2007, now rank as the most stagnant."
Istanbul, a city of legends and dreams, is poised for a 21st-century renaissance where the past lives in the future and the future in the past. Its timeless charm inspires poetry. Click here However, while Istanbul may be the world's best performing city in terms of income and employment growth, the jury is still out whether it is the world's best intelligent city.
The top 100 cities account for 38% of global GDP. By 2025, 25% of the world's population will live in the top 600 cities, accounting for 60% of global GDP, according to Mckinsey Global Institute's "Urban World: Mapping the Economic Power of Cities", March 2011.
Visit the McKinsey report Download MGI - Urban World - Mapping the Economic Powe of Cities - March 2011 and an indepth video presentation on YouTube Click here
In January 2012, the Chinese authorities announced that for the first time, more than half of the country’s population were living in cities – 690.79 million people, an increase of 21 million, compared to 656.56 million rural dwellers.
In their article "Megacities and lifestyle changes" in China Dialogue of February 15, 2012, Click here Paul Webster and Jason Burke pointed out that the number of megacities of more than 10 million inhabitants will double over the next 10 to 20 years.
A graphic showing the rise of the world's megacities is accessible here
A UN Habitat Report in 2008 referred to novel massive urban configurations in the shape of city-regions, urban corridors,and mega-regions. (State of the World's Cities 2010/2011- Bridging the Urban Divide, Earthscan, UN Human Settlements Program, 2008 Click here)
For example, the Bangkok city region in Thailand is expected to expand another 200 kilometres from its current centre by 2020, growing far beyond its current population of 17 million. In Brazil, Metropolitan Sao Paulo extends over 8,000 kilometres, with a population of 16.4 million. South Africa's Cape Town city-region reaches up to 100 kilometres.
In urban corridors, a number of city-centres are connected by transportation routes often linked to mega-cities and their hinterlands. For example, in India, an industrial corridor is developing between Mumbai and Delhi, stretching over 1,500 kilometres. In West Africa, the greater Ibadan-Lagos-Accra urban corridor spans 600 kilometres across four neigbouring countries.
Even larger emerging integrated urban configurations are the mega-regions. The largest is set to be China's Hong Kong-Shenzhen-Guangzhou mega-region, with an estimated population of 120 million. Japan's Tokyo-Nayoya-Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe mega-region is likely to host 60 million by 2015. In Brazil, the mega-region stretching from Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro is home to 43 million people.
All these dazzling statistics hide an ugly side of breakneck urbanization. While cities may concentrate wealth and economic growth, they are becoming hotbeds of an alarming urban divide in income, space, opportunities, and basic livelihood of food, shelter, health and education. Urban sprawl, social segregation and ecological strains degrade and limit many a city's future growth.
A global drive to build "intelligent cities" is quickening to cope with the challenges of sustainability of the world's on-going population growth.
An overview of Intelligent Cities is in TimeSpecials of Time Magazine on October 21, 2010. Click here This shows that buildiing an intelligent city is not just a matter of better urban planning and design. A high-level strategy of economic, social, political, regional and ecological policies and effective implementation are some of the prerequsites.
Chengdu may offer an interesting case study. According to Webster and Burke, "Chengdu’s mayor, Ge Honglin, contends that the city has avoided some of the problems associated with migration into the cities by encouraging families to stay in the countryside.
“The first thing I did was to improve the conditions – schools, shops, garbage collection, the sewerage system,” he said. “We had to cut the gap between rural and urban areas. If people could have a brighter future in the countryside, they’d stay there. So we’re not seeing people swarm into the city … Instead, there are people in the city considering moving to the country.”
“Chengdu is the only super-large central city that has narrowed the urban-rural income gap alongside rapid economic growth in China,” Ge says.
"Chengdu modified the household registration system in use across the country, known as hukou, which previously prevented rural migrants from registering as city dwellers and benefiting from the city’s welfare services. But at the same time it has extended such services into the surrounding countryside. Farmers as well as urban workers can now receive pension insurance, allowing women over age 55 and men over 60 to claim a rudimentary pension once they have paid premiums for at least 15 years."
"Hundreds of new schools have been built in the villages surrounding Chengdu; successful headteachers from city schools are being recruited to move into the countryside, while partnerships between struggling rural schools and the best urban schools are being set up."
"The motivation for all these policies is clear – to persuade millions of rural families around Chengdu that they have an economic stake in China’s rapid growth. Part of the strategy involves pouring resources into satellite towns and villages, and creating thousands of new rural communities where families can be rehoused," the two authors explained.
The Chengdu Mayor may be blowing his own trumpet. But the city's projects are truly futuristic, including the world's biggest stand-alone complex Click here and an avant-garde contemporary art centre by Zaha Hadid Click here
In 2000, the State Council issued directives to promote the establishment of "eco-provinces, eco-cities, eco-counties and eco-townships.” In 2002 The Cleaner Production Promotion Law and the Environment Impact Assessment Law were passed. IN 2008, an amendment to China’s Energy Conservation Law held local government officials accountable for managing environmental standards.
Still paying a heavy ecological price for decades of breakneck industrialization, China is now cleaning up the country in a decisive move to go green. Building eco-cities is now a rage in a game of competition amongst city mayors.
The race to build the next better eco-city is on. In a debate in The Economist dated 22 February, 2012 Click here it is pointed out that as of 2009, 40 eco-cities were in development, including "4 smart-grid pilot cities, 21 LED-street-light cities, (and) 13 electric-vehicle cities".
Still, virtually all these "eco-cities" remain on the drawing board. Near Shanghai, Dongtan,a new eco-city designed by Arup, a UK engineering design firm, was proclaimed as China's first, originally thought to be ready for its first intake of residents in time for the Beijing Olympics. It has since stalled. Another, the planned Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City in collaboration with the World Bank, appears more hopeful. It has been delayed and is now expected to be completed by 2020.
In their recent book, The Spirit of Cities, Click here two political theorists, Daniel Bell and Avner de-Shalit, argue that a city expresses its own distinctive ethos or value in political, cultural, and economic life. In ancient Greece, Athens stood for democracy and Spartan for military discipline. Modern cities likewise exude their own ethos - such as Jerusalem (religion), Montreal (language), Singapore (nation building), Hong Kong (materialism), Beijing (political power), Oxford (learning), Berlin (tolerance and intolerance), Paris (romance), and New York (ambition).
The central message is that cities should avoid homogenization and jealously guard their characteristic historical, cultural, artistic, spatial, socio-economic and political individuality.
Like it or hate it, for better or for worse, urbanization is set to define the shape of the world in the 21st century. For countries and municipalities with vision and resources, perhaps the future of cities is bright.
Best regards,
Andrew
