DEVELOPMENT: Global Conference To Focus On Mega-Cities’ Future

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ramesh Jaura

BONN, Jun 30 2000 (IPS) - A three-day Global Conference on the sustainable development of cities will be opened next Tuesday in Berlin by the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

According to the United Nations, in 2025 two-thirds of the world’s population – more than five billion people – will be living in cities.

By then there will be almost 300 cities, with populations of over one million, and nearly 100 mega-cities with more than five million inhabitants.

Known as Urban 21, the conference is taking place under the broad umbrella of the five-month long World Exposition in Germany, Expo 2000, which closes Oct. 31 in Hanover.

The conference is dedicated to the problems, which the growth of the cities generates in developing and newly industrialising countries. The various problems of urban development in industrialised countries are also on the agenda.

An official background paper describes strong democratic local communities with adequate financial resources, responsibilities and scope of action as “elementary prerequisites for a future-oriented development”.

“Only they are capable of conserving and shaping the city as a living space, of realising social cohesion and solidarity in the city, of creating work in the city and promoting wealth, of permanently protecting the urban environment and natural resources, of guaranteeing eco-friendly mobility in the city, of creating appropriate residential space for all inhabitants and, finally, of strengthening the initiative and commitment of citizens,” says the paper.

Spelling out his expectations, Chancellor Schroeder says in a welcome message circulated among participants world-wide: “With Urban 21, the Federal Republic of Germany – together with the states of Brazil, Singapore and South Africa – would like to intensify the extremely important international understanding on the sustainable development of cities, which began with the Rio conference in 1992 and the Human Settlements Habitat II in 1996 in Istanbul.”

The idea to hold Urban 21 came up at the Special Session of the UN General Assembly, Rio plus 5, in 1997 when Brazil, Germany, Singapore and South Africa established a joint Global Initiative for Sustainable Development.

According to the background paper, the Global Conference on the Urban Future will define the objectives of Agenda 21 – approved in Buenos Aires eight years ago – and the Habitat Agenda more precisely.

The conference is being preceded by a meeting of the mayors of the world’s largest cities.

The globe’s largest agglomerations include: Tokyo with a population of 27 million, Mexico City (16.6 million), Sao Paulo (16.5 million), New York (16.3 million), Mumbai (15.1 million), Shanghai (13.6 million), Los Angeles (12.4 million), Calcutta (11.9 million), Buenos Aires (11.8 million), Seoul (11.6 million) and Beijing (11.3 million).

Others with a population of 6.5 million and above are: Delhi, Karachi, Cairo, Paris, Tianjin, Manila, Moscow, Jakarta, Dhaka, Istanbul, London, Chicago, Teheran, Lima, Bangkok and the Ruhr district in Germany.

The mayors’ meeting will discuss strategic approaches to solve the special problems of mega-cities. “Above all it is aimed at the participative government of the cities and the strengthening of the competitiveness of the mega-cities in the light of globalisation,” says the official background paper.

The results of the mayors’ summit meeting will be presented to Urban 21.

The contents of the conference have been prepared by a world commission, comprising of personalities from all parts of the world.

The commission will present a World Report on the Urban Future. It will analyse current global trends of urban development and propose guiding principles for urban development in the 21st century.

The draft of a Declaration on the Urban Future, which is to be adopted by the participants as a guiding document, will also be presented.

The world commission Urban 21 members include: Ela Bhatt of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) of India, UN Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Mark Malloch Brown, South Africa’s Housing Minister Sankie D. Mthembi-Mahanyele, World Bank Vice-President Ismail Serageldin, and UNEP chief executive Klaus Toepfer.

The background paper states that excessive consumption of resources, structural and infrastructural deficits and social and cultural deprivation in the cities represents global problems to which decisive solutions have to be found.

Natural population growth in the cities and migration to the cities, above all in many developing countries, represent serious obstacles to an economically effective and socially and eco-friendly development.

The paper adds: “Generally the central problem is not growth but, rather, the cities’ lack of capacities and competence for taking action to manage this growth and to create the economic and town planning prerequisites for a future worth living for the growing urban population.”