Urbanization News April 8

This weeks featured story is the release of The 2011 Knight Frank Global Cities Survey.  This survey compares cities based on economic activity, political power, quality of life and knowledge and influence to rank cities. What are the top cities this year? New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, and Brussels.  And in case you are wondering about the most important cities in the future the survey also has projections for 2020: New York, London, Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. Order a free copy of the whole Wealth Report 2011 from Knight Frank and read articles about the report on their website.

Kenya Receives Sh8 Billion ‘Slum Loan‘ “Kenya has received a US$100 million (approx.Sh8 billion) loan from The World Bank to improve physical infrastructure and living conditions in informal urban settlements. The project dubbed Kenya Informal Settlements Improvement Project approved by the Bank last week will be used in upgrading slums in 15 biggest towns in the country.” Read more from AllAfrica.com

The Start Ferry’s Long Farewell On March 31, “ferries on two of the Star Ferry’s four routes sailed for the last time before ferry service between Hung Hom, Wan Chai and Central is cancelled… Though the Hong Kong government put out a tender for other ferry operators to take over the routes, no one was interested. What is lost by the end of the Star Ferry’s services in Hung Hom? An alternative to the buses, which crowd Hong Kong’s overburdened roads and contribute to its increasingly dire air pollution… A direct link between neighbourhoods whose fortunes have historically depended on the harbour.” Read more from UrbanPhoto and the South China Morning Post.

IBM’s new CityOne game have high hopes that it could transform strategic thinking on urban futures. “The developers of IBM’s new CityOne game have high hopes that it could transform strategic thinking on urban futures. Players are presented with a series of energy, water and economic problems, whilst charged with providing an urban space conducive to growth – all within a total available budget. Among the challenges they face in the 100 or so ‘real world’ scenarios are traffic congestion, water shortages and supply chain problems. They’ll be expected to use techniques such as service reuse, cloud computing and collaborative technologies to help make organisations in city systems more ‘intelligent’ and responsive.” Read more from This Big City and IBM.

SimCity for Real in Nya-Raipur India “Like all planned cities, Naya Raipur is monumental. The development plan includes an area of 80.13 kilometers, which will house 500,000 inhabitants by 2031. It has well-defined zones for institutions, housing, commerce, light industry, recreation and extensive parks, including a green belt. The main roads have a 100-meter wide right-of-way with a wide green median, while the secondary roads are 60 meters wide. The superblocks are 800 square meters and will include internal roads, as well as a green internal network. More than 100 kilometers of roads have already been completed.” Read more of Dario Hidalgo’s report on Nya-Raipur from the City Fix.

Visiting Navotas: The Slums of Manila

In the third and final article of his series on Manila, the capital mega-city region of the Philippines, Australian urban planner Marcus Tudehope ventures to  Navotas, one of the seventeen cities that make of the Metro Manila region.

The slums of Navotas are some of the worst in the country’s capital. This is where the “bat people” live, building their shanties under traffic bridges in the dark. For the lucky ones, close to the opening of the bridge, there are opportunities to bootleg electricity, or to see the light of day. For others they are stuck living in the dark, their derelict homes built atop “stagnant water choked with litter and refuse.” On the second floor of the home of a local community group president Tudehope hears the rumble of traffic overhead and realizes that the ceiling is in fact the underbelly of the overhead highway.

It gets worse. Or, at least, it does not get better. Navotas is also known for its “floating houses,” shacks built as house boats on the brackish water just offshore. A major source of income here is scavenging for scrap metal in the waters of Manila bay to be sold at junk shops around the city. Diving in these waters is a perilous trade and Tudehope recalls the story of “two men [who] died after they brought up an unexploded shell from the wreck of a Japanese WW2 battleship, which exploded when they took a hacksaw to it.”

The last slum Tudehope visited during his trip to Navotas is one located on the Navotas beach.  A recent fire ravaged the area, leaving 500+ residents homeless and relegated to a local gymnasium, where families have carved out 2m sq. sections to sleep in, demarcated by piles of family belongings stacked on the floor. These people have been given an ultimatum: either go back to the rural areas they came from (no job) or accept a one-off payment of 1500 pesos (roughly 34 US dollars) to rent a house in the area. For most, neither are viable options, so they remain in the gymnasium, surviving hoping for something more.

Tudehope concludes this piece, and his series on Manila, wondering about the many contradictions at play in the seventeen cities of the Metro Manila region. He wonders about the job of urban planners in such a context, maneuvering between projects aimed at economic development and attracting investment and the dire need for housing and basic services for the growing numbers of urban poor:

“From any angle, the inescapable reality is that displacing or repressing people will not make them disappear. If they have no other options to secure a livelihood they will return, all the more desperate than they were before. If exclusion and repression are the cause of that desperation then meeting it with more of the same will only serve to perpetuate a conflict.

“Conscious, then, of the difficulties of both sides, could we perhaps work towards reconciling the ideal of the stable, investment-friendly city with the presence of the urban poor?…

“Could new partnerships between planners, advocates and the communities themselves yield innovative ways to create a safe, efficient cultural hub that preserves and utilises this kind of diversity as an asset, rather than seeks to eradicate it? There are clearly no simple answers or quick fixes to satisfy all parties. However the appalling sights and stories from inside Navotas, Payatas and San Roque make it abundantly clear that business as usual simply cannot be allowed to continue. Nothing less than a paradigm shift is needed for the sustainable development of Manila.”

Find the rest of Marcus Tudehope’s series here. And for more on Manila, check out the write-up of my time there working as a consultant for a World Bank.

- Ariana K. MacPherson

Urbanization News Roundup March 4

This week’s featured Urbanization report is a a critique of the Economists’ Most Liveable Cities Report by This Big City.  Although the Economist Intelligence Unit clearly states that this ranking is intended for expats thinking of where to relocate, This Big City points out that they may want to use a lesser loaded word than “liveable” to compare cities.  Also even though density is not a direct indicator used to score the cities, it is also interesting to see that the Economist found  the highest rated cities to have very low densities.

The Economist: Liveablity Ranking “Cities that score best tend to be mid-sized cities in wealthier countries with a relatively low population density. This often fosters a broad range of recreational availability without leading to high crime levels or overburdened infrastructure. Seven of the top ten scoring cities are in Australia and Canada, where population densities of 2.88 and 3.40 people per sq km respectively compare with a global (land) average of 45.65 and a US average of 32.”

This Big City: A Critique of the Economists’ Most Liveable Cities Report “The choice of indicators seems ambitiously comprehensive and fair. The top-ten chart is populated by, perhaps unsurprisingly, cities of Canada, Northern Europe, and Australasia. However, as far as ‘liveability’ is concerned, how the cities are ranked exposes a systemic bias… One salient instance is ‘humidity/temperature’ which is rated as acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable, or intolerable. This indicator almost naturally rules out Brasilia, Kuala Lumpur, and other tropical cities as remotely ‘tolerable’, much less questioning how one can assess without bias an in-group’s inclination towards certain weather types.

Rio Residents say Olympic Projects violating rights “nearly 300 families already have been removed from their homes because of the construction of two bus systems that will run across the city and are expected to improve Rio’s clogged traffic during the Olympics and the 2014 World Cup…nearly 300 families already have been removed from their homes because of the construction of two bus systems that will run across the city and are expected to improve Rio’s clogged traffic during the Olympics and the 2014 World Cup.

China’s New Urban Plan – Buy a Car, Don’t Use It! “…cities here are trying hard to pry drivers out of their shiny new cars and lure them into mass transit. By 2015, on average, 1 out of 3 commuters should travel by mass transmit in big cities, up from 1 out of 5 now, according to China’s Ministry of Transportation’s proposed development plan…Already, Beijing’s emergency medical centers have begun sending paramedics by motorcycles, instead of ambulances, to maneuver through stalled traffic.”

A Leg Up: The World’s Largest Cities are Failing in their historic role of providing opportunities for upward mobility “A recent World Bank report argued that large urban concentrations—the denser, the better—are the most prodigious creators of opportunity and wealth… A closer look, however, suggests a more nuanced reality. Cities in the developing world are growing, but largely because they’re the only alternative to poverty and even starvation in the countryside. These cities are not only failing to provide opportunities for upward mobility; they’re producing the class inequalities found in “luxury cities” such as London and New York.”

India’s Huge Census: A national head count should show dramatic changes “The survey will also give details of how a decade of rapid economic growth has changed the daily life of ordinary Indians, especially among the fast-growing middle class. Questions will produce hard data to show rapid migration of rural dwellers to the towns. Consumption habits are also changing. The previous head count revealed that at the start of the century fewer than half of India’s households owned a bicycle, television or toilet. Under a tenth of households had a phone, and a mere 2.5% owned a car.”

Housing Strategies in Metro Manila

After eight long months of researching, writing, analyzing, and some fun, my capstone team has finally finished our final project (aka group thesis) on slum upgrading strategies in Metropolitan Manila.   Our work included traveling to Manila for three weeks in July and researching housing strategies and slum upgrading projects with two local World Bank consultants.  Our final paper will hopefully contribute to the World Bank’s plan to help  Metropolitan Manila  develop a unified slum upgrading strategy.

The story of Manila’s lack of affordable housing is one complicated by the fact that this metro area of 11 million people is also comprised of 17 separate local government units that do not coordinate affordable housing projects.  Also in Metro Manila about 50% of the total population can not afford to acquire any form of secure housing, forcing millions to inhabit the city as illegal squatters.  However there is hope as many communities have self mobilized to apply for the Community Mortgage Program to upgrade their own informal settlements.  Also Habitat for Humanity has been building medium rise developments resulting in much improved communities.  Please enjoy a few pictures from our experience this summer.

A flood wall that had been washed away by Typhoons Ondoy in 2009 and the new retention wall built to protect an informal settlement from future floods.

The mascot of the Philippines National Housing Authority in Manila.

A medium rise Habitat for Humanity housing project consisting of four buildings with twelve units each.

Children in a community that had been part of a World Bank financed upgrading project.

Plans to showing the location of the St James Riverside community, an informal settlement in a frequently flooded area.

Our capstone team including our two local consultants and friends Tanya and Grendell.  Thanks for being such a great team!

Melissa