Rapid urbanization threatens overcrowded cities like Manila

SINGAPORE—Rapid and uncontrolled urbanization will most likely lead to a further decline in the quality of life, greater environmental degradation, acceleration of greenhouse gas emissions, social stress and political turbulence in cities such as Manila in the Philippines.

This was one of the predictions contained in the “New Lenses on Future Cities” publication launched Tuesday by the Shell Scenarios team of Shell International during the World Cities Summit here.

The supplement to Shell’s “New Lens Scenarios” said more than half of the world’s seven billion inhabitants lived in cities in 2007, attracted by urbanization’s benefits such as economic opportunities.

This proportion will hit about 75 percent by 2050 as the global population grows from seven billion to nine billion inhabitants, thus the need to properly manage urbanization, which comes with it intensified demand for resources including water, food and energy.

“The character and quality of future urbanization will have a huge influence on global resource efficiency and sustainability, directly affecting the quality of life for billions of people,” the report said.

The city of Manila was identified as an “underprivileged, crowded city,” which is characterized by high population, low gross domestic product per capita, high population density.

Other features of “underprivileged, crowded cities” include patchy, privatized pockets of infrastructure, slum development, poor transport infrastructure, often constrained by power interruptions and non-industrialized economy focused on trading, agriculture or low energy manufacturing.

The underprivileged, crowded city is one of the six “city archetypes” identified by Shell based on the study of more than 500 cities with over 750,000 inhabitants and 21 megacities with over 10 million inhabitants.

These types were identified to help frame understanding of energy use in cities.

The other archetypes are “underdeveloped urban centers” such as Kathmandu, Nepal and Algiers, Algeria; “developing megahubs” like Nairobi, Kenya and Hyderabad, India; “sprawling metropolises” such as Tokyo, Japan and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; “prosperous communities” like Stockholm, Sweden and Dubai, United Arab Emirates; “urban powerhouses” like Hong Kong, Singapore and New York.

Also identified as underprivileged, crowded cities that consume about 0.36 billion tons of oil equivalent a year are Bangalore in India and Kinshasa of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

According to Shell’s study, the vast majority of future urbanization will take place in “developing megahubs” and “underprivileged crowded cities” such as Manila, which currently have low individual income levels, medium to high populations and low to moderate energy consumption.

“The way in which they develop—the degree to which their growth is managed, well planned and efficient—will therefore be a major factor in global resource use. And due to the long operating life of urban infrastructure, the decisions these cities make in coming years will shape their resource efficiency and livability for decades to come,” the paper said.

For cities like Manila, the challenge is to have “room to maneuver” to respond to emerging pressures and crises that unmanaged urbanization will definitely bring.

Having that “room to maneuver” will require visionary leadership; integrated land, transport, energy, water and waste planning and structural energy-effective solutions, including compact city development and public transport.

What must be avoided is delayed action until it is forced by growing crises, a characteristic of “trapped transition” in city development.

Characteristics of trapped transition are ignored until city livability is threatened and infrastructure is difficult to engineer; solutions are ad hoc and individual patterns of growth are dominated by localized and uncoordinated political and market forces.

Shell stressed in the report that there is huge social, environmental, commercial and political value at stake in achieving efficient urban development and that it will require stable and consistent government at all levels along with “dynamic urban governance” and structures that will enable integrated master planning.

“Tomorrow’s success will depend on how well these are managed and how quickly government, business and civil society improve their collaboration today,” the paper said.