Global Urbanization Today: Low- and Middle-Income Countries · Urbanization in Poor CountriesLarge increases in world population lie ahead; almost all growth to occur in thecities
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Global Urbanization Today:Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Mark R. Montgomery
Stony Brook Universityand
Population Council, NY
May 25, 2015
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 1 / 36
Urban Challenges in the 21st Century:
Urbanization in Poor Countries Large increases in world population lie ahead; almost allgrowth to occur in the cities and towns of poor countries. Today’surban dwellers, and those of the future, will live mainly in small andmedium-sized cities.
Decentralization National governments transferring responsibilities into hands of stateand municipal governments, which typically lack resources and allmanner of bureaucratic expertise.
Governance and the Urban Poor As urbanization proceeds, the poor will increasingly befound in developing-country cities and towns; success in povertyalleviation will become a test of urban governance.
Extreme-event risks As global warming takes hold, the consequences (floods, droughts)will be borne by city and town dwellers of poor countries, as well asrural dwellers. But national adaptation plans typically ignore urbanareas and the urban poor.
Post–2015 Sustainable Development Goals How will such urban concerns berecognized, measured, and monitored?
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 2 / 36
Emergence of New National Governmental Systems:Decentralization
National governments are passing to lower-level tiers of governmentimportant functions, responsibilities, revenue-raising authority, and(sometimes) revenues.
Powerful notion of moving government “closer to the people,” intheory improving responsiveness
Highly variable implementation
Municipal and “state” governments increasingly important in settingpolicies and programs — but often poorly resourced and under-staffed
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 3 / 36
Data and Governance in Poor Countries
Almost all poor countries collect spatially-specific population andsocioeconomic data via population censuses
But unlike the high-income countries of Europe and North America,poor countries do not systematically analyze and distributespatially-specific data to their local governments and civil society
Latin American countries the prominent exception: Detailed, easilyaccessible data seen as essential to good governance. Mexico, Brazil,Uruguay and other examples. This view gaining adherents (e.g., Indiafor its 2011 census)
But elsewhere, national statistical offices do not view data analysisand distribution as part of their work
Smaller-city governments especially disadvantaged.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 4 / 36
How Can International Research Help?
Development assistance for analysis as well as collection of populationcensus data
Publication of jurisdictional boundary shapefiles, and summaries ofsocioeconomic data by jurisdiction (as in Latin America)
Move the development and scientific conversation away fromrural–urban to a focus on places: specific cities and towns
Emphasize the need to link population data to spatial data andpopulation researchers to remote-sensing and other spatially-informedresearchers.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 5 / 36
Time to Jettison “Urban Sector” and “Rural Sector”?
We think that the term “urban” aids understanding of development,and helps to guide programs and development policies in aconstructive way.
But does it? Can we not substitute “rural–urban continuum” or“connectedness” for the increasingly stale conception of an“urban–rural dichotomy”?
Rural villagers participate (directly or indirectly) in urban economic,social, governance and health systems. Two-way connections viamigration, remittances, and multiple input and output markets.
Spatial data illuminate these connections
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 6 / 36
For Climate Adaptation, Focus on Places: Cities andTowns
“Urban” is an abstraction, not really an actionable concept. But cities andtowns are specific places, overseen by municipal and other governments.
This shift of perspective brings gaps and deficiencies of national statisticalsystems into plain view. Most countries collect very little reliabledemographic, economic, health, and social data at the level of individualcities and towns. How will the post-2015 statistical systems monitor citiesand towns?
Population censuses are the major exception. They must—in my view—beassigned a major role in the post-2015 measurement and monitoringagenda.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 7 / 36
The Demography
The Urban Demography of Poor Countries:Who lives where today?
Forecasts of size and location of population growth
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 8 / 36
The Demography
UN Projects Enormous Growth in Urban Populations
-100
0
100
200
300
1950 1975 2000 2025 2050Year
Tot
al P
opul
atio
n G
row
th in
Pre
viou
s 5
Yea
rs (
mill
ions
)
Development Level (Dashed Line shows Rural Growth): Developed Developing
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 9 / 36
The Demography
Urban Population Size by Region, Low- and Middle-IncomeCountries
01
23
4U
rban
Pop
ulat
ion,
in B
illio
ns
1950 1975 2000 2025 2050Year
AfricaLatin America
AsiaOceania
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 10 / 36
The Demography
What’s Distinctive About Today’s Urban Transition?
Let’s correct some common misunderstandings:
Urban population growth rates are higher than in comparable periodsin the West—lower urban mortality, stubbornly high urban fertility insome cases, urban population momentum from past growth
But the pace of urban growth—that is, the change in percentageurban over time—is not historically unusual. It is not correct to saythat “urbanization” is proceeding faster than in the history of theWest.
Although information is limited, it is not obvious that rural-to-urbanmigration rates for today’s poor countries are distinctively higher orlower than in the past.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 11 / 36
The Demography
Clearly Unprecedented: Number of Cities of 1 Million+
36
3 2
97
6 5
102
12 5
33
2 0
238
2212
431
3821
010
020
030
040
0T
otal
Num
ber
of C
ities
More developed regions Less developed regions
1950 2000 2025 1950 2000 2025
Cities 1−5 Million
Cities 5−10 Million
Cities 10 Million+
Preston(1980) termedthis “urbangigantism”.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 12 / 36
The Demography
Cities of 1 Million+ in 2000, by Region
34
2 1
44
3 4
160
17
7
050
100
150
Tot
al N
umbe
r of
Citi
es
Africa LAC Asia
Cities 1−5 Million
Cities 5−10 Million
Cities 10 Million+
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 13 / 36
The Demography
Urban Population by City Size: Smaller Places Matter!
50.2%
10.4%
21.2%
8.6%
9.6%
25
50
75
0/100
CitySize
Fewer than 500,000
500,000 to 1 million
1 million to 5 million
5 million to 10 million
10 million or more
However, amongall urban dwellers,fewer than 1 in 10live in so-called“mega-cities”. Farlarger percentagesin smaller citiesand towns.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 14 / 36
The Demography
Sources of City and Urban Population Growth
Natural increase Multiple credible estimates indicate that the share ofurban growth due to natural increase is about 60 percent.The exact figure varies across countries (depending onfertility levels) and over time for given cities—but 60 percentis a passable rule of thumb. City growth is only partly due tomigration.
Origin of urban in-migrants Today, even in relatively low-urbanizedcountries, more urban in-migrants come from other urbanareas than from rural villages!
Are in-migrants disadvantaged? Do they live in slums? Some aredisadvantaged and live in slums; others aren’t and don’t.The common perception needs critical examination.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 15 / 36
The Demography
The 60/40 Rule
The United Nations rule-of-thumb: In developing countries, about 60percent of the urban growth rate is due to natural growth, thedifference between urban fertility and mortality rates. The remaining40 percent is due to migration and spatial expansion.
Similar rule applies to countries followed over time: 60 percent figurecited in Handbook of Indian Urbanization (2005:32) for four decadesfrom 1961 to 2001.
China the great exception to the 60/40 rule—low fertility, migrationtightly controlled, then unleashed. Population of “floating migrants”estimated at 150 million.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 16 / 36
The Demography
Keep Urban Natural Increase in Mind!
Many countries are nervous about city growth and have forcefullydiscouraged migration—often via punitive, brutal, welfare-reducingand (ultimately) ineffective actions such as forced evictions.
More enlightened regional development policies are promising, butseldom produce rapid change in pace and spatial distribution ofpopulation growth.
But voluntary urban family planning programs have proveneffectiveness against a major component of city growth. This simplepoint is almost universally ignored.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 17 / 36
The Demography
Cities and Towns:Linking Population to Spatial Extents
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 18 / 36
Change Over Time: The UN Cities Database
UN Population Division: City Population Time-Series
Longitudinal data: Population counts for individual cities over time,reported at irregular intervals. Long time-series, in many cases (5+observations)
The UN monitors all cities of 100,000 population and above; when agiven city crosses this threshold, the UN attempts to reconstruct itshistory.
Since 1970s, UN asks for data on urban agglomerations—butcountries often supply counts for the city proper, the metropolitanarea, or in unspecified types.
No boundaries as such—only the type of boundary.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 19 / 36
Change Over Time: The UN Cities Database
Improving the UN Cities Database
1 Bring spatial content to a currently aspatial database.
Short-term goal: Vigorously clean and update the city data, includebasic spatial identifiers, and explore spatial factors influencing growth.Longer-term goal: Need to assemble a geographic database using thesmallest available geographic “building blocks” to which populationdata can be attached.Need to add meaningful jurisdictional boundaries
2 Need better coverage of smaller cities and towns, where a largepercentage of urban residents live, and to areas on the peripheries oflarge cities or lying between cities that are likely to fuse with theseurban populations.
3 Need to incorporate land cover rasters
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 20 / 36
Change Over Time: The UN Cities Database
Heterogeneous City Histories: Luanda, Angola
● ●●
●
●●
●
●
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010Year
Pop
ulat
ion
(000
s) BoundaryType
●●●
City Proper
Unknown
Urban Agglomeration
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 21 / 36
Change Over Time: The UN Cities Database
Spatial Expressions of Population Growth: GHSL
Percent_1975 Percent_1990
Percent_2000 Percent_2014
0
20
40
60
80
100
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 22 / 36
Change Over Time: The UN Cities Database
Heterogeneity across Cities and Time
● ● ●
●● ● ●
● ●● ● ●●
●
●
●
●●
●
●
●
●
●
●
● ●●
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
1940 1960 1980 2000Year
Pop
ulat
ion
(000
s)
BoundaryType
●
●
●
City Proper
Unknown
Urban Agglomeration
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 23 / 36
Change Over Time: The UN Cities Database
Forecasting City Size and Growth
The Science Behind the UN’s City and Urban Forecasts
Since the early 1980s, forecasts based on a simple extrapolation methodthat produces substantial, well-documented forecast errors. A high-priorityarea for research—new work would be welcomed by the UN.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 24 / 36
Change Over Time: The UN Cities Database
Urban Population Forecast Errors for the Year 2000Source: Cities Transformed, 2003
Mean Percentage Forecast Errors1980–2000 1990–2000 1995–2000
RegionEast Asia and Pacific 3.9 26.7 -2.8EAP excluding China 18.4 9.8 -0.4Latin America and Carib. 19.8 5.4 -0.9Middle East and North Africa 13.3 6.8 8.5South Asia 27.2 19.7 2.7Sub-Saharan Africa 21.8 23.4 5.5
Level of DevelopmentLow 23.1 18.3 3.2Lower Middle 6.9 26.1 -1.3Lower Middle excluding China 25.6 9.9 3.7Upper Middle 12.8 8.9 0.8
Figures show population-weighted averages of(U f
t,2000/U2000 − 1)· 100 with U f
t,2000 the
UN forecast made in year t = 1980, 1990, 1995 of a country’s total urban population in
the year 2000, and U2000 the actual population in 2000.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 25 / 36
Urban Poverty and Governance
Urban Poverty and Governance
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 26 / 36
Urban Poverty and Governance
Urban Poverty in the Millennium Development Goals
Target 11
The United Nations Millennium Declaration specified a target of achievingby 2020 “significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slumdwellers.”
UN-HABITAT estimates that there are already nearly 1 billion slumdwellers in developing countries.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 27 / 36
Urban Poverty and Governance
Recent Estimates of “Slum Dwellers”
050
100
150
200
250
Slu
m P
opul
atio
n in
Mill
ions
Southern AsiaEastern Asia
Sub−Saharan AfricaLatin America
South−Eastern AsiaWestern Asia
North AfricaOceania
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 28 / 36
Urban Poverty and Governance
Poverty Rates Higher in Secondary Cities: Cote d’Ivoire
1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1999
Year
0
20
40
60
Pro
port
ion
Und
er U
S$2
Per
Day
AbidjanOther Cities
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 29 / 36
Urban Poverty and Governance
Is Urban Poverty Spatially Concentrated?Major unanswered questions:
What exactly are “slums”? And where are they? (Officiallyrecognized?)
What proportion of the urban poor live in slums?
What proportion of slum residents are poor?
How long do slum residents stay in those neighborhoods?
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 30 / 36
Urban Poverty and Governance
Important Limitations
UN-Habitat estimates the number of urban dwellers with inadequatehousing, access to drinking water, and sanitation, from a careful analysis ofover one hundred DHS and MICS surveys.
Despite “slum-dwellers” label, no consideration of spatial concentration
Spatial concentration difficult to measure from survey data alone
Should be interpreted as estimates of the number of urban poor, notslum-dwellers as such.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 31 / 36
Urban Poverty and Governance
Are Most of the Urban Poor Slum-Dwellers?
We don’t know. For India, however, Chandrasekhar and Montgomery(2009) found:
UnlistedSlums
ListedSlums Non-Slums Total
Poor UrbanHouseholds
6.7 11.4 81.2 ≈ 100.0%
Non-Poor UrbanHouseholds
2.2 5.0 92.4 ≈ 100.0%
Siddharth Agarwal (Urban Health Resource Centre, New Delhi) shows thatofficial records of unlisted slums are woefully incomplete—in several cities,number understated by half. Even with this adjustment, slum-dwellerswould not represent the majority of the urban poor.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 32 / 36
The Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals
What’s Being Considered for the Post–2015 SDGs?
A Sustainable Urbanization Goal Appears all but certain to be adopted inSeptember 2015: “Goal 11. Make cities and human settlementsinclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”
Targets and Indicators The upcoming tasks:
Frame goals in terms of sub-national, disaggregated targetsand indicatorsWhere possible, localize these to city–regions, with roles forlocal urban governments?Must overlay statistical monitoring systems and governmentalsystems to know what is feasible in the near term.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 33 / 36
The Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals
Proposed Targets for the Urbanization Goal Include:
Adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums
Significantly reduce the number of deaths and the number of people affected anddecrease by [x] per cent the economic losses . . . disasters, including water-relateddisasters, with a focus on protecting the poor and people in vulnerable situations
Reduce per capita environmental impact of cities (air quality and municipal andother waste management)
Integrated policies for mitigation and adaptation to climate change, resilience todisasters, in line with the forthcoming Hyogo Framework
Participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning
Support positive economic, social and environmental links between urban,peri-urban and rural areas by strengthening national and regional developmentplanning
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 34 / 36
The Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals
Other SDG Goals Relevant to Cities and Towns Include:
Reduce extreme poverty and poverty as nationally defined
Reduce hunger and malnutrition (recognizes internal markets)
Reduce maternal, child mortality and mortality from both communicable andnon-communicable disease. (Road traffic accidents specifically mentioned.)Universal access to family planning. Reductions in air, water, and soilpollution
Adequate access to drinking water, sanitation; reductions of water pollution
Effective climate change-related planning and management in leastdeveloped countries, focusing on women, youth and local and marginalizedcommunities
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 35 / 36
The Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals
New Space is Opening for International Research
The proposed SDGs recognize (implicitly) the value of spatially-refinedestimates and forecasts, at the subnational and even city levels
Much work remains to construct national monitoring systemsadequate to the task ahead
Population censuses are still under-exploited!
Vast array of spatially-explicit remotely-sensed and other data anenormously valuable, unprecedented set of assets for the SDGs.Countries and international agencies will need assistance to make themost of these new assets.
Montgomery (Stony Brook UniversityandPopulation Council, NY)Urban May 25, 2015 36 / 36
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