Urbanization is one of the most profound trends reshaping the human presence on the planet. More than half of the global population now lives in cities, a figure expected to grow to at least 75 percent by the end of this century.
Jacobs
In the developing world — and especially its megacities — this migration and growth poses enormous and interconnected social and environmental challenges, according to Harvey Jacobs, a professor of urban and regional planning and environmental studies.
Jacobs is a widely-recognized expert on property rights, land use and social conflict, and he is studying how these issues intersect and escalate. He has worked and lectured on these topics in locations ranging from Albania to Italy to Zimbabwe, and recently shared his thoughts on global urban sustainability.
Q: What do you see as keys to a livable city? And how might that change as you go from a city like Madison to a megacity of millions?
A: We've been urban in the developed parts of the world for roughly a century, so we know how to think about what it means to be predominantly urban in the United States and Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan. But we really don't know what it means when much of that urban population is in global megacities. On top of that, a very significant portion of that population is living in slums or informal settlements.
When I'm teaching, I show my students videos and databases that estimate that more than a million people a week are migrating to cities in the world. That's four times the size of Madison in a single week; it's hard for most of us to wrap our heads around that notion.
The challenge to me is not how do you make a city like Madison sustainable, because in many ways it's easy when you've got a city of 250,000 and a very educated and involved citizenry. What's hard is what you do when the world is dominated by the Mexico Citys, the Johannesburgs, the Nairobis, the Mumbais or the Bejings.
Urban sustainability is really about figuring out how to engage resources, people and infrastructure in these megacities. What do you do when you have high rates of poverty and people struggling day to day to be alive, who therefore have less motivation to think about or care about sustainability in terms of a multigenerational frame?
Q: Are you exploring these challenges?
A: I'm exploring one aspect of it: the security of people in slums and informal settlements.The familiar images are the bulldozers that come in and destroy shacks overnight, leaving tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people homeless.
There's a very rich global discussion from the United Nations, the World Bank and a global network of scholars asking the question of, what do you do? Do you give these people ownership of land in some fashion? And in giving them ownership of land, will their lives be improved? If their lives are improved, will the sustainability of the city be improved? Or, is giving them ownership of land in some way not really an answer?
There are multiple case studies around the world that seem to come out with different answers and there are strong advocates on both sides. My part of it is, what do you do with the millions of people living in places like Nairobi, Johannesburg and Mumbai who have tremendous insecurity in the day to day? People go to work in the morning and don't know when they come home at night if the place they call home will be there. Even in the poorest of the poorest neighborhoods of a city in the United States, few people have to live in the conditions these people live in.
I show my students a movie about informal settlements in India, which makes the point that in one of these settlements in Mumbai, there's one working toilet for every 800 people. Afterwards, you see the shock on the students' faces; they can't get their minds around this.
Q: As you look to the global urban future, is there one idea or solution that you think could be implemented almost anywhere to help make a modern city more livable or sustainable?
A: There is actually a lot of global discussion about urban food systems and the fact that, regardless of the size, density or tenure situation of the city, there are often places where food could be grown. And there's often high motivation for people to want to grow food.
"In Madison, what do we like to do? We like to get on our bicycles or the bus and it's very easy to get around and do what we need to do. People everywhere would like that opportunity."
— Harvey Jacobs, professor of urban and regional planning and environmental studies
A second important part of it, but a much more difficult one, is transportation. Transportation is a very big contributor to non-sustainability. The issue in China with the growth in the number of cars, smog, and the consumption of oil and gas … there's an obvious solution and it's about mass transit. It doesn't have to be investment in trains, which can be wonderful if done right; it can be investment in bus systems and other forms of public transit.
If you're going to have cities and they're going to work, people have to get around them. Nobody likes sitting in a traffic jam. And who suffers the most when transportation doesn't work? The poorest of the poor. They tend to live the farthest from work and spend the most time in transportation, in uncomfortable and unsafe scenarios.
Then an issue which comes right back to urban planning, which has been a much harder one to implement, is the question of where job opportunities are and where people live, and trying to think about the growth, development and management of the city so those two things — where people live and where they work — are not so separated.
In Madison, what do we like to do? We like to get on our bicycles or the bus and it's very easy to get around and do what we need to do. People everywhere would like that opportunity.