THE curtain rises on June 3 at Istanbul, Turkey, on another major United Nations conference. Earlier conferences have addressed themselves to the environment (the Rio Earth Summit), population (Cairo), social development (Copenhagen), and women (Beijing). This time it's urbani-sation, which is especially focused on the developing world since populations of the largest cities in the West have stabilised.
Officially labelled the Conference on Human Settlements, or Habitat II (Habitat I was held in Vancouver two decades ago), it is being referred to as the City Summit. And like most UN meets, this too is plagued by controversies. The Earth Summit saw a North-South polarisation. The former claimed that environmental destruction, such as the cutting down of the rain-forests, was largely being done by the South. The South countered that 'over-consumption' by the North was responsible for the depletion of the earth's natural resources. At the Cairo population meet, the Vatican, opposed to all forms of artificial birth control, tried to derail proceedings by imposing its agenda on the final platform of action. At Beijing, the Chinese authorities' attempt to stifle all dissent got the meeting off to a shaky start.
At Istanbul, ideology is bound to play a major part in the debate. The Left will oppose those committed to a market economy. The latter believe the only way to tackle the problems facing the cities of the world, particularly the developing world, is to give more power to local governments and to involve the private sector in civic matters, such as garbage clearance and road-building, thereby stimulating economic growth and creating jobs. The Left believes that leaving everything to market forces could lead to further marginalisation of the poor.
There is no denying the magnitude of the problems that continue to defy solutions. Take Bombay. Just 30 years ago, its population was less than five million, its air clean, the public transport system efficient; and there was little garbage around and hardly any crime on the streets. Today, 30 years on, Bombay's population is over 13 million, almost half of whom live in slums or on the pavements. The trains and buses are jamflat in south Bombay costs Rs 3 crore, probably more than in Manhattan or Tokyo.
An estimated 300 families migrate to Bombay every day. These are not just casual migrants who later return to the countryside. Unable to make a livelihood in the villages, and hoping to find a world of limitless possibilities, they come looking for a job. More often than not, they don't find it, adding to the city's unemployed and under-employed. Some of them become recruits of mafia-style gangs.
To house this influx, enough tenements would have to be constructed for 300 families every day—a virtually impossible task. So, the number of slum-dwellers grows exponentially, and builders rake in profits by constructing expensive, soaring skyscrapers. The result is that slum and skyscrapers exist side by side, a sure recipe for social tension. Ironically, thousands of flats lie locked up, unoccupied, their owners scared to let them out because of the outdated and wholly unjust rent control laws.
This picture is being replicated, with small variations, in other Indian cities as well. Indeed, it is being replicated even more grimly in many other cities of the developing world. In Africa, the least urbanised continent, cities are growing by a staggering 5 per cent each year and are becoming increasingly crime-ridden.
Overall, the world's cities are growing by one million each week. More than a third of the urban population live in sub-standard housing, and 40 per cent overall don't have access to safe drinking water or adequate sanitation. Urbanisation is clearly the big challenge of the future. For, it encompasses the major concerns of the day for the developing world: the unchecked population explosion which promotes migration from countryside to city in the first place, the deteriorating environment and the social ferment that comes from uprooted people living in alien surroundings.
