An Address on Behalf of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat)

Abstract

The convening of this conference is another indication of the growing concern within the international community of the future growth and development of urban centres and their consequential impact on the health and well being of their inhabitants. While increasing numbers of developed country cities are experiencing what is termed 'the dying inner-city', due to the phenomenon of sub-urbanization and counter-urbanization, the cities of the developing world are currently experiencing the opposite. For it is clear that both in the past, as well as in the present, industrialization and urban growth have been inextricably linked, and, furthermore, there is no doubt that this mutually reinforcing relationship will continue well into the next century, particularly in the developing part of the world, where the process of industrialization and urbanization are far from consolidated. In fact, in many of these countries, they are still in their infant stages, but advancing rapidly. Already, cities in the developing world are absorbing two-thirds of the total population increase. Today, natural increase rather than migration constitutes the major source of urban population growth. It is not uncommon for cities to grow annually at rates of 6%, which means that they are doubling every 12 years. At this rate, close to two billion people will populate the urban areas of developing countries by the year 2000-adding some 700 million people over the next decade. By the year 2020, all developing regions will for the first time become predominantly urban. The speed of urban growth in developing countries, unprecedented in the urban history of mankind, is such that it has defied, up to now, all attempts to make it orderly and conform to physical and spatial planning blueprints. Such phenomenal population growth has had several negative consequences. The first of these has been the haphazard, if not outright chaotic, spatial and physical growth of cities, which has resisted any attempt to control and to make it conform to schemes for optimal spatial segregation of commercial, residential and industrial activities. The result has been that it is, more often than not, the norm to find residential zones bounding the sites of industries, or industries enveloped by housing estates, with all the potential risks this implies to environmental health. The second consequence that I should like to mention is related to the first. While some cities in developing countries have been growing at rates up to 6% per annum, slum and squatter settlements within some of them, the so-called 'informal' settlements have been growing at twice that speed. Today, around a half of the urban population of the developing countries live in such settlements and much of the future increase in urban population will, no doubt, be accommodated therein. Not only are these spontaneous urban settlements located as a rule on the least desirable land, and exposed therefore more often than not to the dangers of natural disasters, such as flooding and land slides, they are also to be found abutting toxic dump sites and polluting industries, some of which are particularly prone to accidents and mishaps. It should therefore be no cause for wonder that it is the urban poor who most frequently become the unfortunate victims of industrial accidents as well. This is the lesson we have learned from the past, of which the chemical leak at Bhopal and the oil refinery