Each year, millions of people move from the countryside into cities. This has made tackling problems of urban poverty even more challenging, say Lauren Hendricks and Peter Lochery of CARE International, who are leading projects to improve conditions in some of the world’s poorest urban communities.
 | Lauren Hendricks directs CARE International’s economic development unit. Peter Lochery heads CARE’s water and sanitation team (Photos: CARE) |
What are the most pressing issues that need to be addressed in poor urban centers in the developing world?
PL: People are coming to cities for the economic opportunity, or in some cases, because of conflict in the rest of country. They're coming to places where the services are designed, as in the case of Luanda [Angola], for 500,000 or 750,000 people. Now there are millions.
People are living in poor conditions, often on the periphery of cities with virtually no services available to them. They try to save money to send home to their families, so they're looking for the cheapest place to live. They're not going to invest in a place where they're only renting a room. It's a vicious circle: they are not prepared to invest because they don't have security of tenure; governments are not prepared to provide services because they don't have a mandate to do so, because these are illegal settlements.
These are mostly infrastructural problems. Are there other kinds of challenges you are seeing in urban areas?
HL: A huge issue in urban areas is that there are many people involved in trash-picking as an economic activity. They comb through the local dump to find things they can sell, recycle, or use themselves. It's extremely hazardous work, and it's often children that are involved in it. In Ecuador, we've been running an interesting program to get trash-pickers to prioritize education for their children.
One of the other big issues in urban areas where we work is the issue of dramatically increasing gender-based violence. This is due to increased tensions in the household, but also because the traditional social mechanisms that would guard against some of the most extreme forms of domestic violence aren't there anymore.
And, obviously, urban areas and the HIV/AIDS crisis don't mix very well. You see urban slums everywhere in the world as the places where HIV/AIDS is incubating. You can track its progress from these urban slums as it sort of ripples out into the rural areas.
HL: The priority issues for the urban poor are water and sanitation, because people moving to cities tend to set up in slum areas that are not linked to any sort of services. And because people don't have rights to be where they are, they are in very tenuous positions. Governments can and sometimes do move them for political reasons, which can have hugely devastating effects.
 | Evelyn and her son Derek stand on a hillside overlooking Kibera where they live (Photo: Sarah S. Bones/CARE) |
What does urbanization mean for rural areas in the developing world?
HL: The problem is that there are only one or two big cities in some of these countries. Everybody is moving to the same city. If there was a range of smaller cities that could absorb people, I think it would be a positive development. People think their only economic opportunities are in these big cities.
There needs to be bigger focus on rural, non-farming enterprises - industries where people see the benefit of staying in rural areas or small towns in rural areas. I think microenterprise is incredibly important at the household level, but what you really need is medium to large enterprises. We need to think about businesses that will soak up hundreds of people.
Who is working to tackle infrastructural problems in cities? Governments? NGOs?
PL: In some places, there has been involvement from local organizations acting on behalf of the residents. Some, for example, procure water in bulk from a service provider, and then develop their own internal distribution system - a small cart, a pipe system, or kiosks run by women's group where water is sold at a reasonable price. Essentially, that's what's been happening in parts of Kibera [large slum in Nairobi, Kenya] and parts of Bangladesh.
The government in India has been significantly involved in improving water and sanitation. Ninety percent of investment is coming from the government, but that's pretty unusual. Elsewhere, you see huge external investment by a whole host of organizations.
Looking ahead a decade or two, is there any reason to be optimistic about the infrastructural and social challenges of rapidly growing cities?
PL: I first started visiting Kibera in the late 1980s or early 1990s. I was a bit disappointed when I visited a couple of years ago. We passed one area with a row of latrines that were disgusting, quite frankly. You're wondering, there's been all this investment to improve sanitation - are we actually making progress?
If you were dealing with just a static population "X" and given a number years, you could probably resolve problems and make progress on that population. But unfortunately, you come back ten years later and it's "X + Y." You see improvement, but the population is increasing all the time, so the problems get compounded.
editor: Valdis Wish
publishing date: October 10, 2007
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Readers' Comments:
As a geographer, I do agree with many of the observations raised, and in support would like to make a few additional comments. No doubt the issue of urbanization continues to offer a major challenge to governments, policy makers,entrepreneurs, scholars, and even citizens. In my country Nigeria, for example, and many developing nations I would suppose, the issue of unsustainable 'mega-city' or the 'primate city' is critical - primarily for two key reasons - inadequate technology to make the city function efficiently, and poor and unreliable data employed in many aspects of planning. So I think Africa - and Nigeria in particular - should begin to focus on these twin problems, in addition to promoting the emergence of several medium-sized cities.
Also new and existing cities must be deliberately planned , and relevant planning laws and regulations must be strictly enforced for the benefit of all-but therein lies perhaps a greater critical challenge, the political will! Essentially therefore proper response to the challenges thrown up by the process of urbanization in Africa would benefit greatly from the political leadership, with the support of the relevant professional groups and the citizenry as well. Thank you.
Anonymous Reader, Nigeria
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