URBAN POVERTY AND DEVELOPMENT

Dynamic Urban Economic Growth Is The Pre-Requisite For A Successful Urban Poverty Reduction Strategy

[Institute Name]

Dynamic Urban Economic Growth Is The Pre-Requisite For A Successful Urban Poverty Reduction Strategy

Introduction

The rapid growth of the global urban population is one of the most striking features of the demographic shift taking place in the world. Only 233 million people lived in cities in 1900 (14 per cent of the world's population). By 1950, 30 per cent of the world was urbanized; in 1980, the figure was up to 39 per cent and by 2001, it is estimated that 47.5 per cent of the world's population lives in urban areas.

This dramatic growth is unprecedented in human history. The level of urbanization will rise to 56.7 per cent within the next two decades, with all of the urban growth in developing countries. Numerically, this represents an increase of 1.5 billion people between 2000 and 2025.1 Another distinctive feature is that most of the urban growth will be a result of natural population increase and the structural transformation of formerly rural areas on the periphery of urban areas. Less than half of this urban growth will be a result of rural-to-urban migration.

Just as the world is becoming increasingly urban, there is also an increase in the number of urban poor. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)'s 1999 Human Development Report demonstrates that despite the significant advances in human development in previous decades, extreme poverty persists. In developing countries there are still 60 percent more illiterate women than men. An estimated 1.3 billion people live on incomes of less than $1 per day.2 In his "Millennium Report," United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared that "extreme poverty is an affront to our common humanity," and called on the international community, "to adopt the target of halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty… by 2015."

A number of recent inter-governmental meetings related to reviewing progress on commitments made at major UN conferences, including the preparatory process of Istanbul+5, have identified a range of concerns about the present urban context. Some of these are:

•The worsening of access to shelter and security of tenure, resulting in severe over-crowding, homelessness and environmental health problems;

•Large and growing backlogs in delivery of basic service to urban residents as demand outstrips institutional capacity, financial resources and environmental carrying capacity;

•Increasing inequality in cities, manifested in stark residential segregation, increasing violence impacting disproportionately on women, the poor, and more generally intensifying poverty; and

•Lopsided economic growth displayed in the simultaneous evolution of high-end investments to attract foreign investment and an expanding informal economy with poor labour conditions.

More poor people are now in urban areas than ever before. The process of urbanization, though stimulated by economic development, has also led to sharp divisions in growth between cities and among social groups. It is estimated that nearly one billion urban residents in the cities of the developing world are poor, and the next decade will witness increased urbanization of poverty ...