Cities in a Globalizing World

THIS VOLUME CHRONICLES human settlement conditions and trends since the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) in June 1996 with a particular focus on globalization. Today, the trend of urbanization continues apace although entwined with globalization. Like urbanization, globalization brings opportunities as well as problems and its impacts are increasingly being observed worldwide, most clearly in the cities. This book draws on a great range of background papers and authors from which Willem van Vliet (University of Colorado) developed this volume, with support from staff at the UN Centre for Human Settlements.
The positive consequences of globalization can be seen in the way that it has facilitated diffusion of knowledge and the spread of norms of democratic governance, environmental justice and human rights. It has helped increase city-to-city exchanges of knowledge, experiences, ‘best’ practices and lessons learned. It has also increased awareness in both citizens and city managers of the potentials of peer to peer learning. Yet in Africa, only one-third of all urban households are connected to potable water. In Latin America, 30 percent of the urban population live in poverty. In Asia and the Pacific, only 38 per cent of urban households are connected to a sewerage system. In Europe, processes of social exclusion marginalize many low-income and minority households, while urban crime and deterioration in peripheral housing estates undermine the social cohesion of many communities. In North America, problems of residential segregation, discrimination in housing markets and affordability persist, particularly in larger cities, despite recent economic growth. Worldwide, hundreds of millions of urban dwellers live under conditions of abject poverty or experience unequal access to resources.
Studies presented in this report show that while some population groups have improved their housing conditions, a disproportionate share of the world’s population have seen their conditions deteriorate. Sixty countries have become steadily poorer since 1980. Many of the studies portray increasing economic disparity between nations, cities, neighbourhoods and households. This report also shows how the growing demand for public services is being increasingly met by local authorities and, in some cases, by the private sector. Furthermore, as civil society becomes more organized, effective and politically active, municipal institutions are becoming more democratic and adopting more participatory local structures. Local political coalitions, together with representative groups from civil society are seeking to shape their cities in ways that help to maximize opportunities and minimize the social and economic disadvantages associated with globalization. As a result, as many of the studies point out, many cities have experienced a shift in the policies of urban government from managerialism to entrepreneurialism, viewing the city as a
product that has to be marketed, particularly to global investors.
International cooperation in the form of city to city exchanges is also growing in popularity. Public-private partnerships are increasingly being broadened to include civil society groups and there is increasing evidence of the potential of community-based networks based on direct people to people interactions. The change at national and international levels is to create an enabling legal framework.
Megacities are theoretically able to face all kinds of technical problems, including urban service provision and environmental management; however they are facing governance challenges as a result of obsolete municipal political structures and inhabitants who are increasingly concerned only with their immediate individual and local interests rather than with their common future. Globalization, it appears, increases not only competition but also fragmentation, with contradictory effects on cities which need