Urban Population–Development–Environment Dynamics in the Developing World: Case Studies and Lessons Learned

Through case studies, this collection invites a re-appraisal of the links between urban population, development and the environment. Contributors highlight the diversity of forms in urbanizing areas and explore population–development–environment linkages in small- and medium-sized cities as well as megacities and city-regions. The multi-disciplinary research teams from African, Asian and Latin American cities include planners, sociologists, geographers, demographers and oceanographers. Their wide-ranging focus is matched by a variety of data sources such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote-sensing and GPS data. In turn, the collection helps destabilize rural–urban dichotomies and encourages urban policy makers to recognize thediverse linkages between poverty, environment and demography.

The volume’s chapters were originally presented at a 2007 workshop sponsored by several research institutions, including the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC), the Programme for International Research on the Interactions between Population, Development and Environment (PRIPODE) and the Centre for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University (CIESIN). The book’s chapters are organized geographically, with five from Africa, two from Asia and two from South America. Many contributors advocate enhancing urban spatial planning and data information systems, as well as improved capacity and infrastructure at the local level.

Common themes include migration patterns, changing urban land use and morphology and environmental quality, with some attention to health and gender implications (Chapter 3 on water and sanitation in South Africa). Several studies examine smaller cities, such as communities in the Ecuadoran Amazon (Chapter 8 on mobility and development since 1990) and Ogbomoso, Nigeria (Chapter 1 on household responses to urban encroachment). In Chapter 4, Adama Konseiga explores rural–urban linkages through a discussion of family migration and its health effects on Kenyan children. Families in Nairobi frequently engage in split migration, with some children remaining up-country and others following their parents to the informal settlements. By comparing demographic surveillance data for these migrants, the study finds that households in two Nairobi informal settlements had higher child morbidity than households with children up-country (43 per cent of urban households had at least one sick child in the past month vs. 31 per cent in rural areas).

Studies of Asian cities and city-regions highlight the region’s major planning concerns and the inadequate paradigms used to address them. Zhu
et al. discuss China’s in situ urbanization in Quanzhou municipality and advocate new theoretical and planning frameworks to address this dispersed form of city development (Chapter 7). While just 10.6 per cent of the population resides in the urban core, about 35 per cent of Quanzhou’s city-region population lives in two outer transitional zones. The authors argue that in situ urbanization is neither an isolated nor a short-lived phenomenon, and may not be unique to China. Chapter 6 explores Delhi’s environmental challenges, with an analysis of the urban heat island effect, inadequate solid waste management, and increasing air, water and noise pollution. High density residential areas doubled from 10.4 per cent of Delhi’s area in 1992 to 23 per cent in 2004, while agricultural land fell from 44.9 per cent to 36.9 per cent and urban agriculture dipped from 5.5 per cent to 3.2 per cent.

In the last chapter, on urban sprawl and mobility in Brazil, Ricardo Ojima and Daniel Hogan construct spatial indices of sprawl in 37 urban areas, with indicators for density, fragmentation, spatial orientation and integration/commuting. Brazil’s most dispersed areas are in the south–southeast, while the north and northeast are more compact overall. Surprisingly, Rio and Curitiba both received intermediate ranking