Harmonious Cities: Findings from the World Cities Report 2008/9

Wednesday, March 11, 2009
4:00 - 5:30 pm

Presenter
Eduardo López Moreno, Head, City Monitoring Branch, UN-HABITAT

Presentation (pdf)

This session presented the main findings from the UN-HABITAT World Cities Report 2008/9.

The 21^st century has been dubbed the “Century of the City”. Half of the world’s population already lives in urban areas and by the middle of this century, most regions of the developing world will be predominantly urban. The State of the World’s Cities 2008/9 adopted the concept of “Harmonious Cities” as a theoretical framework in order to understand today’s urban world, and also as an operational tool to confront the most important challenges facing urban areas and their development processes. For that purpose, it focused on three key areas:

1. Spatial or regional harmony that explored the determinants of urban growth and decline in cities of the developing world, and the consequences of asymmetrical regional development and rural-urban disparities;
2. Social harmony that presented a preliminary global analysis of income and consumption inequality at the city level (using Gini coefficient) and levels of shelter deprivation in various cities and how these are adversely impacting social and economic development; and
3. Environmental harmony that contributed to the climate change debate by presenting data on energy consumption at the city and household levels and showing which cities and urban populations will be most at risk from rising sea levels.  The State of the World’s Cities 2008/9 also assessed the various intangible assets within cities that contribute to harmony, such as cultural heritage, social capital and the complex set of social and symbolic relationships that give cities meaning.

Using a wealth of comparative data, the report broke new ground in analyzing the key drivers of urban growth, patterns of urban inequality and the role that cities can play in mitigating the impact of climate change. Among its significant findings were that: i) central governments play a critical role in determining the prosperity and growth of cities; ii) high levels of urban inequality can be social destabilizing and economically unsustainable; iii) focused and targeted investments can significantly improve the lives of slum dwellers; and iv) cities provide an opportunity to mitigate or even reverse the impact of global climate change as they provide the economies of scale to reduce per capital costs and demand for resources.