It is estimated that more than two-thirds of the world’s population lives in cities where income inequality has increased since the 1980s.
In many cases, this increase has been staggering. Bhubaneswar was initially planned for a population of about 60,000 after the State capital was shifted from Cuttack. Now, the population of the city has reached about 12 lakh and the projected population by 2030 is 30 lakh. It is a nice city, but there are problems pertaining to social, political, law and order, sanitation, congestion, poorly planned city expansion, temperature rise, environmental pollution and a host of other issues. Development managers, local civil citizens, slum dwellers, women, youth, and all others can participate to develop the city for better living with peace, harmony and quality.
New forms of poverty and inequality are emerging in urban cities world over: ‘infrastructure-poor’, ‘feminisation of poverty’, ‘immigrant poverty’, ‘vulnerable elderly and youth at risk’. Relatively highly unequal cities have difficulties to optimise the urban advantage with huge intra-city disparities between ‘haves and have-nots’ (including men and women, slum and non-slum areas, ethnic majorities and minorities and elder and young). In these unequal cities, the urban poor have less chances of finding a job and their life expectancy at birth is lower; children are less likely to enroll in school and their occurrence of ill health is noticeably more frequent; public facilities predominantly used by the poor are more often than not overcrowded and badly managed; the poor in general are also excluded in a cultural, social and political sense.
Urban equity in development is not just an ideal, something that operates in the realm of ideas or aspirations. It is a concept framework that guides decision-making to enhance lives in cities for all; a useful tool needed to redefine the urban policy agenda at local, national and regional levels to ensure shared prosperity; and a factor to enhance the city’s transformative capacity to bring about collective wellbeing and fulfilment of all.
When equity is embedded in urban development strategies, efficiency is enhanced, asset utilization becomes optimal, productivity improves and social cohesion is strengthened. It creates equal life chances with equal concerns for people’s needs, promoting deeper and more sustainable change. Equality can underpin a new development agenda based on key elements such as participation, transparency, accountability, nondiscrimination, empowerment, rule of law, and social inclusion. These principles can provide practical guidance to design and assess development strategies and clarify their content -- for example, by prioritizing universal access to adequate water, energy, income security, provision of essential public goods and respect of commons. It can also help to deploy or take forward existing concepts such as the “right to the city” that promotes a more holistic, equitable, balanced and multicultural type of development.
This helps to integrate equity into development and at all levels.
The City of Medellin, host of the Seventh Session of the World Urban Forum (WUF), endorses the idea that the notion “Equity in Development” can be operationalised at urban level by the ‘Cities for life’ concept. This concept nourishes the hope of a more equitable, socially inclusive urban world that can devise comprehensive safeguards for all. ‘Cities for life’ is a concept that celebrates a transition of a city’s social and political landscape from violence to peace and hope.
The concept connects every individual with their surroundings, creating multiple local and external interactions, and facilitating possible responses to their needs, hopes and aspirations. It focuses mainly on those more in need - the poor and marginalized, who are excluded from all opportunities and deprived of the tools needed to transform their lives in the search of individual and collective wellbeing.
Adopting the notion of ‘Cities for life’ is a commitment for equity and harmonious development; a novel concept that helps restore the balances and mixed connections in living for all individuals and life- expressions. In 2012, the United Nations Summit Rio +20 was blunt in pointing out and agreeing that global approaches and insights on sustainable development should lead to more human development at all times. A process that enables everyone to live in harmony with nature; to restore the State and integrity of the earth’s ecosystem, so as to ensure a quality of living that strikes the right balance between economic, social and environmental needs of present and future generations. In an era in which the future of sustainable development is inexorably linked to urban life “Cities for life” is a simple concept that can facilitate a better understanding of the fundamental problems of humanity. It is also an operational tool to confront the most important challenges and respond to them in a collective manner.
Planning “Cities for life” is a way of rethinking the city from the perspective of the specific needs of people, their life cycles and rhythms, their conceptions of ‘good living, identity and diversity, plurality and unity, imaginations and dreams, beauty and aesthetic’.
“Cities for life” are made viable from a genuine construction of citizenship, civic reengagement, ethics and values, participatory democracy, co-responsibility and solidarity. Each actor contributes to bring solidarity in the territory, by consensus, contributes to the social construction of the habitat, the holistic understanding of the context, and an inclusive approach to economic, social, cultural, environmental and institutional aspects. Public policies and the provision of public goods and services are designed and delivered with the poor and excluded in mind. It brings a new dimension to equity a fresh notion of governance - inspired by inclusive public policies, a new civic and political culture, democratization of science and knowledge, entrepreneurship and citizen empowerment and holistic management - feeds the new thinking and planning of cities and the notion of urban over time. long-term visions and concurred actions of all stakeholders go beyond the boundaries of short-term and fragmented agreements that are imposed by the governors’ political terms in office, ensuring continuity. A new governance of the city constitutes the nutrient that inspires a major change in human values and the conservation and constant enrichment of life.
The 7th World Urban Forum (WUF7) will bring together some of the most committed city changers from the South and from the North. It will be a platform to create new networks and partnerships and strengthen existing ones, with a meaningful impact on equity and development. The forum is an excellent occasion for stimulating new ways of thinking. It will help to define new objectives and strategies for integrating equity in the development agenda. By sharing perspectives and viewpoints on the present-day relevance of equity, it will be possible to initiate a debate on the operational ways to make cities and development more equitable.
(Dr SN Patro is working president, Orissa Environmental Society, who participated in the 3rd session of the World Urban Forum (WUF) at Vancouver, Canada in June 2006.)