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By 2050, about 70 per cent of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas and over 60 per cent of the land projected to become urban by 2030 is yet to be built. If done right, urbanization can help deliver a sustainable future. Taking aim at the topic of sustainable urbanization, ECOSOC is gathering high-level representatives from across the globe for a three-day event on 27-29 May.
“95 per cent of urban expansion will take place in the developing world,” said UN DESA’s Under-Secretary-General Mr. Wu Hongbo as he addressed a High-level Symposium on Sustainable Cities and Sustainable Urbanization in China last year. “In China, 350 million people are expected to move into cities in the coming two decades. Clearly, such massive changes will pose social, economic and environmental challenges, while also creating tremendous opportunities,” Mr. Wu said.
With the world urban population estimated to increase from 3.5 billion today to 6.2 billion in 2050, urbanization poses both a challenge and an opportunity to sustainable development. Urban areas are faced with problems of unsustainable geographical expansion patterns; ineffective urban planning, governance and financing systems; inefficient resource use; poverty, inequalities and slums; as well as inadequate delivery of basic services.
Youth, women and people with disabilities have also often been left behind in conventional models of urban development. Extreme deprivation remains a major concern with one billion people living in slums. Furthermore, cities continue to be the major contributor to the total greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite these challenges, urban areas are also a source of growth, development and jobs. They offer opportunities for economies of scale and scope in development efforts, in particular in addressing poverty, health and education issues.
The process of urbanization can thus create an enabling environment for transforming production capacities, income levels and living standards, especially in developing countries. However, this requires a shift in mind-set of decision makers, away from viewing urbanization as a problem, towards viewing urbanization as an opportunity to promote sustainable development.
Taking aim at the issue of sustainable urbanization during the Integration Segment on 27-29 May, this will offer the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) an opportunity to contribute to the third United Nations conference on housing and sustainable urban development (Habitat III) scheduled to take place in 2016, and more importantly, to the expected outcome document outlining the new urban agenda.
By bringing together the ECOSOC system, policy makers and key stakeholders, including networks of UN-Habitat, Major Groups representatives and UN system organizations, the event will help to establish a common understanding of the role of urbanization in sustainable development and to define the fundamental attributes of the ‘sustainable city’, which Member States and the UN could collectively promote.
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