The document discusses the unprecedented scale of urbanization that will occur globally by 2050, with over two-thirds of the world's population living in cities. It outlines both the opportunities and challenges that this massive urban transition presents for sustainable development. Key opportunities include concentrating populations and investments to improve infrastructure, services, innovation and economic growth. However, challenges include managing diverse city sizes and populations, transforming food and energy systems, ensuring environmental protection and equitable development. The document argues we need an urban focus in the post-2015 development agenda to help cities and countries harness urbanization for poverty reduction, access to services, housing, jobs and participation in governance.

1. The Urban Opportunity
to Enable Transformative and Sustainable development
Background paper for the
High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda
Prepared by the co-chairs of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network
Thematic Group on Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Cities:
Aromar Revi
Director, Indian Institute of Human Settlements
Cynthia Rosenzweig
Senior Research Scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
22 January 2013

2. The first half of the 21st century will host a world that is a fundamentally new one. For the
first time in human history a majority of the world population will live in urban areas. Over
the next 30 years, this transformation will depend not only on policies and practices in the
OECD economies; but increasingly on choices made in the cities of East and South Asia,
Latin America, followed soon by those in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Country
after country in every region is in the process of moving from rural and agrarian to urban and
potentially post-industrial landscapes – in a deep transformation of culture, institutions and
identity that has never been experienced since the agricultural revolution over 5,000 years
ago.
This development has profound implications on how societies shape and manage themselves.
It offers an unprecedented opportunity to use the urbanization process as a catalyst for
sustainable economic and social development. At the same time, it also offers a set of
significant challenges to governments, the private sector, civil society and communities. They
have to collectively ensure that public policy, private enterprise and collective action is
recalibrated to manage this rural-urban transition without significant economic, social or
environmental disruption.
To this end, this note lays out an initial framework of how urban issues underline and link to
larger sustainable development processes.
1. Trends: From now till 2050, the world urban population will grow from 3.5 billion (in
2010) to 6.2 billion, by when 67 percent of the global population (estimated 9.3 billion)
will live in cities. Of this, over 525 million are expected to live in poverty below the $1 per
capita per day and 1.2 billion below $2 per capita per day. By 2025, the GDP of the 600
highest contributing cities will rise by over 30 trillion or 65% of global growth. Annual
urban infrastructure and building investments are expected to rise from $10 trillion today
to more than $20 trillion by 2025, with urban centres in emerging economies attracting the
most of this investment.
2. Why Cities are Different: The contours of urban economies and societies demand new
forms of governance and policy making in comparison to traditional agrarian or mixed
societies. Higher population densities require concentrated investments in physical,
natural and social infrastructure, careful conservation and management of ecosystem
services and building greater resilience against external shocks. Rapid migration and the
growth of trans-boundary environmental refugee movement will require continuous policy
revision and predictive planning to manage volatile population fluxes. Less stable social
systems, fracturing of community and extended family bonds will require a greater role for
state-led or formal social safety systems. Income and social disparities in dense urban
concentrations will challenge the ability to deliver order and the rule of law and will
require specific policies to encourage inclusion, widen opportunity and, in highly stratified
societies, enable social transformation.
Food systems for an urban world will require re-orientation towards greater sustainability,
an expansion of urban production to enable universal nutritional coverage and promoting
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3. ‘healthy cities’ to reduce the risk of lifestyle-related disease. Related biomass systems like
forests are under threat because of the massive expansion of urban resource consumption
that often spans continental scale. Cities, unlike agricultural systems are not the largest
consumers of freshwater, but are often most at risk due to pollution, water scarcity and
flooding which is being acerbated by climate change. Addressing this will require a
transformation of both city and urban metabolism and production processes. Industrial
forms of transportation have not only led to unsustainable sprawl but the growth of
resource and carbon intensive forms of urbanization that are a serious threat to the local
and global environment. Finally, the economic core of the city requires constant
reinvention to create sustainable forms of livelihood, end poverty in urban areas, carrying
economic prosperity to peri-urban and rural areas.
All of this has profound implications for natural resource use, land-use dynamics and
biodiversity conservation, and the sustainable metabolism of cities. It will imply the co-
evolution of new technological and governance systems for an emerging urban world, in
which the largest economic entities will be cities or firms and a new set of middle-income
nation states.
3. The Opportunity: If uninterrupted by conflict or global environmental change, this
urbanization-led 100-year post-WWII boom could transform human societies across the
globe. It offers unprecedented leverage to help end multidimensional poverty; dramatically
improve life expectancy, health status and education; help diminish social stratification
and inequality; enable greater economic and political participation; provide the ‘space’ to
deepen the governance of our societies and conserve and heal a badly injured planet and
the ecosystem services that provide the basis for all life to thrive and human societies to
develop. The geographic concentration of urban populations opens up opportunities for
economies of scale and scope in creating productive opportunities, providing health and
educational services, promoting innovation and knowledge creation, diffusion of ideas and
creativity in ways that were never possible before. It allows for much more efficient water,
food, biomass and energy use if managed well, opening up possibilities of building
ecologically sustainable communities.
4. The Challenge: As a globalizing urban society, we will face multi-dimensional challenges
in this transition. By 2030, urban areas in developing countries will range in size from a
hundreds of thousands of 10,000 people towns; to over 500 million+ cities, about 25 mega
(> 10 million) cities and 8 mega urban-regions with populations of over 20 million.
Megacities and mega urban-regions will typically concentrate large proportions of the
economic, environmental, and human resources of their countries - requiring
fundamentally new modes of governance, technological and environmental management
systems to enable their sustainability. Managing cities with such diversity of size, scope
and character will require resilient and innovative institutions, flexible policies and a cadre
of interdisciplinary professions with a wide range of skills.
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4. A fundamental global shift from an agrarian society and economy to an urban-based one
will require new ways of supporting food and biomass production that is less dependent of
fossil nutrients and ecologically balanced, and yet produces enough for a planet full of
over 9 billion people. This will require new forms of ecological production in rural and
urban areas. Increasing pressure on land will require different ways of managing
biodiversity, coastal and forest ecosystems and mitigating desertification while catering to
the real needs of cities. The century-long transition through low-carbon energy systems to
renewable will need to proceed differently across a wide spectrum of cities based on size,
economic structure and transportation system. The velocity of this transition will strongly
determine the pain and disruption that climate variability and change can cause to urban
systems across the world.
Urban epidemiological profiles differ significantly from rural populations and will throw
up new risks for urban health systems to address. Managing the large and continuous
influx of people in cities will create pressures on economic, social and political structures
and supporting ecosystems. Inadequate infrastructure, housing, security, and employment
opportunities can create deep public unrest and social instability in cities much more
rapidly than in rural areas.
The greatest challenge therefore is the creation of a converging set of aspirations and
identities for city after city across the planet, for their diverse institutions and even more
diverse populations so that collectively, we can coalesce around a globally shared vision of
prosperity and inclusive development.
5. Urban priorities for the post-2015 development agenda: Development strategies to
reduce income poverty, improve educational and health outcomes, and manage natural
resources typically cut across the artificial rural and urban divide. Yet, as city-led growth
accelerates in some regions, the specific challenges of developing world growth will not
only have regional influence but impact the global economy, polity and environment. Thus
we need a global framework for engagement with a broad set of urban challenges and
mobilize synergies between them to enable transformative development outcomes over
2015-30:
I. Ending income poverty and feeding our cities: Inclusive urban development
especially in Asia and Africa could help end much of global urban income poverty by
2030 as has been demonstrated so effectively in China over the last two decades. This
in turn could have significant impacts on rural poverty via employment expansion and
stronger urban-rural linkages. In the context of declining global food productivity,
global and regional food systems need to integrate urban areas and ensure sustainable
and ecologically safe modes of production and consumption. Goals on nutrition
security and access to affordable food are essential to end food-based poverty.
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5. II. Universal access to urban environmental services and ensuring ecosystem
integrity: The most dramatic reduction in the burden of disease and child mortality
since the industrial revolution has been enabled by universal access to basic
environmental services: potable water, sanitation and solid waste services. As climate
variability increases, drainage networks need to be added to this set of services to
respond to incipient flooding. Reducing indoor and outdoor air pollution has also
become an important challenge in rapidly industrializing cities across the world. An
urbanizing world will need specific goals on ensuring ecosystem integrity and
conservation of major ecosystem services along with ensuring access to and
conservation of scarce water resources, especially in ecologically stressed regions of
the world. Goals on minimum standards of urban sanitation services, solid waste
management and recycling and air, water and soil pollution are essential to ensure
well being and continuous improvement in the quality of life, especially of the most
vulnerable.
III. Providing access to affordable and safe housing and the ‘right to the city’:
Enabling access to affordable and safe housing for all is a necessary condition for
urban sustainability. This is part of a systemic response to the failure of land and
labour markets in many cities to address questions of equity. Building a progressive
entitlement frame that underwrites the ‘right to the city’ as effectively demonstrated
by Brazil will help address the explosion of informal settlements across the world.
This is only a symptom of the failure to address the linkage between location, work
and housing and build a new participatory planning paradigm. This will enable each
citizen access to security of identity, tenure and livelihoods via a locally determined
mix of state, market and community-led approaches that will lead to an upsurge in
collective action for the common good.
IV. Enabling sustainable energy and transportation services and mitigating climate
risk: The security and productivity of cities depends on universal access to efficient
and sustainable energy services, and well functioning and affordable mobility and
transportation systems that are integrated with economic development, land use
planning and risk reduction measures. Specific relative and absolute goals on the
transition to universal access to efficient low-carbon and renewable-based energy
services will not only enable greater economic and resource efficiency, but help
mitigate impact climate risk. Universal access to affordable active mobility and
transportation systems that are in consonance with sustainable energy, low-carbon and
compact city goals will enable the development of more inclusive, accessible and
efficient cities.
V. Promoting economic and social inclusion and keeping cities safe: The physical
proximity between the elites, the vulnerable and the deprived is a stark contradiction
of most 21st century cities. In a youthful world bursting with aspiration of a better
future, media and information access has brought exclusion to the forefront of the
public imagination. Promoting economic and social inclusion (and in highly stratified
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6. cultures enabling social transformation around gender, ethnicity, age and other forms
of exclusion) is a necessary condition for sustainable development and keeping cities
safe from a wide range of conflicts and predatory interests. Creating social and
economic safety nets to support access to livelihood security and basic nutrition,
health, education and environmental services is a necessary goal for most cities.
Security of poor and excluded communities, women and girl children especially at
risk to sexual and other violence will help address some of the asymmetries caused by
mal-development and iniquitous economic growth.
VI. Developing effective governance systems and deepening participation and
resilience: The governance structures of most cities in the developing world are
overwhelmed by a combination of inadequate urban governance frameworks and
political systems, demographic pressure, resource and institutional constraints and
managerial complexity. As urban systems expand, city governments, citizens,
communities, civil society and private enterprise need more inclusive, transparent,
outcome-oriented and effective systems of political participation, planning and
development to address the wide range of contests and conflicts that will emerge.
Urban resilience will emerge through the interaction between systems of governance,
delivery institutions and socio-political systems that re-orient economic, social and
environmental goals towards greater sustainability.
As the world moves into an urban future, societies across the world have to grapple with deep
challenges of redirection and reorganization to ensure that they manage global public goods
and resources effectively, that they harness the productive potential of urban societies in ways
that enable the expansion of prosperity within the capacities of the planet, and that they
develop structures and processes of inclusion and participation that allow citizens to build a
better life for themselves- the central promise and challenge of transformative development
for the 21st century.
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