More than 50% of the world’s population live in cities and a phenomenally higher percentage is projected by 2020
David Macfarlane and Glenda Daniels Globalisation has led to a crisis of poverty and social disintegration in cities around the world. Traditional cities as coherent spaces of communal interaction are being overtaken by metropolitan sprawls. Reconstructing cities is therefore an urgent worldwide priority.
This was the argument of leading urban theorist, Professor Manuel Castells of the University of California, Berkeley, at the Urban Futures 2000 conference in Johannesburg this week. It was organised jointly by the University of the Witwatersrand and Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council. The conference provided debate on problems facing Johannesburg – such as social fragmentation, poverty, urban sprawl – by considering the multiple pressures of globalisation on cities worldwide. “Manuel Castells is to the contemporary phase of globalisation what Karl Marx was to an earlier phase. Castells is no less profound than Marx, though his conclusions are different,” said Wits sociologist Professor Eddie Webster, who chaired the session at which Castells spoke on Monday. Globalisation is having a more and more critical effect on people’s livelihoods, Castells said. Cities as traditionally conceived are disappearing and being replaced by enormously large “metropolitan sprawls”. Whereas cities used to be sites of communal interaction, the global communication network “appears to render cities obsolete”; but the paradox is that urbanisation is accelerating. More than 50% of the global population now live in urban areas and a phenomenally higher percentage is projected by 2020. The fastest rate of urbanisation in the world is in sub-Saharan Africa. In South America, 80% of people now live in cities – the stereotypical view of the continent as idyllically rural is a picture-postcard tourist clich’. Brazil is 82% urban, the United States 77% and Japan 78%. Relatively low urban levels in China and India (about 30% each) are expected to more than double by 2020. The metropolitan settlements that are absorbing cities, and vastly extending their peripheries, are accelerating – and the largest will be in the developing world, said Castells. The trend towards urbanisation is driven partly by the spatial concentration of jobs, human development possibilities and services such as finance, law, health and education. The significance of concentrating high-quality education, for example, in metropolitan areas is underscored by staggering figures that Castells provided: South Africa’s employment demand for those with tertiary qualifications has increased by 5 000% in two decades; by 300% for secondary qualifications; but has actually decreased for lower qualifications.
In an information technology age, knowledge and information are sources of value of power, he said, and the IT industry is always metropolitan, always territorially concentrated (Silicon Valley in California is merely the best-known example). A further impetus in the drive towards metropolitan concentration is the urban location of cultural industries such as media, film, art and tourism. The Internet is at the heart of the “informational paradigm”, said Castells, and yet it embodies a paradox. On the one hand, it is the most highly spatially concentrated industry in the world; on the other, the Internet contains no centrality – it is structured by nodes. Communication networks of major cities are therefore both global and local. The local, however, is being short-changed: because no city is secure from being disconnected from the global network of communications, a city’s constant battle to remain competitive pushes local considerations to the sidelines.
Metropolitan sprawls loosely link unrelated human activities along transport routes that themselves have no centre. Prominent examples are Bombay, Sao Paulo, Ile de France, Manila, Greater London, the San Francisco Bay area, Hong Kong and Canton. This leads to social fragmentation and segregation – and “unprecedented social problems”, Castells said. The past two decades have seen an unparalleled metropolitan concentration of extremes of wealth and poverty. However, this is not the traditional split between inner cities and suburbs. Currently, the most important urban trend is the extremely high rate at which upper-income groups are removing themselves from the cities – a far higher rate than any other group.
A pattern of “selective segregation” emerges as the urban elite insulate themselves within “gated communities”, protected by physical and other barriers from the outside world. As a result, the traditional city’s modes of communal integration start breaking down and social services disintegrate. This leads to “staggering environmental problems”, creating conditions conducive to epidemics, for example. This is not so, said Castells. The conservative argument is that the planet is over- populated; it is not. The US, for example, is half- empty. Rather, urban concentration is reaching levels where survivability itself is endangered. Reconstructing cities will need at least three elements. Accountable and democratic metropolitan governments, currently the exception, need to become the rule. Most metropolitan governments operate on a global level and let the local survive by itself. Secondly, new ideas of strategic planning are necessary. Clear social goals should be the priority, not inflexible traditional rules of urban planning. Thirdly, there is an urgent need to restore ways of balancing individual freedoms and communal interactions. One way is to recreate public spaces – now fast-disappearing – since it is there that communal cohesiveness can occur. Public spaces are the “signs of bridges among us”, said Castells. “We need to build bridges among different communication channels. Links must be restored between power and experience, culture and technology.”