Future of Our Cities

Currently, more than half of the world’s population is living in cities and towns and it is expected to grow by 75 per cent by 2050. Developed countries have already attained a very high level of urbanisation while in developing countries more than half of the population is still living in the villages.

However, as compared to the developed countries, rates of growth of urbanisation are very high in developing countries and it has been projected that in the coming decades most of the population which will be added to the urban net will come from developing countries.

While growth rates of urbanisation in developing countries are comparatively higher, it is interesting to note that not all the urban centres are growing at a high pace rather only large cities are growing faster.

As a result, the distribution of the urban population in developing countries is skewed towards large cities. In 1950, there was only one city (New York) with more than 10 million population and currently (2015) 211 such cities of which 18 are from developing countries.

Along with the city growth in developing countries, countries’ economy is also increasingly concentrated in the cities. Like other developing countries, in India too, large cities are growing faster (although, the rate of growth has been declining in the last three decades) and an increasingly larger proportion of the urban population is concentrated in a handful of large cities. In 1951, there were only five million plus cities in India which has increased to 53 in 2011which accounts for 43 per cent of the total urban population.

Against this backdrop of comparatively rapid rates of population concentration in the cities of South as well as in Indian cities, the following questions are worthy to discuss in detail:

How long the cities will continue to grow?

If cities keep on growing, will they cater for the demand of the city’s poor and lower-middle class who constitute the bulk of the cities’ population?

What would be the spatial form of the large cities?

What are the issues cities likely to confront in the near future due to the changing economic, social, demographic and environmental characteristics?

How far the use of natural resources by the cities is sustainable?

Future of City Growth

Future of Cities’ Economy and Labour Market

Future Demographic Structure of the Cities

Future of Cities Environment

Conclusion:

Given the increasing dominance of cities in the share of a country’s total population, economy, culture, innovation etc. it is often said that “our cities; our future”. Here we made an effort to unfold the future of the cities of India in particular and those of developing countries in general, focusing on the future of cities’ growth, economy, demographic structure and environment.

The analysis can be summarised as follows: The pace of growth of cities has already slowed down and in the near future it will decline further. However, taking the advantage of “economies of scale”, in the future, cities will continue to act as engines of economic growth but there is little hope that the urban poor, working class and unskilled or semi-skilled labourers will be benefitted from the economic growth because the structural transformation of production system under the neoliberal regime goes against these underprivileged groups.

Along with the growth of cities economies and the growing concentration of the middle-class population in the cities, the quality of the environment in the cities will have deteriorated further and there would be little possibility of improving cities’ environment as long as cities will be following the SAPs.

Here, it needs less to elaborate that the deteriorated urban environment will affect mostly the urban poor. Apart from these, the growing concentration of the elderly population will be a new challenge to the cities of the developing world as it demands active involvement of the government in welfare activities while the governments of developing countries tend to follow the opposite path under the aegis of SAPs.

In response to these future challenges, several cities across the South have already taken several initiatives but most of such initiatives are being taken in a piecemeal way without integrating different sectors of development. As a result, the impacts of such initiatives largely remain unfelt from a macro perspective.