Schwerpunkt: Megacities - ein zentraler Faktor für eine global nachhaltige Entwicklung

[1]

by Rüdiger Korff and Eberhard Rothfuß, University of Passau

Cities have always been dynamic places of change and beyond that of human civilisation. They are nodes connecting highly diverse networks, flows of people, capital and knowledge on local, regional and global levels (Castells 1996; Levebvre 1976). Thereby they are transformers of development processes (Braudel 1985; Dwyer 1972; Dwyer 1975). As development is ambivalent, it implies that cities are not only centres where problems, conflicts and tensions are concentrated and intensified, but also that they form innovative milieus (Hall 2000) continuously creating new ways of coping with changing circumstances (social creativity) (Holston 2002, p. 326; Korff 1988). Solutions to numerous problems faced by humankind are in fact invented and tested in the urban context and disseminated through city networks on national and global scales. In conclusion, a city is always as much a centre of conflicts, problems, tensions as it is a centre of innovations and solutions. Unfortunately, most research on megacities focuses on Cassandra-like warnings of a coming apocalypse and largely neglects identification of solutions created already.

1     Megacities and agglomeration

In contrast to several other approaches, we do not regard megacities as a current phenomenon only. If we define megacity as a settlement whose reproduction requires the supply of resources exceeding the capacities of its hinterland, megacities are a feature even of early urban life (Bairoch 1988; Benevolo 1991). Following this view, megacities depend on their integration as nodes or centres into an urban system.[2] The maintenance of megacities requires that a constant flow of resources is guaranteed. Therefore, early megacities were either centres of empires (Rome, Constantinople, X’ian, later London, Paris, Beijing, etc.) or of trade (Melaka) or a combination of both. Present megacities in developing countries seem to contradict this perspective. Lagos, Dacca, Khinshasa, etc. are certainly neither centres of empires nor of world-trade. However, as nodes articulating national economies with the world market, their reproduction derives from drawing most national resources combined with resources available through trade (formal as well as informal) and other transfers like transfers from migrants, development aid or capital from world-market integration.

In how far megacities might be a means to enhance global sustainability, or have to be seen as a force challenging sustainability, depends on the pattern of agglomeration. Megacities seem to indicate the “limits of urban growth”. But are there really such limits and are there definable benchmarks of optimal city size? Certainly such benchmarks can not be defined in absolute terms like number of population, city size, etc. Such simplistic definitions are based on arbitrary population numbers, which are highly unreliable and can certainly not be generalised. Doubtless, for a Chinese city like Chengdu (about ten million inhabitants), located in a very fertile basin, the limits are different then for Ürümqi (about two million inhabitants) at the edge of deserts and highland plains in the centre of China. It depends on the social, economic and ecological environment, of which the city is part, the interdependencies with the direct hinterland, and the urban system. The form of integration into the urban system and its different levels (regional, national, global) either enforce or allow for relative independence of the particular city from its hinterlands.

Two main patterns of agglomeration can be distinguished:

1. Polycentric agglomeration: This refers to the development of an urbanised society as it evolved for example in Europe, consisting of multiple closely interwoven and interdependent cities usually of medium and low size, which maintain a high level of political and cultural independence. It is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish hinterlands of particular cities, not the least because rural areas are characterised by industrialisation (manufacturing as well as agricultural production). One reason why urban-rural differences hardly exist are, following Krugman (1998), low costs in terms of money and time for transportation of goods and people, and a similar degree of integration into communication, social and political networks.
2. Monocentric agglomeration: Here the differences between rural and urban areas get enforced, what gives rise to a further concentration of urbanisation in specific centres that are often megacities. Krugman (1998) refers to this dynamic as “agglomeration shadow”. In particular, this urban form is found in emerging countries such as Brazil, Mexico, India or China. Here, costs for transportation in terms of money and time tend to be high and strong differences with regards to integration into educational, social, communicative and physical infrastructures prevail.

A special case of monocentric agglomeration could be termed “insular agglomeration”, when the city is comparatively independent from the hinterland. Such a situation evolves when expenses to transport resources from the hinterland into the city are very high and transport is unreliable compared to importing them. Typically, civil war situations, rural revolts and generally a low level of state control over the country (failed states) lead to such an insular agglomeration. Insular agglomeration certainly has negative effects on sustainability. However, we have to be aware that such a pattern evolves under the condition that social cohesion, governance and thus sustainability is already threatened in a far-reaching way. Thus, insular agglomeration, as a response to these factors, might even reduce vulnerability. The question is then not whether the megacity has negative implications for sustainability, but rather: Would sustainability be even worse without the rise of megacities?

When considering agglomeration in terms of sustainability, it is important to turn not only to the megacity, but its interdependencies with other large as well as smaller cities, because the intermediate and smaller cities play a crucial role with regards to agglomeration and sustainability. For example, they reduce economic and ecological costs for transportation. In other words, it is not sufficient to focus only on one pole, the megacity – it is also important to analyse the degree of integration of the national urban system. Even the agglomeration shadow of a megacity can have the positive effect of spreading innovations and improve the integration of rural hinterlands into infrastructures (Aguilar, Ward 2003) and thereby facilitate integration. A good example is for instance farmers’ production of vegetables, flowers or meat for the urban market. Thereby the farmers gain a higher income and the city is provided with needed goods, while costs for transportation remain low due to the proximity. The situation is similar for small scale manufacturing and crafts as well as for education, as educational facilities are closely correlated to urban centres. Consequently, the situation of large cities that are integrated into structured urban systems connected by a well maintained infrastructure is far different from that of large cities which are loosely connected through a hardly working infrastructure with the region, but far stronger integrated into global flows.

Turning to the internal structure of a megacity, typical patterns of decentralisation, or rather internal “poly-centric” agglomeration occur. Due to rapid growth of population, former villages and towns are integrated into the city as nuclei and evolve as sub-centres. With the increase of distances within the city (time needed for travelling, traffic jams, costs, etc.), further sub-centres develop or connect to old cores as intermediate places serving the quarter. Then a typical dynamic of a larger city is that capital intensive industries locate at the fringe while labour intensive industries tend to be located in the city centre. The employment opportunities at the fringe resulting from industrialisation draw migrants into these areas. New quarters emerge and new sub-centres evolve. These later become spaces for labour-intensive activities, as a result of further city growth. In a kind of leap-frog pattern, fringe areas become part of the inner city, accompanied by the movement of former industries into the new peripheral regions.

2     Megacities – Problem or solution?

Megacities seem to defy the view of the city to be not only a concentration of problems, but as well of solutions. In contrast, they set the stage for visions of urban catastrophes. Simply to supply them with water (and bring the water out again), food etc. has already far-reaching negative ecological implications. The size of these cities makes them widely ungovernable (Mertins, Kraas 2008). As they are centres of migrants from very different backgrounds, social control and social cohesion is lacking, which leads to violence and the dissolution of social bonds. The trajectories of an urban catastrophe are well known. The only solution is proper planning based on the latest technical expertise. But already the simple calculation of how landscapes and ecologies might be maintained without megacities indicates that even these cities are a kind of solution (see figure 1).

Crucial for urban development is not primarily to find new technical solutions, but to identify, how solutions are already created within the city, and build on these. Consequently, a major task for further research on megacities is to modify the expert perspective towards a citizen perspective, where the citizens define what kind of technical solutions are required. With citizen perspective we do not refer to common techniques of participatory research combined with stakeholder meetings. We follow an understanding of the city as formulated by Max Weber (1922) and Henri Lefebvre (1972, 1976) that a city is structured by communication, and thus, solutions have to be based on communication.[3] In fact, a major research field is to analyse exactly these patterns of communication among citizens and between citizens and the administration, taking into account the formal established channels, but focussing much more on the existing informal ways how demands are articulated and how citizens make use of the city in their everyday life practices. In contrast to universally valid technical solutions for proper planning, which, however, tend not to work properly, an analysis of communication and processes by which citizens devise solutions faces the problem of particularities. In fact, each city is particular, what makes it so difficult to design universally valid solutions.

With the concept of “urban revolution” we follow Lefebvre’s arguments. It has to be kept in mind that a revolution is an open process without pre-defined results. Even if people, be it urban planner, administrator or citizen, have clear intentions, what happens is always a mixture between intentions and unintended consequences. Therefore, whether the current process of urban revolution enhances sustainability or not is itself an issue for research. Such research will have to focus on the processes of urban change and what brings about such changes.

Figure 1: At the crossroads. Alternative urban trajectories

Source: Own compilation

3     Three cases of (mega)cities

That each city has to be considered as a specific case is valid for megacities as well. We will briefly present three cases to indicate differences and similarities.

3.1   Salvador da Bahia (Brazil)

Brazil, as Latin America in general, is one of the most urbanised regions in the developing world, experiencing falling urban growth rates since the past decades (UN HABITAT 2008). In Salvador, a city of three million inhabitants, the current urbanisation rate is comparatively low, at about two percent. Salvador is the third largest city in Brazil and faces a major challenge: the tremendous social inequality, the huge gap between rich and poor, dialectically connected to literacy, education, skills, exclusion in general, which is strongly related to the high unemployment rates that require a high level of informal and illegal strategies to earn an income for a large part of the population in slum areas, the so-called favelas (Rothfuß 2008). The degree of social and economic stratification is high and directly connected to exclusion. This results in a very inadequate supply of public consumer goods and housing for the poor. Through political exclusion low socio-economic status transforms into spatial marginalisation and stigmatisation. Selforganisation is limited by crime combined with patronage, which in turn reduces chances for participation (Mertins, Mueller 2008).

3.2   Chennai (India)

Chennai, a city of nearly five million inhabitants, is of medium size in the Indian context. Recently, Chennai was defined as Coastal City Disaster Risk Hot Spot (earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, etc.). It is a rapidly growing centre for manufacturing in India that draws migrants to Chennai. Industries are located at the fringe and here new living quarters are rapidly evolving on marginal land. This implies far-reaching transformations of peripheral urban nuclei. Commonly, self-organisation in slum areas is based on traditional forms of social cooperation and is surprisingly efficient in maintaining community and providing for mutual support. Due to multicommunal in-migration, these traditional forms have adapted to new circumstances within the peripheral nuclei. This is an urgent on-going task, because natural risk management within slum areas depends on existing forms of cooperation, as the Tsunami in 2004 clearly indicated. Municipal authorities try to interface with local governance organisations, particularly with regards to risk management and slum improvement (Bohle, Sakdapolrak 2008).

3.3   Shanghai (China)

Shanghai is a multi-ethnic global megacity with about 14 million inhabitants where the market economy is dominant. The urban development follows a top-down approach directed by the administration. Over recent decades, Chinese cities have undergone farreaching changes brought about not the least by a policy of rapid modernisation and market deregulation. In many cities, former villages have been integrated into the proper city. In these Cheng Zhong Cun (“villages in the city”), previous inhabitants live together with recent migrants in crowded conditions. Formerly, the “villages” were substituted by high-rise buildings. Since maintaining heritage has increased in relevance, the improvement of people’s living conditions has gained in importance. Urban reconstruction, following a top-down approach of the administration, has recently encountered opposition. Currently, there are discussions about how inhabitants with highly diverse cultural backgrounds can be better integrated and their needs addressed more effectively.

These three cases indicate differences regarding major challenges of the cities, capacities of the administration and adoption strategies of the inhabitants. In Shanghai, an efficient administration is able to implement its plans. However, this policy of rapid modernisation and market orientation comes with high ecological costs. In Salvador, the slum regions are more or less ignored by the administration. They are left to their own devices. Although this opens chances for self-organisation, in combination with poverty and lack of administrative supervision, it easily leads to criminality, although even “criminal” organisations often have positive effects on the neighbourhoods. In many cases they are the only guarantee for local control of violence and support. In Chennai, there are quite well-working communities. In contrast to Shanghai, the capacity of the administration to implement plans is limited. The reason is not the least that in Chennai democratic forms are well established.

These cases show that there are no easy solutions, especially not from outside. In fact, those who live in the city, those who have to cope with it, must have a far more advanced understanding of its dynamics then external planners. Thus, the available local expertise should be recognised as prime asset for sustainable urban development.

4     Megacities and mega-slums

A crucial issue of urbanisation and in particular of megacities are slums. In fact, much of current urban growth (even in developed countries) means an extension of slum areas. In 2001, 31.6 percent of the urban world population lived in slums (UN HABITAT 2003: xxv). Data from UN HABITAT (2008) estimate the percentage of slum dwellers in Latin America at 27, for Southern Asia at 43 and for China at 37 percent. The UN predicts the number of slum dwellers to rise to 2 billion within the next 30 years if no action is taken (UNFPA 2007; Davis 2006). The ambivalence of urban development mentioned above is most explicit in slum areas. The problem is that slums will remain an integral part of cities and will expand in the future. Even in emerging countries with very high economic growth rates like China, India and Brazil or in Europe, the population living under substandard conditions and generally the “urban poor” are not decreasing. Funding public housing for the urban poor and establishing social welfare systems is beyond the capacity of most municipalities. But even without such financial limitations it is technically impossible to provide decent housing for, in many cases, more than half of the population of a city within a short time.

Although the negative aspects and dynamics of slums cannot be disputed, the positive aspects of slums in terms of providing infrastructure, housing, communal integration and control, should not be ignored either. In slums, practical solutions for environmental, social and economic problems are created. These solutions have to be taken into consideration for sustainable development, because any policy limiting the adaptive/creative capacities amplifies social and cultural problems. It is crucial to understand that slums are centres of poverty, criminality and ecological problems; but they are as much centres were practical solutions are developed. Even though cities show clear advantages to fight poverty, they are not yet seen as places that can provide solutions. Consequently, the positive aspects of slums in terms of providing infrastructure, housing, communal integration and control are widely ignored.

One important dynamic that enhances sustainability is that slum dwellers have to maximise their use of free resources. In the urban context, these are cast-offs from the better-off, like waste or trash. Recycling is therefore a prime income-generating activity for many slum dwellers, reaching from scavenging to organic food production (pig and chicken raising, small-scale agriculture, etc.). Consequently, without slums, the ecological conditions would be far worse.

In the Istanbul declaration of HABITAT, self-organisation within slum areas is taken as crucial for coping with housing problems, as neither the public sector nor the market are able to provide sufficient housing for the urban poor. Beyond the immediate housing problem, local self-organisation allows communal integration of slum areas into the wider urban system. This reduces violence and social as well as cultural conflicts, enhances economic productivity, produces social capital, and provides a better level of resilience and security. Often, urban planning intends to solve the problems related to slums, possible damage of self-organisation, and thereby increases problems. A non-biased approach to processes of communication and selforganisation in slum areas is important for a realistic evaluation of the role of slums (and its inhabitants) for urban sustainability.

Such points are by no means irrelevant to Europe where, despite the existence of welldeveloped welfare and social integration systems and markets, poverty and social exclusion continue to exist and areas of the cities remain socially and spatially excluded. Mingione’s (1991) research in Europe suggests that recipro-cal forms of exchange remain an important alternative to the market and welfare state in the provision and (re-)distribution of resources necessary for the survival of households and local communities. Indeed, his work suggests that this system is, in a reconstructed form, assuming an increasingly important role among sectors of the population experiencing casualisation of work, unemployment and welfare state cuts (Atkinson 2008; Atkinson, Carmichael 2007), most of which involve some form of community participation. However, there is much less emphasis on the informal activities and resources that local / neighbourhood communities already possess, even though a recognition is slowly emerging that within deprived / marginalised areas there are often many forms of self-organisation and other activities that contribute to regeneration and problem solving.

5     Urban self-organisation

Self-organisation is not limited to slum areas. It is crucial for the functioning of a city and for coping strategies of the citizens. Selforganisation provides multiple benefits and reduces costs for the people as well as the administration. Through self-help, housing is provided and does not have to be provided by the state. In addition, recycling and waste treatment is organised informally and the city is supplied with cheap resources regarding informal trade, food production, labour, etc. With improved social cohesion, social control improves and thereby external control can be reduced. The self-organised, functioning community is itself a resource (or social capital) for its members that provide mutual support and thereby economic and social security. Social capital is increasingly taken into account, but as a personal asset. In contrast to these perspectives of social capital, research on social capital as a “collective property resource” is required. In fact, social capital is produced through social creativity by collectives. Social creativity is the ability to create new patterns of social relations and patterns of organisation. Thus, in self-organisation social capital is maintained as collective agency through a process by which a socially cohesive collective maintains itself.

Neighbourhood, joint working and collective activities are means through which multicultural tolerance is established. Enhanced coordination and cooperation allows for differentiation and specialisation within the organisation, which in turn strengthens the potential for strategically pushing certain interests (Castells 1983). Mayntz (2006) has drawn attention to the importance of self-organisation for governance. Self-organisation has further a sociospatial connotation (Barros, Sobreira 2002). Multiple social relations and interdependencies between inhabitants developing out of work, trade, neighbourhood, kinship or friendship become stabilised through organisation. This is particularly the case when the problems to be addressed require collective action. In these cases, self-organisation is connected to territorial definitions and demarcations of a collective. This is defined as “locality”. Localities neither resemble administrative districts, nor closely knit communities. What defines a locality are the local organisations that have the capacity to define and maintain spatial boundaries (Berner, Korff 1995; Korff 2003).

The discussion of the “informal sector” has drawn attention to socially embedded economic relations (Rothfuß, Deffner 2007). One important finding of studies on the urban informal sector was that it is closely linked to the urban poor as a means to gain access to resources (income, consumer goods, housing and land tenure).[4] However, informal activities are not isolated from the market economy. In contrast, economic activities in the formal and informal sector tend to be interwoven.

6     Consensual urban governance

Urban planning has so far been unable to significantly reduce urban problems on a global scale. Nevertheless, megacities still exist and perform surprisingly well. We think that this is due to competences and knowledge of the (subaltern) citizens. In fact, their life depends on finding solutions. Consequently, a (new) approach to urban governance should be based on these competences, instead of training inhabitants to be able to cope with expert planning. This implies a general assessment of the conditions that limit urban sustainability from a per-spective of how communication proceeds within the city, i.e. what institutional framework exists and how it facilitates citizen participation. To improve sustainability in a fragmented city characterised by exclusion, where most inhabitants are not recognised by the administration, as it is the case in Salvador da Bahia in Brazil, is impossible. Similarly, even if the administration is able to implement development plans like in Shanghai, sustainability can hardly be improved if based on repression.

The most crucial aspect of urban sustainability is that it has to be based on a general consensus of goals and future visions (innovations, importance of the public sphere, civil society and habitat) for all people living in the city. Such an idea of a consensus reached through public discourse reminds of the Agora, as the public centre of politics of the polis. In a metaphorical way, governance based on reaching a public consensus can be called “Agoragovernance”. Certainly, the Agora of the polis implied already patterns of exclusion resulting from power relations and valorisation of knowledge, as only the free men were allowed to articulate themselves. In difference to antiquity, in the present all humans are regarded as equal, and consequently, Agora-governance demands open access to the Agora, or to the public sphere to articulate demands, visions and ideas. Consequently, power relations and expertise have to be modified to allow for participatory inclusion in decisions about the future development of cities (Carley et al. 2001). Here, the analysis of the institutional framework is of main relevance, as it perpetuates exclusion. However, institutional change is not easily brought about, because it only works if the institutions make sense to the citizens. It requires, first of all, that “inhabitants” must be recognised as citizens. Such a change allows the rise of organisations that enable the articulation of interests (public sphere) and the creation of supporting social and economic practices (self-help, mutual cooperation, business networks, informal sector). Accordingly, urban governance has to interface with these organisations. Self-organisation is the crucial process for such a transition towards real (rather than virtual) citizen participation. Consequently, self-organisation is a necessity for urban sustainability (see figure 2).

Figure 2: Approach to sustainable urban development

Source: Own compilation

Recently, new modes of inclusive governance, sustainability and citizen participation have become widely accepted aspects of contemporary urban policy in Europe and across the world. Supranational organisations such as the EU, World Bank and IMF all support this approach. This general recognition contrasts to its implementation in policies and projects. One reason might be that it demands to address not only the economic preconditions for development, but also the social preconditions in terms of community self-organisation and resilience (Stiglitz 1998).

7     Conclusion

Taking self-organisation seriously demands an actor- and everyday-life-oriented perspective to understand developments in cities. This draws attention to the interfaces between organisations and the administration to allow for citizen participation. Thereby, consensual visions – a kind of “Agora Governance” – for a sustainable future of the city can be developed. Such an idea of sustainability of active participation of citizens in urban development engenders social, economic, political as well as environmental urban structures which control, develop and innovate their own specific potentials.

Research should focus on “what makes a city a city is communication”. Communication requires public spaces and public spheres where citizens can fulfil their main function as citizens: shape the future of their city based on mutual agreement of its future.

Notes

[1]  We want to thank Rob Atkinson (University of the West of England, Cities Research Centre) and Justin Beaumont (University of Groningen, Urban and Regional Studies Institute) for their comments and inputs.

[2]  Following Guidoni (1995) an urban system is formed by interdependencies between cities based on complementarity or similarity of interests of groups within the cities. Currently even small remote cities are part of a global urban system (GaWC, http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/rb/rb5.html). However, not all cities and not all parts of the cities are integrated into this system to the same degree. Depending on the groups and the corresponding interdependencies, clusters of more or less closely connected cities ex-ist. In many cases, the administration provides for the existence and maintenance of national, provincial etc. urban systems and degrees of centrality of capital cities. However, depending on the patterns of agglomeration, cities in different countries might be closer linked with each other then those within one country.

[3]  Besides the market place, the “political community” of the “Bürger” was the defining characteristic for a city, as Weber (1922) notes. For Lefebvre (1976), industrialisation and urbanisation are two sides of the same process, i.e. the development of capitalism. Industrialisation characterises the instrumental aspect, the incredible development of technologies, to transform and dominate nature, while urbanisation is linked to the social component, communication and meaning. The industrial city indicates the subjugation of urbanisation under the demands of industries and its instrumental rationality. Urban revolution indicates a shift by which the instruments do not define meaning, or the means define the purposes), but that through communication the meaning (Sinn) of instruments is defined.

[4]  In this context see Durand-Lasserve 1997.

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Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Korff
Universität Passau
Philosophische Fakultät
Lehrstuhl für Südostasienkunde II (Festland)
Innstraße 43, 94032 Passau

Dr. Eberhard Rothfuß
Universität Passau
Philosophische Fakultät
Lehrstuhl für Anthropogeographie
Innstraße 40, 94032 Passau