Our Urban Nightmare
By Mir Adnan Aziz
06 June,
2008
Countercurrents.org
On May 23, 2007, the world
reached a seemingly invisible but momentous milestone. For the first
time in history the world's urban population outnumbered the rural
one. Now more than half its human population, 3.3 billion is living
in urban areas. By 2030, this is expected to swell to almost 5 billion.
Many of the new urbanites will be poor. Their future, the future of
our cities and the future of humanity itself, all depends very much
on decisions made now in preparation for this growth.
Towns and town creation play an important role to impose control over
the country. It also directs the activities of urban residents towards
the larger purpose of establishing an administrative network and helps
attain national prosperity. Unfortunately powerful political and economic
interests shape urban policies to line their own pockets. The middle
and working classes pay the bills for humongous, perpetually undelivered
projects and programs.
There is an ominous divide between the urban and rural economy. Incomes
in the cities have greatly increased for some whereas rural residents,
who make up a huge section of the population, have barely felt the
effect. This economic differential leads to large scale resentment
and a sense of deprivation. The widening divide in turn drives millions
into the cities, creating slums filled with poor, dislocated people.
To slow down this stampede, we have to bring jobs to the countryside.
Investors should be encouraged to build factories away from the presently
focused main cities and help boost the local cottage industry.
The course of sustainable development at the local and regional levels
requires the pursuit of economic policies that do not add new burdens
to the carrying capacity of our locale. Population shifts or migrations
to urban areas globally have traditionally been a tell-tale sign of
many issues. Here people move for assumed advantages, such as employment,
educational and economic opportunities. There is also forced movement
to flee environmental crises, persecution and violence at the hands
of the feudal.
In Pakistan what is happening today is the migration of farmers, peasants
and landless rural families to cities that do not have sufficient
means to absorb the newcomers productively. The result has been an
explosive growth of slums with hungry miserable people without access
to even the basic necessities of life. Here these souls discover their
utopia to be a concrete jungle with sprawling slums, massive traffic
jams, chronic unemployment, no education/health care, almost no electrical/water
services, less recreational facilities and sky-rocketing food costs.
This urban nightmare is almost impossible to escape as it ensnarls
millions. People migrate, more are born into it through no fault of
their own; to live and die in it. They are unable to escape its grip,
thanks to the numerous barriers purposefully placed by the oblivious
system. With this urban explosion, the feeble obsolete infrastructure
crumbles further, with the housing situation aggravating with each
passing day.
Our bourgeoning population growth at almost 3 percent and strong inward
migration (rural to urban) trends add to the woes. This is also compounded
by the decreasing average household size in our urban centers. This
translates into more houses for a smaller number of people. For a
population of 160 million there are nearly 19 million houses countrywide
against a required 26 million. This leaves a staggering shortfall
of nearly 7 million houses.
The number is huge if seen against the backdrop of housing units being
built annually. The bulk of existing 19 million houses consist of
67 percent rural houses, while kuccha and semi pukka houses account
for about 40 percent of total housing units. Room density for Pakistan
and India is nearly 3.5 persons per room while it is 1.3, 1.1 and
0.5 in the case of Turkey, China and USA respectively. At present
the urban housing demand stands at 8 percent per annum.
The rural-urban migration may be a global phenomenon but developing
countries like Pakistan with already over burdened urban cities, seem
reeling under the endless deluge. Karachi, that utopian beacon for
all, is attracting more than 250,000 to 300,000 people annually! This
mass migration adds to the innumerable woes of this city ominously
creaking at the seams.
Migrants inhabit squatter settlements or shanty towns called katchi
abadis. Karachi has 539 katchi abadis and a staggering 49 percent
of the city population lives there. Presently 30,000 housing units,
a fraction of the gigantic demand, are being constructed. Pakistan's
social and human indicators too make for dismal reading. In the context
of development, the government faces a three pronged crises: wide-spread
poverty, fast track unplanned urbanization and rapid erosion of our
natural resource base.
Over two-thirds of our adult population is illiterate. 740,000 child
deaths are reported each year, half of them linked to malnutrition.
This is one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. Pakistan
is also experiencing one of the fastest rates of urbanization in the
developing world. This will result in the urban population exceeding
the rural by the turn of the century. Our population growth rate is
the highest in South Asia. According to long-term UN projections,
Pakistan will emerge as the third most populous country in the world
by the year 2050.
Already, 36 million people live in absolute poverty. More than half
of the cultivable land in the holdings of 50 acres and above is in
the hands of big landlords, thereby encouraging the rich-poor divide
to further widen. Even after six decades of independence we are essentially
a feudal society. Ultimately, collapse always results in the 'abandonment'
of urban centers, but that abandonment can take many forms. Sometimes,
it means just what the word implies-people move out of the cities.
Other times, it means that everyone crowds into the cities, hoping
to escape the poverty of the countryside, only to die in an orgy of
violence, famine and disease.
A lack of imagination, rather than lack of skills, is a far more critical
distinction between survivors and victims. To learn to make our cities
livable we will have to break some longstanding chronic habits. The
hardest habit to break is the 'syndrome of tragedy', that brooding
feeling, like we are terminal patients in almost all walks of life.
There is absolutely no dearth of 'specialists' out to prove that change
is not possible. What has to be explained to them is that it takes
the same energy to say why something cannot be done as to figure out
how to do it, provided an honest working will is there.
We long for a spiritually satisfying niche, a human habitat that cooperates
with our biological nature, a community rich with multifarious interactions.
Communities are living, growing organisms that need constant internal
regulation and whose health should be based upon happiness alone.
'No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far
greater part are poor and miserable'. Adam Smith made that statement
back in the 18th century. It holds true for the Pakistan of today.
Today our struggling cities, like almost everything else, are portrayed
as evolutionary dead ends, with no future to contemplate. Our vision
should be less a dream, an end-point or an unrealizable utopian existence,
out there somewhere in the future; it should instead be an unending
process to promote social justice and economic well-being among all
Pakistanis. We should work towards peace with nature and that enveloping
ecosystem which sustains life on our planet and is the true source
of our natural capital.
It is time to raise our voices in opposition to the degradation of
our lives, the jeopardizing of our individual and collective health
and well being and above all the pollution of our politics. The consumer
culture we inhabit bombards us with messages to buy beyond our budgets
and live beyond our means. We can be more happy and content if we
could but get off the habit of buying too much and consuming thoughtlessly.
Hiding our unhappiness by frolicking in this consumer paradise for
some, we who can, eat too much, spend too much, and waste too much
time on things that do not matter. Along the way, we contribute to
the plunder of nature's depleting capital and the theft of our children's
future.
It is time to construct a future where people and nature matter, where
wealth is based on the things that count rather than merely the things
that can be counted. It is time to find the means for putting our
urban house in order by planting seeds that will establish new roots
for our urban community; enliven and enrich the nourishing soil on
which we depend for human life itself.
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