Urban settings as an opportunity for realizing all …URBAN SETTINGS AS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR REALIZING...

1Second High Level Meeting on South-South Cooperation for Child Rights in Asia and the PacificNew Delhi, 23-25 October 2013

Urban settings as an opportunity for realizing all child rights

South-South Cooperation for Child Rights Working Paper 4

UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia (ROSA) UNICEF Regional Office for East Asia and Pacific (EAPRO)

September 2013

URBAN SETTINGS AS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR REALIZING ALL CHILD RIGHTS

Jaideep Gupte2

UNICEF ROSA-EAPRO REGIONAL OFFICE WORKING PAPERS ARE INTENDED TO DISSEMINATE INITIAL

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS ADDRESSING KEY ISSUES RELATED TO SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION FOR

THE REALIZATION OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS IN ASIA AND THE PACIFIC.

THE FINDINGS, INTERPRETATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS PAPER ARE THOSE OF THE

AUTHORS AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE POLICIES OR VIEWS OF UNICEF.

THE TEXT HAS NOT BEEN EDITED TO OFFICIAL PUBLICATION STANDARDS AND UNICEF ACCEPTS NO

RESPONSIBILITY FOR ERRORS.

EXTRACTS FROM THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE FREELY REPRODUCED WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.

© United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) September 2013

Suggested citation:Gupte, Jaideep. Urban Settings as an Opportunity for realizing all Child Rights, South-South Cooperation for Child Rights Working Papers 3, UNICEF ROSA and UNICEF EAPRO, Kathmandu, September 2013.

South-South Cooperation for Child Rights Working Papers

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Urban settings as an opportunity for realizing all child rights

Jaideep Gupte Institute of Development Studies, UK

September 2013

UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia (ROSA) UNICEF Regional Office for East Asia and Pacific (EAPRO)


Jaideep Gupte4

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Comments and feedback from several individuals helped support the preparation of this report. While any shortcomings are mine alone, I would like to thank Richard Jolly and Allister McGregor for their comments on early ideas and versions of this report. I would also like to thank very useful inputs, ideas and suggestions from Chris Bene, Amita Bhide, Joaquin Gonzalez-Aleman, Mary Grace Agcaoli, Tomoo Hozumi, Karin Hulshof, Dolf te Lintelo, Robert Muggah, David Parker, Keetie Roelen, Sheridan Bartlett, Kerry Constabile, Alessandra Heinemann, Andrea Rossi and Tejinder Sandhu. I would also like to thank participants and Unicef staff at the Beijing HLM-preparatory meeting for useful suggestions, the participants of various discussion groups on urbanisation in the Vulnerability and Poverty Reduction Team, at IDS, and to Jeff Sherman for very able research assistance.

The paper received valuable inputs from anonymous peer reviewers and was edited for the general audience.

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CONTENTS

Executive summary ....................................................................................................7

1. Introduction ..............................................................................................................12

2. What are urban settings? ........................................................................................13

3. Macro trends in urban growth: rates and absolute size ......................................15

3.1 THE IMPORTANCE OF SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED TOWNS ........................................................16

3.2 VARIABILITY WITHIN URBAN SETTINGS ........................................................................................17

4. Policy challenges in urban settings ........................................................................20

4.1 URBAN POVERTY ................................................................................................................................20

4.2 DISASTERS AND IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE .........................................................................21

4.3 POLLUTION ..........................................................................................................................................22

4.4 LACK OF SPACE ..................................................................................................................................22

5. How do urban environments affect children in the region? ................................23

5.1 BASIC SERVICES AND MULTIDIMENSIONAL EFFECTS ..................................................................23

6. Creating enabling environments for urban children .............................................27

6.1 URBAN GOVERNANCE AND INCLUSION .........................................................................................27

6.2 URBAN PLANNING, WITH A FOCUS ON EQUITY AND CHILD RIGHTS .........................................28

6.3 DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE URBAN POOR AND POLICY-MAKERS .................................................29

6.4 THE NEED FOR DISAGGREGATED DATA ..........................................................................................30

6.5 EFFECTIVE AND COORDINATED ENGAGEMENT OF RELEVANT ACTORS ...................................30

6.6 SOUTH-SOUTH LEARNING ................................................................................................................32

7. Policy issues on children and cities ........................................................................33

Key policy questions ................................................................................................34

Endnotes ...................................................................................................................36


Jaideep Gupte6

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Asia and the Pacific, home to 60% of the world’s people, is the most densely populated region after Europe, despite having far lower levels of urbanization. This brief focuses on the challenges posed by urban poverty and exclusion, and the need to ensure that urban settings live up to their potential for realizing the rights of all children as the region continues to develop rapidly.

Hundreds of millions of urban children in Asia, along with their households and communities, have moved out of poverty in recent decades, and cities have been engines of opportunity in this regard. Concentrations of people and investment can stimulate innovation and development, but these benefits are seldom equally shared. Urbanization can boost economic growth, but these growing economies often become more stratified, especially in cities. Economic growth alone is not a solution, and often goes hand in hand with widening disparities and stagnant levels of absolute poverty. The opportunities that potentially exist for all urban children in Asia can only be realized through a reduction in urban inequalities. This requires strong political will and effective governance, not only at national level but also from local governments and civil society.

SOME MAJOR TRENDS Urban dwellers made up 44% of the region’s population in 2010 (more in East Asia, less in South and West Asia) and their number is currently increasing at an average annual rate of 2.4%.

This is mostly from natural increase, although rural-urban migration plays a greater role in some countries (especially in China). Although urban growth has slowed, UN projections suggest there will be 1.4 billion more urban dwellers in the region by 2050. This will help to fuel considerable economic growth, pulling millions of households into the middle class and creating significant opportunities, not only economic but also cultural and technological.

However, this increase in the number of urban dwellers with their rising expectations represents an enormous challenge, especially to the local governments responsible for providing services. These local governments already face considerable backlogs in providing housing and infrastructure. Almost a third of Asia’s urban population lives in under-served slums and informal settlements. Their proportion is higher in several countries: 71% in Bangladesh, 59% in Nepal, 47% in Pakistan, and 42% in the Philippines. Furthermore, the absolute number of people living in slums is projected to grow.

Asia is home to many of the world’s largest cities, but almost half its urban residents live in centres of under 500,000 people, compared to about 13% of people who live in mega-cities. Small towns and cities can be vital for local economic growth, also benefiting the areas around them. But they have their own challenges and can suffer from low levels of resources and government capacity. They often concentrate higher numbers of those in poverty, and require particular support from national governments.

Executive summaryUrban settings as an opportunity for realizing all child rights


Jaideep Gupte8

The underestimation of urban poverty

Extreme poverty has declined markedly in Asia over the last decade, even if this decline has been overwhelmingly concentrated in China, which is home to almost 80% of those who moved out of poverty during the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) campaign. Most of the people still living on less than USD1.25 a day are in South Asia1. While poverty has declined overall, inequalities have deepened. In urban areas these inequalities are often accompanied by high levels of stress, instability and violence.

Assessments of poverty routinely conclude that it is a far greater problem in rural areas, and this holds true for Asia. But simplistic rural-urban comparisons mask the scale and depth of urban deprivation. It should be noted that:

• Average poverty rates for cities and urban areas hide vast disparities.

• Informal settlements, home to the poorest, tend to be excluded or under-sampled when poverty data is gathered, thus producing skewed figures.

• Most poverty lines fail to take account of the higher cost of living in urban areas. It is blatantly impossible to live on USD1.25 a day in most cities, where the economy is cash-based with high costs for non-food needs, and there is no space for subsistence farming.

Despite shortcomings in data and definitions, there is evidence that poverty, hunger, disease and a lack of basic services are becoming more prevalent in many urban areas. Poverty in Asia is an increasingly urban phenomenon, and achieving the MDGs (or whatever replaces them post-2015) may well become most difficult in under-served urban areas.

Poverty lines also obscure other critical dimensions of poverty relevant to children. Even for urban households that are not formally ‘poor’, inadequate housing, insecure tenure, poor quality or absent basic services, ill health, and political invisibility are facts of life. For those in peripheral areas, transport costs alone can deplete meagre earnings.

The lack of adequate basic services

Despite large investments over recent decades and substantial gains, especially in Southeast Asia, most large cities in Asia still suffer from irregular water supplies, an absence of sewers, uncollected garbage, congestion and pollution. Provision in

smaller urban centres is even worse and in most informal settlements the situation is especially dire. Estimates for ‘improved’ provision in water and sanitation show a number of Asian countries on track to meet full coverage, with considerably better access in urban than in rural areas. But there is also evidence of stagnating or even declining progress in some urban areas, while rural areas move ahead. In Pakistan, the proportion of urban dwellers with improved sanitation has remained at 72% since 1990; in Bangladesh it has declined.

More important is the fact that the standards for ‘improved’ provision are totally inappropriate in dense conditions. Hard-to-maintain pit latrines, water points with long lines and irregular supplies may count as ‘improved, but in dense urban areas, the only adequate forms of supply are sewer systems and piped water to premises. In some countries, there have been impressive gains on these fronts. In others, they remain unavailable to most people. In Indonesia, 92% of the urban population has ‘improved’ provision for water, but only 36% have water piped to their premises. In Bangladesh, the figures are 85% and 20%. In much of South Asia, the proportion of urban dwellers served with water piped to their premises has actually dropped since 1990. Most Asian cities also lack sewer systems except in limited areas, which has severe implications for people’s health.

Given that density is conducive to cost-effective service provision, urban children should enjoy easier access to health and education services than their rural counterparts. In reality, however, access remains elusive for many, despite geographic proximity to schools and hospitals. In Delhi for instance, in 2006, less than 40% of poor urban children were immunized, compared to 65% in surrounding rural areas and 69% in other parts of the city. In 2007, 80% of the city’s out-of-school children were found to be concentrated in the most marginalized areas. The Education For All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report for 2009 reported children in urban slums to be among the hardest to reach in many countries.

Air pollution

Recent research indicates that the dangers of air pollution in the region are far higher than previously thought, a grim side effect of economic growth. Of the estimated 2.5 million global premature deaths a year from ambient air pollution (fine particulate matter and ozone), the great majority are in Asia, with the worst conditions in East Asia, followed by India and Southeast Asia. Worsening air quality, according to the United Nations Economic and

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Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP), is hitting an all-time high in urban Asia, generated by vehicles, industry and energy production, with cross-border pollution becoming a growing problem. Almost a third of the region’s population still relies on solid fuels, so indoor pollution is responsible for another 1.6 million deaths (almost half the global total) and high levels of morbidity. In South Asia it has become the leading risk factor for the burden of disease.

Climate change and disasters

Weather-related disasters have become increasingly common in Asia, and the region is extremely vulnerable to the risks associated with climate change. In huge coastal cities like Dhaka, Bangkok, Mumbai and Shanghai, millions of people (and their property and enterprises) are at risk from rising sea levels and storm surges. Many cities are also exposed to cyclones and hurricanes, and many cities have expanded into areas that may be at high risk, like steep slopes or river beds. Informal settlements house many of the most vulnerable people and enterprises, least able to invest in preventive measures or to recover from extreme events. They often live in the most hazardous areas, lacking basic infrastructure necessary to withstand more extreme conditions.

Climate change calls of course for mitigation. But adaptation is a priority for reducing risk and ensuring that urban economies, enterprises, communities and children are as resilient as possible. Asian countries are at the forefront in accumulating and sharing knowledge and experience in this regard. A network of secondary cities, for instance, has identified a number of specific measures that can strengthen cities while taking account of equity issues.

Violence and stress

It is widely accepted that inequalities and deprivation fuel frustration and stress, which in turn can lead to violence and dysfunction both at household and community levels. The growing spatial segregation of rich and poor reinforces inequalities, eroding civic life and often concentrating illegal activities in poor settlements, where the lack of police protection accompanies an absence of provision on other fronts. Crowding, noise and other environmental stressors add to the strain, increasing tensions and undermining social capital.

Informality

Informality is a central characteristic to urban life in Asia, whether in employment, housing or services. Informal solutions make survival possible for the hundreds of millions of excluded people, although the cost of informality can be significant. Over the longer term, informal solutions can entrench barriers to secure tenure, basic services, education and other fundamental rights. The poor may find ways to earn money, but they still have no security against income shocks and fluctuations, and no chance of upward mobility. They may find a place to live in the city, but lack the secure foothold and formal identity which are often a prerequisite to move out of poverty. Even in democratic countries, forced evictions turn life upside down for millions each year, eroding hard-won gains.

THE IMPLICATIONS FOR ASIA’S URBAN CHILDREN

Children are disproportionately vulnerable to many of the problems that persist in the region. For children, even more than for adults, living conditions can have a great impact on their well-being and long term outcomes. In urban areas even children from households above the poverty line can experience multiple deprivation in terms of lack of nutrition, lack of basic services, pollution, inadequate housing, and violence.

Cities in Asia and the Pacific can have more and better services for children: economies of scale and density create – at least in theory – opportunities to deliver services for children more effectively and efficiently than in rural areas. But this considerable ‘urban advantage’ for children’s health and survival is increasingly becoming an urban penalty. Children in poor households and under-served settlements are considerably worse off than the urban average, and are often doing less well than their rural counterparts. Young children are especially vulnerable to the risks associated with density and a lack of provision, with under-five mortality rates more highly correlated to provision of water and sanitation than to income or health services. Injury rates for young urban children in poverty in South Asia are also very high.

Malnutrition is a most critical problem, resulting in long-term developmental deficits. Progress on this front has stalled in many places. About one child in five in low- and middle-income countries globally


Jaideep Gupte10

is seriously or moderately underweight; in South Asia, it is over one half. Some analyses indicate that this is increasingly an urban problem. It is not just a matter of calories. Hygiene plays a vital role in nutrition, and can be impossible to achieve in situations of high density, where appropriate provision is lacking. Dense urban slums are among the most threatening environments in the world for young children.

Some health risks recede as children get older – others become more problematic, like occupational hazards, substance abuse, mental health issues and HIV, which are all more prevalent among the poor. Road traffic accidents are a major problem for children and adolescents in urban Asia, with about two thirds of related child deaths globally occurring in Southeast Asia.

Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of violence. They are often the victims of the punitive treatment or neglect that can accompany stress. And witnessing violence at home or in communities can also have long-term detrimental effects on their development. Living in violent neighbourhoods also decreases mobility and opportunity, especially for girls. For boys, when opportunities are limited, the very frustrations that fuel anti-social behaviour can add to the attraction of crime and gang-related activity.

What little investigation there has been in Asia of the effects of forced evictions on children points to high levels of trauma, school drop-out and loss of social networks and support. This is in addition to loss of property, jobs and huge difficulties for households in regaining stability. But even without eviction, the lack of tenure leaves millions of children and families in fear of forced removal, unwilling to invest, unable to move ahead, and without access to services and protection.

Education indicators have improved markedly in Asia, although access and gender equity remain problematic in South and West Asia. Figures are better overall for urban children but progress lags for the urban poor. In Bangladesh, rural children enrol at twice the rate of those in slums; a scant 18% in slums make it to secondary school, compared to 48% in rural areas. In Mumbai, thousands of children who face eviction (some-times repeatedly) stop even trying to attend school. An international study of urban schooling argues that the solution in Asia lies in the flexible provision of multiple solutions (including non-formal schooling, faith-based schools and small private schools) while still depending on strong state systems genuinely committed to education for all.

Many out-of-school urban children are workers, supplementing fluctuating and insufficient household earnings. Many are also recent migrants, often without family: for instance, 12% of surveyed informal-sector child-worzkers in Thailand were living without family; and in Nepal, 8% of 5- to 14-year-olds become independent migrants. Many of these children have made a rational choice, with family, in the face of intractable circumstances, and have access to better education and health facilities. Yet unquestionably they are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. These children and adolescents are invisible to most statistics, hidden as domestic servants, working on buses, as waste pickers, as marketplace porters, often surviving on the streets, exposed to a range of risks.

The work opportunities that are available, even as they get older, are limited, especially for those who have not benefited from an education. Youth unemployment in Asia is a critical problem. The International Labour Organization (ILO) in 2010 reported 36 million unemployed young people in Asia, and in Southeast Asia young people were almost five times as likely to be unemployed as adults. The situation has actually improved in the last few years, but young workers are still far more likely to remain in extreme poverty as they turn to whatever livelihood options are available.

THE ROLE OF GOVERNANCE

It is easy to point at government failure – but important to consider the constraints under which many governments operate, especially the local governments that, with decentralization, are increasingly responsible for the services that underpin quality of life for most households and their children. The situation varies considerably, and many local governments have limited powers, capacities and funding to carry out their responsibilities adequately. In most countries, responsibilities are more decentralized than revenues or the capacity to raise revenues. This is especially true for smaller cities which lack the investment allure of the growing number of global cities in Asia.

Effective city management is also seriously constrained by incomplete data. Most survey data is collected at a national level, despite the fact that many of the most important decisions have to be made locally. As a recent Global Monitoring Report points out, there is more good information available on Fiji than on such cities like Delhi or Shanghai. Many data sets also ignore or underrepresent

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those in illegal settlements, and even where data exists, it is seldom adequate or disaggregated enough to provide a good spatial understanding of realities, leaving the most excluded in effect invisible. Greater priority could be given to making census data available to local governments in a form that allows the identification of areas with inadequate infrastructure and services, along with the careful inclusion of all settlements and better coordination between city departments in sharing relevant data. It would also make sense to support and build on the innovative enumeration efforts of grassroots federations of the urban poor in documenting their informal settlements, often for an entire city.

Yet constraints aside, political will is critical. In most of the cities in Asia and the Pacific, there is no official recognition of the slums. When government and local authorities do recognize the problem it is possible to see differences. The case of notified and non-notified slums in India is instructive: for instance, while 99% of households in Mumbai’s notified slums had access to at least a community water point, less than 1% did in the Kaula Bandar non-notified slum; while1% in the former relied on open defecation, 14% did in the latter. The infant mortality rate was more than twice as high in Kaula Bandar, as were the number receiving no education.

In keeping with the principle of subsidiarity, multi-level governance, based on genuine partnerships and drawing on the potential contribution of all stakeholders, is critical to realizing the potential of cities and their capacity to serve all their citizens.

Many cities are increasingly relying on the private sector and public private partnerships. The role of the private sector can be controversial, yet cities cannot grow and develop without the active

involvement of the private sector in terms of both finance and expertise. There are good examples where cross-subsidies and other equalization measures have realized widespread improvements. The capacity of local governments to oversee and monitor private sector involvement - setting standards for investment in inclusive, equitable urban development - is key.

Public-community partnerships have also been productive in many Asian cities. They tend to focus on such areas as solid waste management and sanitation, but in some countries have also moved into low-income housing – as in Thailand with the Baan Mankong programme. Approaches that allow marginalized urban dwellers to play a role in developing solutions that work for them and that encourage negotiation and collaboration between low-income communities and local government are a practical way of ensuring that action is well targeted, efficient, effective and sustainable.

Asia is home to some of the most successful and well documented examples of community-driven action, supported by local governments and the aid community, creating citywide networks and platforms for action and new forms of urban governance, with far-reaching effects for marginalized children and families. The Asian Coalition for Community Action (ACCA), an excellent example of South-South cooperation, is now active in 150 cities in 19 countries. But the bottom line, across Asia, is that wherever urban living standards are high and the needs of children and their households well addressed, local governments have generally played an important role – whether through the actual provision of infrastructure and services or through their regulation and oversight of the activities of other players such as the private sector.


Jaideep Gupte12

The extremely diverse region of Asia and the Pacific, home to 60% of the world’s people, is more densely populated than any region in the world except Europe, despite its far lower level of urbanization. It includes affluent countries, thriving and emerging middle-income countries and low-income countries. This brief focuses on the challenge facing the more deprived urban populations, and the need to ensure that their children are not left behind in the course of the region’s development.

Hundreds of millions of urban children in Asia, along with their households and communities, have moved out of poverty in recent decades, realizing their rights to safe, healthy survival and better prospects. Cities have been engines

of opportunity in this regard. Concentrations of people and investment along with economies of scale and proximity can stimulate vitality and exchange, innovation and development, ideally with benefits for all. But these benefits are seldom equally shared. Urbanization can boost economic growth, but these growing economies often become more stratified, especially in cities.2 Economic growth has rarely been pro-poor, and often co-exists with widening disparities and continued levels of absolute poverty. The opportunities that exist potentially for all urban children in Asia can only be realized in the context of efforts to reduce urban inequalities. This requires strong political will and effective governance, not only at a national level but, critically, within local governments and civil society.

1. Introduction

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While there is no single definition of what constitutes ‘urban’ contexts, most cited definitions usually reflect national census classifications. Even so, there is significant variation between national and regional contexts. As seen in Table 1 in the next page, the classification of ‘urban’ in Asia and the Pacific may be based on density, livelihood and activity profiles, or number of residents. Countries often further disaggregate between mega-cities and several tiers of towns. Some countries also distinguish peri-urban (or peripheral) areas (which neighbour an urban area, but which do not fall under the administration of the urban municipality), in recognition of continuity between urban and rural contexts.3

Of the 26 countries and territories in Asia surveyed by the UN ESCAP4, 15 define urban areas based on administrative criteria and another four based on population size and/or density, two countries categorize as ‘urban’ those areas where certain economic functions or infrastructures and services are available, and in the remaining five countries in the sample, ‘urban’ refers to a combination of administrative boundaries, population size and density. For the purposes of this paper, ‘urban settings’ refer to areas of dense human habitation that also exhibit a higher density of built space (and reflect higher concentrations of services, infrastructure and socio-economic activity)5 than outlying rural settlements and areas. This definition recognises the spectrum of urban settings across several dimensions, including the size of settlements, the

nature of the built environment and degrees of formality. The circumstances of children in these differing environments naturally vary, too.

Given demographic realities, almost half the region’s urban children can be assumed to live in conditions that challenge their prospects and wellbeing. Fertility rates declined dramatically in the region – in 1990, children were a third of the Asian population; by 2010, one quarter. But there is a correlation between poverty and the number of children: the poorer the country (or the community), the higher the proportion of children. Birth rates are often two to three times higher in the poorest quintiles than the richest, meaning disproportionate numbers of children in poverty and in under-served settlements.6

This paper does not address the concept of urbanization, or describe the process through which settlements become urbanised. There are divergences in the drivers of urbanisation across the region and two major components can be identified: rural-to-urban migration, and natural increase (natural population growth influenced by differences in fertility and mortality rates). For example, in China the rise in urban population from 191 million in 1980 to 622 million in 2009 was driven largely by rural-to-urban migration.7 In India, by contrast, net migration from rural areas contributed only about 21% to the increase in urban population in the 1990s, whereas natural increase in already urbanised populations has been by far the largest source of urban growth (62.7% in the 1980s and 59.2% in the 1990s).8

What are urban settings?

2.


Jaideep Gupte14

Country Definition

Cambodia Towns as notified by the government.

China

‘City’ only refers to the city proper, as designated by the State Council. For cities with district status, the city proper refers to the whole administrative area of the district if the population density is 1,500 per km2 or higher, or the seat of the district government, and other areas or streets under the administration of the district if the population density is less than 1,500 per km2. In the case of cities without district status, the city proper refers to the seat of the city government and other areas or streets under the administration of the city. For city districts with population densities below 1,500 per km2 and cities without district status, if the urban construction of the district or city government seat has extended to some part of the neighbouring designated town(s) or township(s), the city proper includes the whole administrative area of the town(s) or township(s).

India

‘Urban’ refers to towns (places with a municipal corporation, municipal area committee, town committee, notified area committee or cantonment board). Also considered ‘urban’ are places with populations of 5,000 or more, a density of no less than 1,000 per sq. m. (or 400 per km2) with pronounced urban characteristics and at least 75% of the adult male population employed in pursuits other than agriculture.

Indonesia Places with urban characteristics.

JapanA city (‘shi’) is host to 50,000 or more, with 60%or more of the houses located in the main built-up areas and 60% or more of the population (including dependants) engaged in manufacturing, trade or other urban types of business. A shi with urban facilities as defined by a prefectural order is also considered to be urban.

Republic of Korea Any size of population living in designated cities.

Malaysia Formally designated areas with populations of 10,000 or more.

Maldives Malé, the capital.

Mongolia The capital and district centres.

Pakistan Places with a municipal corporation, town committee or cantonment.

Sri Lanka All municipal and urban council areas.

Thailand Municipal areas.

Viet Nam Urban districts or quarters and towns. All other local administrative units (‘communes’) belong to rural areas.

TABLE 1: DEFINITIONS OF ‘URBAN’, SHOWING DIVERSITY ACROSS ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

Source: UNESCAP and UN-HABITAT, State of Asian Cities 2010/2011: 33

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This is mostly caused by natural increase, although rural-urban migration still plays the greater role in some countries (most markedly in China). UN projections suggest there will be 1.4 billion more urban dwellers in the region by 2050.11 This will help to fuel the considerable economic growth that is expected in the region over coming decades, pulling millions of households into the middle class, and creating significant economic, cultural and technological opportunities.12

Urban growth is not a new phenomenon. Until the 1980s, there were only four cities with 10 million or more official residents. Within the space of a decade, six cities had joined the mega-city league.13 While the mega-cities in the Americas dominated the 1980s, the subsequent decades were to be definitively shaped by Asian cities. Mumbai was the first Asian mega-city outside Japan and by the early 2000s, when Europe and

Africa had their first mega-cities (Moscow and Cairo), half of the world’s 16 mega-cities were in Asia, with five in South Asia.14 Projections for 2025 predict a world in which Asia will host seven of the top ten mega-cities, most with populations over 20 million.

All of the top 10 and 15 of the top 20 fastest-growing urban settings in Asia and the Pacific between 1995 and 2005 were in China. The fastest growing cities outside China in the same time period were Kabul, Afghanistan (6.17%), Ghaziabad, India (6.06%) and Klang, Malaysia (6%).15 More than 35% of the people of the Pacific Islands live and work in towns, and the rate of urban population growth throughout most of the region is high. Overall, 8 of the 22 Pacific countries are now predominantly urban; by 2020 more than half the population in a majority of these countries will live in towns.16

Macro trends in urban growth: rates and absolute size

3.

While Asia and the Pacific is currently still the second-least urbanised region in the world (43% live in urban settings), it has the second-fastest urban growth rate,9 currently 2.4% every year.10


Jaideep Gupte16

3.1 THE IMPORTANCE OF SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED TOWNS

It is critical to recognise that while there are commonalities in the experiences of children living in urban settings, there are significant differences from one urban location to another. These variations can broadly be conceptualised into three dimensions: first, a settlement varies by size - small, medium or a mega-city. The size of towns and cities may have significant implications on the density of population and the built environment, on economies of scale in terms of service provision, as well as the rate at which the settlement grows. Second, a settlement varies by virtue of its location – it could be a satellite town or a remote settlement, or it might be on the coast, along a river or inland. The location may have significant implications on livelihood options, the nature of urban sprawl, the natural resources available and resilience against disasters. Third, a settlement can vary by virtue of its governance and the quality of its infrastructure, how these have developed over time, the factors that have influenced their development, as well as the current state of provision. Governance and infrastructure have a significant impact on children and the vulnerabilities they face. There is also a high degree of variation within cities and towns in terms of the quality of governance and infrastructure.

Asia includes many of the largest cities on the globe, which concentrate much of the region’s economic growth. But almost half its urban residents live in centres of under 500,000 – compared to about 13% in mega-cities.17 Small and medium-sized towns and cities can be vital centres for economic growth, but they also face distinct challenges, including lower levels of resources and government capacity, and difficulties in attracting investment. They often concentrate higher numbers of those in poverty and require particular support from national governments.

Despite the common misconception, mega-cities’ (with 10 million plus inhabitants) do not dominate the urban landscape in Asia and the Pacific. There are many ‘emerging cities’ in the region (with populations of about 2.5 million) that show signs of demographic and economic growth above national averages.18 This is a very diverse range of cities, and some of these have the potential to grow to mega-city status.19 In 2010, half of all urban dwellers in Asia lived in cities of less than 500,000 people, compared with 10% in cities of 500,000-1 million, 19% in cities of 1-5 million, 10% in cities of 5-10 million and 11% in cities of more

Average annual rate of change of the urban population (%)

Area/Country1995-2000

2000-2005

2005-2010

2020

Pacific 1.3 1.5 1.3 1.4

East and North-East Asia 3 3.4 2.2 1.4

North and Central Asia -0.2 -0.3 0 0.5

South and South-West Asia 2.7 2.5 2.4 2.5

South-East Asia 3.6 2.2 2.2 2.1

Afghanistan 3.6 4.6 4.6 4.5

American Samoa 2.6 2.2 2.1

Bangladesh 3.6 3.4 3.2 3

Bhutan 6.2 6.9 4 2.9

Brunei Darussalam 3.2 2.7 2.5 1.8

Cambodia 5.8 3.7 3 3

China 3.8 4.2 2.6 1.6

Cook Islands 1.1 3.4 2

DPR Korea 1.2 0.7 0.5 0.8

Fiji 1.9 1.5 1.4 1.4

French Polynesia 1.3 1.3 1.2 1.3

Guam 1.5 1.7 1.3 1.1

Hong Kong, China 1.4 0.6 0.5 0.9

India 2.6 2.4 2.3 2.5

Indonesia 4.7 1.8 1.7 1.8

Japan 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.2

Kiribati 5 2.1 1.7

Lao PDR 7 6.1 5.6 3.6

Macao, China 1.4 2 2.3 1.6

Malaysia 4.6 3.7 3 2

Maldives 3.4 5.4 4.9 3.1

Marshall Islands 0.9 2.2 2.7

Micronesia (F.S.) -2.3 0.4 0.6 2.3

Mongolia 1 2.2 2 2

Myanmar 2.6 2.5 2.9 2.5

Nauru 0.1 0.1 0.3

Nepal 6.6 5.6 5 4.2

New Caledonia 1.9 1.3 1.3 1.6

Niue -1.3 -1.5 -1.4

Northern Mariana Is. 3.7 3.1 2.1

Pakistan 3.4 3.1 3 2.8

Palau 2 3 1.8

Papua New Guinea 1.4 1.6 2.3 4

Philippines 2 2 2.1 2.5

Republic of Korea 1.1 0.9 0.8 0.5

Samoa 1.4 -0.4 -1 1.2

Singapore 2.9 1.2 2.5 0.8

Solomon Islands 4.1 4.2 4.2 4.7

Sri Lanka -1.1 -0.6 0.3 2.1

Thailand 1.3 1.9 1.7 1.9

Timor-Leste 0.7 5.4 4.8 4.8

Tonga 0.4 0.8 0.7 2.2

Tuvalu 1.6 1.3 1.4

Vanuatu 3.4 4.2 4.3 4.3

Viet Nam 3.5 3.5 3.3 2.7

TABLE 2: THE AVERAGE ANNUAL RATE OF CHANGE OF THE URBAN POPULATION (%)

Source: UNESCAP. World Population Prospects 2010. Estimated demographic trends are projections based on censuses, administrative data and surveys provided by countries through an annual questionnaire.

17

than 10 million. Furthermore, most of the expected growth in urban population in the region will also be outside the mega-cities, hosted primarily by small and medium sized towns or cities that have less than 1 million people.20 In India over the past decade, there has been a 54% increase in the number of small towns with a density of over 1,000 people per km2 (from 5,161 in 2001 to 7,935 in 2011), while the number of villages remained nearly constant over the same time period.21

The smallest urban settings (fewer than 20,000 residents) need particular attention, as not all of them are recognised as full urban agglomerations by national policies.22 This can leave them in a grey zone, with sizeable population densities but without the support of municipal services, governance and financing. In India for example, while the definition of ‘urban’ includes a cut-off of at least 5,000 residents, there are currently 3,962 ‘villages’ with more than 10,000 residents.23 Indeed, research using geo-spatial data shows that many of these correspond to dense and continuous built-up urban extensions, and yet they are not under the administration of urban municipalities.24

3.2 VARIABILITY WITHIN URBAN SETTINGS

Over and above the variability between types of urban settings in the region, there are also significant differences within cities. Cities and towns are, by their very nature, always in a state of flux, and the neighbourhoods within them are rarely without specific social and historical contexts. These shape the ways that children and adults live, organise, work and play in them.25 How neighbourhoods are planned (whether they are dense, informal or under-served for example), as well as where they are located, also have a significant impact.26 For example, rent or land rents, food prices and transport costs (which constitute a major proportion of expenditure for poor urban households) can vary significantly between neighbourhoods. This exposes children to varying shocks and vulnerabilities,27 and movements in population and changes in economic activity from one neighbourhood to another.28 Varying food and transport prices also mean that meaningful poverty lines based on monetary measures are very difficult to set. The flux in urban settings also has impacts further up the income ladder. For example, in Jakarta (Indonesia) a growing middle-class population falls ‘in-between the superblocks and the slum’,29

and this is increasingly shaping urban space in terms of its demands for formal housing and facilities, while creating excessive pressure for the redevelopment of historic and poorer areas.30

Studies on informal settlements in Mumbai show that not all slums within the city are alike, and the extent to which children’s rights are protected and their wellbeing achieved varies.31 These neighbourhood effects can operate through a number of overlapping pathways, ranging from an ‘epidemic’ or contagion effect of social interaction patterns (children interacting in very closed groups or not having positive adult role-models to guide behaviour), through a lack of institutional resources (schools, police protection, community services) or the perception of inequality (children who perceive themselves as inferior to more affluent neighbours tend to underperform and may be subject to negative labelling).

Slums

According to the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), households in informal and under-served settlements have the following drawbacks: they lack adequate access to water and sanitation, they do not have security of tenure, their homes are built with temporary materials, and their living space is insufficient. Across the region, informal settlements or slums are known under a variety of names: jhopad patti, adugbo atiyo and katchi abadis, for example.

Living in informal settlements is uniquely challenging for children. It may imply no access to government schools or health centres, while for their parents or carers, the lack of a formal address can result in very limited access to credit or insurance. It usually also means little protection against forced eviction, no rule of law, hazardous housing sites, heightened incidence of violence and a lack of provision for any basic amenities (sanitation, running water or waste removal). These inadequate living conditions are one of the most pervasive violations of children’s rights worldwide, and can underpin and even exacerbate the failure to realize many other rights.32 There is compelling evidence suggesting that child mortality is increased by these environmental factors,33 while various communicable and non-communicable diseases, injuries and psychosocial disorders can be linked to the risk factors inherent in unhealthy living conditions and in unsafe locations such as near traffic hubs, dumpsites or polluting industrial sites.34

These impacts are often traceable to particular locations and communities, resulting in spatial


Jaideep Gupte18

poverty traps.35 For example, most rickshaw pullers in Dhaka appear to have good access to urban amenities (90% have electricity; 52% have gas facilities; 62% have access to tap water; 78% have bathroom facilities; 99% have latrine provision; and 61% have a separate kitchen). However, mismanagement and over-crowding of the facilities renders the services highly inadequate, especially with respect to water, sanitation and kitchen facilities, and this has serious adverse knock-on effects on their children.36 Table 3 below provides a useful framework to understand the dimensions of urban poverty traps.

Between 2005 and 2011, the proportion of the urban slum population in the region decreased

from 35% to 31%.37 However, comparable data on the urban slum population are sparse between regions. For example, 2007 data estimates are available for only four Asian countries (none in the Pacific). The last reasonably full set of available data (2005) contains estimates for only 15 Asian countries, none of which are in the Pacific.38

In all, over 505 million people, or over half the world’s slum population, live in Asia and the Pacific,39 and basic service provision is failing to keep pace with demographic expansion. The Asian and Pacific urban slum population exceeded 25% of the total urban population for 14 countries, and conditions of extreme poverty and vulnerability continue to be a persistent reality for a significant

Spatial Poverty Traps

Spatial poverty trap description

Definition Ecological characteristics

Poor infrastructure

Weak institutions (including markets)

Political isolation

Remote regions and areas (distance and locational disadvantage)

Can include high and low potential environments. Costs of centrally supplied infrastructure and services are higher. Generally lower potential for nonfarm activity, though remoteness offers some protection from competition. Poor urban residential areas remote from workplaces, with weak connections.

Geographically isolated, may have low or high population densities with different implications for resource exploitation. Geographical obstacles (such as slopes, ravines and marshes) contribute to isolation.

High infrastructure costs lead to poor quality or absent provision. Poor road, rail, river connections lead to high transport costs.

Low economic diversity and lack of growth. Little wage labour available: outmigration or commuting ‘solutions’, but usually into low skill/return and insecure occupations. Few accumulation or expansion possibilities due to low demand. Few opportunities to augment skills, save, get credit. High risk for investments. Social capital may be high, but often excludes the poor or not useful for securing access to other resources.

Excluded. Relatively small (often fragmented) constituencies. Political access more constrained because less competitive. Voices rarely heard, especially if also ethnic or religious minority.

Low potential or marginal areas (ecologically disadvantaged)

Poor locations for built or productive environment: hillsides, roadsides, canal-sides, riversides, and dumps.Limited possibilities for technical change in natural resource based production systems.

Steep slopes. Vulnerable to hazards, displacement.

Multiple costs to meet basic needs in settlements that are often unsafe and insecure. Low cash circulation as a result of low productivity. Dependence on remittances, public subsidy.

Poor economic and social infrastructure, ‘over-population’, low human and financial capital. Outmigration or commuting with positive and negative consequences depending on migrants’ endowments.Includes poor areas within growth centres.

Political characteristics not usually considered but natural disadvantage may affect societal perceptions of people from such areas leading to stigma, discrimination and inequality.Illegal land holding increases vulnerability.

Less favoured areas (politically disadvantaged)

Can include high and low potential environments and pockets. Lower levels of infrastructure and services, stigmatised, ‘hardship posting’.Private sector avoids investment; savings invested outside the area.

No clear patterns. Lack of services for informal and illegal residents and enterprises. Low public investment in social protection and basic services leading to low cash circulation. Risk of falling out of labour market due to injury or death.

Limited market access, low population density, ‘residual’ populations left behind, old, very young, disabled, ill, discriminated.

Lack of protection against abuse by officials, lack of institutions able to safeguard and further citizen rights, no safety net.

Source: Adapted from Chronic Poverty Research Centre. 2004. The Chronic Poverty Report 2004–05. Manchester: Chronic Poverty Research Centre. Pp. 30

TABLE 3: DIMENSIONS OF URBAN POVERTY TRAPS

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number of urban dwellers. Almost a third of Asia’s urban population lives in underserved slums and informal settlements. There are much higher proportions in a number of countries (71% in Bangladesh, 59% in Nepal, 47% in Pakistan, 42% in the Philippines), and the absolute numbers are projected to grow.40

Political will is critical. In most of the cities in Asia and Pacific there is no official recognition of the slums. When government and local authorities do recognize the problem it is possible to see differences. The difference between notified and non-notified slums in India is instructive. For instance, while 99% of households in Mumbai’s notified slums had access to at least a community water point, less than 1% did in the Kaula Bandar non-notified slum; while1% in the former relied on open defecation, 14% did in the latter. The infant mortality rate was more than twice as high in Kaula Bandar, as were the number receiving no education.41

Informality

The informal sector is fundamental to urban life in Asia, a set of transactions that drives urban development in housing, services and livelihoods. Informal solutions make survival possible for hundreds of millions who lack access to other solutions (even when they end up paying more than those served by the formal sector). But informal solutions can also entrench barriers to secure tenure, basic services, education and other fundamental rights. The poor may find ways to earn money, but without security against income shocks and fluctuations, and without upward mobility. They may find a place to live in the city, but lack the secure foothold and formal identity from which to tackle the problems of poverty. Even in democratic countries, forced evictions turn life upside down for millions each year, eroding hard-won gains.


Jaideep Gupte20

4.1 URBAN POVERTY

Extreme poverty has declined markedly in Asia over the last decade, even if this decline has been overwhelmingly concentrated in China (almost 80% of those who moved out of poverty during the MDG campaign).42 With more than 80% of global GDP being generated from urban centres,43 a primary question regarding acute urban poverty is ‘why does it exist?’. Urban settings benefit from economies of scale resulting from high density of economic activity and service provision. Over recent decades, poverty has declined significantly in some urban settings.44 Nevertheless, it is also apparent that urban settings are not inherently poverty-reducing, and that the urban share of global poverty is increasing.

Most of the people still living on less than USD1.25 a day are in South Asia. While poverty has declined overall, inequalities have deepened in many urban areas, along with the higher levels of stress, instability and violence that so often accompany them.45

Assessments of poverty routinely conclude that it is a far greater problem in rural areas, and this holds true for Asia. At the macro-level, poverty rates tend to be significantly lower in urban areas - in 2008, only 11.6% of the urban population were poor, while 29.4% were poor in rural areas. The picture is even starker at the extremes, since 76% of the extreme poor live in rural areas.46 Child mortality also tends to be lower, on average, in urban areas than in rural areas. In India, for example, the share of infant deaths to

total deaths in urban areas is 9.7% while in rural areas it is 15.8%.47 By and large, basic services are concentrated in urban settings, with urban dwellers having better access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation.48 Because of a higher density and multi-purpose schemes, the cost of providing piped water can be much cheaper in urban than in rural areas.49 The incidence of child deprivation was found to be notably higher in rural areas than in urban areas in Cambodia, the Philippines and Viet Nam.50 In Vanuatu, fertility rates were significantly higher in rural areas than in urban areas, 5.1 compared to 3.8 children per woman.51

But there are major problems with simplistic rural-urban comparisons that mask the scale and depth of urban deprivation, with serious implications for policy priorities:

• Urban averages hide the vast disparities in urban areas, especially in larger cities.

• Informal settlements, home to the poorest, may be excluded from formal data gathering.

• Most poverty lines fail take account of the higher cost of living in urban areas. It is patently impossible to live on USD1.25 a day in most cities, where the economy is cash-based with high costs for non-food needs.

Furthermore, rapid economic growth is correlated with urbanisation levels. The more developed countries tend to have relatively high levels of urbanisation (high-income countries in the region have an average urbanised proportion of 75%, while the lesser developed countries of the region have an average of 27%).52 As correlation does not imply causation, it is not clear whether economic

4. Policy challenges in urban settings

21

growth is causing an increase of urban population, or vice versa. Probably in each country it is a combination of the two.

Even if shortcomings in data and definitions are accepted, there is still evidence that poverty, hunger, disease and a lack of basic services are becoming more prevalent in many urban areas. In effect, poverty in Asia is an increasingly urban phenomenon, and achieving the MDGs (or whatever replaces them post-2015) may well become most difficult in under-served urban areas.53

Poverty lines defined purely in monetary terms obscure other critical dimensions of poverty that are particularly relevant to children. Even for households who are not formally poor, marginal housing, insecurity of tenure, poor or absent basic services, ill health, poor prospects and political invisibility can be facts. For those in peripheral areas, costs for transport alone can deplete meagre earnings.

The economies of scale resulting from urban density need to be effectively harnessed in an equitable and sustainable manner. When they are not, and people are excluded from basic service provision, urban poverty and insecurity result. The ‘urban advantage’ for some is non-existent55. According to UN-Habitat, “the worsening state of access to shelter and security of tenure results in severe overcrowding, homelessness, and environmental health problems in most cities.”56

4.2 DISASTERS AND IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Cities and towns in Asia and the Pacific are likely to be significantly affected by climate change, because of a number of factors (size, geographic location and elevation).57 Weather-related disasters have been increasingly common in recent years, and the region is extremely vulnerable to the risks associated with climate change. In huge coastal cities like Dhaka, Bangkok, Mumbai, Shanghai, millions of people and their property and enterprises are at risk from rising sea levels and storm surges. Many cities are also exposed to cyclones and hurricanes. Especially in the context of rapid growth and high density in Asia, many cities have expanded into areas that may be at high risk. Informal settlements house many of the most vulnerable people and enterprises, least able to invest in preventive measures or to recover from extreme events. They often live in the most hazardous areas – flood plains, places at risk from landslides – and are unserved by the kind of basic infrastructure that can be strengthened and adapted to withstand more extreme conditions.58

Urban settings on the coast or near large rivers are vulnerable to even small rises in sea levels. For example, a one-metre rise could lead to losses of 34,000 km2 of land in Indonesia and 7,000 km2 in Malaysia; in Viet Nam, the areas at risk include 5,000 km2 in the North (the Red River Delta), and 15,000–20,000 km2 in the South (the Mekong Delta).59 In some Pacific Island countries, entire populations – rural and urban alike – will need to be

Percentage of the population below USD1.25/day54

USD1.251990 1996 2002 2008

Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban

South Asia 51 40 46 35 45 35 38 30

East Asia and Pacific 68 24 46 13 39 7 20 4

Europe and Central Asia 2 1 6 3 4 1 1 0

Latin America and the Caribbean 21 7 20 6 20 8 13 3

Middle East and North Africa 9 2 6 1 8 1 4 1

Sub-Saharan Africa 55 42 57 41 52 41 47 34

Total 53 21 43 17 40 15 29 12

Source: World Bank and IMF. 2013. Global Monitoring Report.

TABLE 4: URBAN POVERTY RATES ARE LOWER, BUT THERE IS DISPARITY IN REDUCING POVERTY WITHIN THE ASIA PACIFIC REGION, AS WELL AS COMPARED TO THE REST OF THE DEVELOPING WORLD


Jaideep Gupte22

relocated.60 These Island nations may have limited options, depending on their financial and technical resources. Mumbai, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh City and Kolkata are considered to be some of the world’s most exposed cities (in terms of size of exposed population) to increased flooding due to climate change.61 Climate change also stands to reduce clean water supplies and productive (agricultural) soil areas, while changes in rainfall patterns will affect the ability of rural areas to supply food to cities: the implications for food security are significant.62 Climate change calls for mitigation. But adaptation is also a priority for reducing risk and ensuring that urban economies, enterprises, communities and children are as resilient as possible. Asian countries are at the forefront in accumulating and sharing knowledge and experience in this regard. A network of secondary cities, for instance, has identified a number of specific measures that can strengthen cities while taking account of equity issues.63

Within urban areas, children living in informal settlements are most at risk from extreme weather events and rising sea levels.64 More often than not, these areas do not have infrastructure that can be strengthened and adapted to withstand more extreme conditions. The demand for land and failings in the regulatory structures in urban settings are such that they push the poor into occupying marginal land prone to natural hazards such as floodplains, sloping lands and reclaimed land, which are unsuitable for habitation.65 In turn, these types of living arrangements can also increase the risk of flooding and landslides by changing drainage patterns or destabilizing slopes.66 On top of having low financial resources to invest in preventative measures, those living in informal settlements also do not have direct incentives to make such investments if their land tenure is insecure or when they rent accommodation. A key feature is also the inability of the urban poor to have their needs for risk reduction taken seriously by local governments.67

4.3 POLLUTION

Recent research indicates that the dangers of air pollution in the region are far higher than previously thought, a grim side effect of economic growth. Of the estimated 2.5 million global premature deaths a year from ambient air pollution (fine particulate matter and ozone), the great majority are in Asia, with the worst conditions being in East Asia, India and Southeast Asia.68 Worsening air quality, according to UN ESCAP, is hitting an all time high in urban Asia, generated by vehicles, industry and energy production, with cross boundary pollution becoming a growing problem. In addition, almost a third of the region’s population still relies on solid fuels, and indoor pollution is responsible for another 1.6 million deaths (almost half the global total) and high levels of morbidity.69 In South Asia it has become the leading risk factor for the burden of disease.70 Urban air pollution is set to become the top environmental cause of mortality worldwide by 2050, ahead of dirty water and lack of sanitation. The number of premature deaths from exposure to particulate air pollutants leading to respiratory failure could double from current levels to 3.6 million every year globally, with most occurring in China and India.71

4.4 LACK OF SPACE

Lack of space in the home has also been linked to a wide range of impacts, including poor social interaction, low educational achievement and cognitive development, behaviour and socio-emotional problems and poor respiratory health. In Hong Kong’s dense urban environment, for example, personal space appears to be important in influencing children’s academic performance.72 Evidence suggests that in order to best support child wellbeing, homes should have sufficient space and good arrangement of space to provide well for privacy, residential areas should have connected street layouts, incorporating trees and greenery, and public spaces should be guided by the principles of mixed and shared usage with plenty of local facilities and parks.73

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Despite large investments over recent decades and substantial gains, especially in Southeast Asia, most large cities in Asia still suffer from irregular water supplies, an absence of sewers, uncollected garbage, congestion and pollution.74 Provision in smaller urban centres is even worse. In most informal settlements the situation is especially dire. Estimates for improved provision in water and sanitation show a number of Asian countries on track to meet full coverage, with considerably better access in urban than in rural areas. But there is also evidence of stagnating or even declining progress in some urban areas, while rural areas move ahead. In Pakistan, the proportion of urban dwellers with improved sanitation has remained at 72% since 1990; in Bangladesh it has declined.

5.1 BASIC SERVICES AND MULTIDIMENSIONAL EFFECTS

The standards for improved provision are totally inappropriate in dense conditions. Hard-to-maintain pit latrines, water points with long lines and irregular supplies may count as improved, but in dense urban areas, the only adequate forms of supply are sewer systems and piped water to premises. In some countries, there have been impressive gains on these fronts. In others, they remain unavailable to most people. In Indonesia, 92% of the urban population has improved provision for water, but only 36% have water piped

to their premises. In Bangladesh, the figures are 85% and 20% respectively. In much of South Asia, the proportion of urban dwellers served with water piped to their premises has actually dropped since 1990.75 Most Asian cities also lack sewer systems except in limited areas, making adequate service difficult to achieve.76

Health services and schooling are serious concerns too. Urban areas can offer major gains in health and education, but many urban residents who live close to schools or clinics have no better access than they would in a rural area. In Delhi, in 2006, less than 40% of urban poor children were immunized, compared to 65% in surrounding rural areas and 69% in other parts of the city;77 and in 2007, 80% of the city’s out-of-school children were concentrated in the most marginalized areas. The EFA Global Monitoring Report for 2009 reports children in urban slums to be among the hardest to reach in many countries.78

Children, with their disproportionately high numbers in poor urban communities, are also disproportionately vulnerable to many of the problems that persist in the region. For rapidly developing children, even more than for adults, poverty is primarily about the many deprivations that can persist despite rising incomes; their living conditions, in effect, can have a greater impact on their well being and long-term outcomes than whether their households are on one side or the other of a poverty line.79 Stunting rates are the starkest indication of this.

How do urban environments affect children in the region?

5.


Jaideep Gupte24

In order for children to flourish in urban settings, they need access to basic services and a safe environment in which to grow. The percentage of the poor living in urban environments is increasing. In urban contexts, there tends to be a higher concentration of basic service provision in terms of water, electricity and sanitation, as well as health clinics, hospitals, schools, and child protection services, as compared with rural contexts. However, basic services are often insufficient due to over-crowding, or are inaccessible to poor and vulnerable children for a variety of reasons. Children can be actively or unintentionally excluded due to over-pricing, or as a result of their legal or social status (declaring them as temporary or non-urban residents). Homeless or displaced children, or those employed in illegal or dangerous vocations, are at particular risk of exclusion.

Research has also shown the inter-generational transmission of deprivation. There is a close association between households in informal settlements and deficiencies in young children’s height for age. Inadequate attendance of a trained healthcare professional during childbirth is also associated, and neighbourhood living standards exert significant additional influence.80 In the poorest quartile of India’s urban population, only 40% of 12- to 23-month-old children were completely immunized in 2004-2005, 54% of under-five year-olds were stunted, 82% did not have access to piped water at home and 53% were not using a sanitary flush or pit toilet.81

The considerable urban advantage for children’s health and survival is increasingly becoming an urban penalty in many areas.82 Children in poor households and under-served settlements are considerably worse off than the urban average, and are often doing less well than their rural counterparts. Young children are especially vulnerable to the risks associated with density and a lack of provision, with under-five mortality rates more highly correlated to provision of water and sanitation than to income or health services.83 Injury rates for young urban children in poverty in South Asia are also being found to far exceed previous estimates.84

In Bangladesh, under-five mortality is higher in some informal settlements than in rural contexts.85 Similarly, in Ahmedabad, India, infant mortality rates are twice as high in slums as the national rural average, while in Manila, the Philippines, under five mortality rates were found to be three times as high in slum areas when compared to non-slum areas.86 In Karachi, Pakistan, infant mortality rates varied between from 33 to 209

per 1,000 live births across different informal settlements.87

Malnutrition: Malnutrition in childhood results in long-term developmental deficits. About one child in five in low- and middle-income countries globally is seriously or moderately underweight; in South Asia, it is over one half.88 Some analyses indicate that this is increasingly an urban problem.89 It is not just a matter of calories. Hygiene plays a vital role in nutrition, and can be impossible to achieve in situations of high density, where appropriate provision is lacking. Dense urban slums are among the most threatening environments in the world for young children.

Road traffic accidents: Some health risks recede as children get older – others become more problematic. The latter include occupational hazards, substance abuse, mental health issues and HIV, all more prevalent among the poor. Road traffic accidents are a major problem for children and adolescents in urban Asia, with about two thirds of related child deaths globally occurring in Southeast Asia.90

Forced evictions: What little investigation there has been in Asia of the effects of forced evictions on children points to high levels of trauma around the event, school drop-out and loss of social networks and supports.91 This is in addition to loss of property, jobs and huge difficulties for households in regaining stability. But even without eviction, the lack of tenure leaves millions of children and families in fear of forced removal, unwilling to invest, unable to move ahead, but also denied access to the full range of services and protections that underpin the realization of rights.

Education: Education indicators have improved markedly in Asia, although access and gender equity remain problematic in South and West Asia. Figures are better overall for urban children, but as noted above, progress lags for the urban poor. In Bangladesh, for instance, rural children enroll at twice the rate of those in slums; a scant 18% in slums make it to secondary school, compared to 48% in rural areas.92 In Mumbai, thousands of children who face sometimes repeated evictions just stop even trying to attend school.93 An international study of urban schooling argues that the solution in Asia lies in the flexible provision of multiple solutions (including non-formal schooling, faith-based schools and small private schools) while still depending on strong state systems genuinely committed to education for all.94

Child labour, migration and trafficking: Large numbers of out-of-school urban children

25

are workers, supplementing fluctuating and insufficient household earnings. Many are also recent migrants, often without family; for instance, 12% of informal sector child workers in Thailand were living without family; and in Nepal, 8% of 5- to 14-year-olds become independent migrants.95 This does not always point to trafficking – many of these children have made a rational choice, with family, in the face of intractable circumstances. Yet unquestionably they are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. These children and adolescents are invisible to most statistics, hidden as domestic servants, working on buses, as waste pickers, as marketplace porters, often surviving on the streets, exposed to a range of risks.

Youth unemployment: The work opportunities available in urban areas, even as children get older, are limited, especially for those who have not benefited from an education. Youth unemployment in Asia is a critical problem. The ILO in 2010 reported 36 million unemployed young people in Asia; in Southeast Asia they were almost five times as likely to be unemployed as adults.96 The situation has actually improved in the last few years, but young workers are still far more likely

to remain in extreme poverty as they turn to whatever is available.97

Street children: The term ‘street children’ is an imprecise term primarily used to refer to children living on and off the streets, and several different frameworks for defining such children are used across countries in Asia and the Pacific (see Box 1). However, there are many more nuanced categorisations. Children may transit to the street, live on the street, or have previously lived on the street (engaged in a wide variety of occupations, including begging, rubbish picking, sex work or petty crime). Some groups are highly ‘visible’ as they try to earn a livelihood on the streets and footpaths. These children contend with the many physical threats: police harassment or arrest, and risk of serious injury from traffic. The lives of street children are more complex and dynamic than simply the negative circumstances of their lives. Many street children display a wide range of skills, competence, knowledge and resilience in dealing with everyday life. In some cases, such as in Nepal,98 they may even be better nourished than their peers who live in poverty in rural areas. Their wellbeing and the structural causes underlying

Street Children

In 1994, the National Children’s Committee in Mongolia organized a national conference on street children, involving representatives from Parliament, the Ministry of Science and Education, Juvenile Police Department, Juvenile Prison, the Aimag Centres for Children, as well as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Save the Children, United Kingdom (UK). The conference adopted three categories of street children:

• Children who work on the streets during the day, but who maintain links with the family and who usually return to their homes in the evening

• Children who have some contact with their families, but who spend most of their time on the streets, especially during warm seasons; and

• Children who have lost contact with their families and live permanently on the street.

Accounts of street children in Mongolia, and especially by the external press, generally focus on children in the last category. These are the children who, because of Mongolia’s harsh climate, live or sleep underground, in tunnels and access points to urban heating systems (“manholes”), or in the entrances and basements of apartment buildings or other shelters. The health of such children is obviously at risk, given the lack of sanitation and access to water, as well as generally poor diets.

In Viet Nam a notion of “real street children” pervades both academic and informal definitions or categorizations. In Ho Chi Minh City, the work of Tim Bond in the early 1990s, and the tripartite categorization of street children that he devised, had enormous and lasting influence. The classification scheme is as follows:

• Category A: children who have left home and family, or have no home or family, and who sleep on the street

• Category B: children who sleep on the street with their family or guardian• Category C: children who have a family or guardian and (generally) sleep at home.

Source: World Bank and IMF. 2013. Global Monitoring Report.

BOX 1: SOME CATEGORISATIONS OF STREET CHILDREN


Jaideep Gupte26

their circumstances vary greatly across the region. In Mongolia, the presence of street children is a comparatively recent phenomenon closely associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and a rapid transition to market-based economies. Accurately measuring the number of children living on and off the streets is extremely difficult, and there are no reliable and accurate estimates for Asia and the Pacific.

Violence: It is widely accepted that inequalities and deprivation fuel frustration and stress, precipitating higher rates of violence and dysfunction at both household and community levels.100 The growing spatial segregation of rich and poor reinforces inequalities, sabotaging healthy civic life and often concentrating illegal activities in poor settlements, where the lack of police protection accompanies an absence of provision on other fronts.101 Crowding, noise and other environmental stressors add to the strain, increasing tensions, undermining social capital.102

Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of violence. Not only are they often the victims of the punitive treatment or neglect that can accompany stress. Witnessing violence at home or in their communities can also have long term damaging effects for every facet of their development. Living in violent neighbourhoods also decreases mobility and opportunity, especially for girls. For boys, especially when opportunities are limited, the very frustrations that fuel anti-social behaviour can add to the attraction of crime and gang related activity.

Finally, when urban settings become unsafe or insecure, the quality of life of the most vulnerable – the poor and children in particular – is diminished. Socio-cultural bonds are damaged and social mobility inhibited.103 Such circumstances are caused most directly by violent crime, ranging from burglaries or muggings to violent public disorder. The causes of such crime and violence include socio-economic or inter-ethnic tensions, gang-related violence and armed conflict. But in most urban settings in Asia and the Pacific, the causes of insecurity are indirect.

What factors lead to feelings of insecurity?

Children’s individual experience of space and their anxieties about crime create a generalized feeling of insecurity that can dramatically alter children’s quality of life.

• Limited access to and/or low quality of basic services (safe housing, clean water, employment, education, health, etc.)

• Personal experience of violence• Low confidence in police, justice and government• Perceptions of human rights violations by the state• High unemployment rates and high numbers of casual labourers• Relatively high numbers of people living in unplanned neighbourhoods (informal settlements)• Insufficient or unfair wealth distribution (pro-rich tax systems) and a significant gap between rich

and poor• Crime hotspots and no-go zones• Drug abuse and trafficking• Use of weapons and small-arms trafficking• Disorder, litter, graffiti, vandalism, noise, speeding, arson, etc.• Racial, ethnic, religious, sexual harassment and discrimination• High truancy rates• High rates of domestic violence and violence against women and children

Source: UN-Habitat, 2006. Urban Safety Toolkit for Asia-Pacific: Part I 104

BOX 2: FACTORS LEADING TO FEELINGS OF INSECURITY IN URBAN SETTINGS

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A focus on children in urban settings is not new.105 In 1961, the first UNICEF programme specifically designed for children in urban areas was established in Mexico City, focusing on housing, sanitation and vocational education. This signalled the start of UNICEF’s Urban Basic Services (UBS) programme. A few years later, the Government of India officially adopted the UBS programme by incorporating it within its 7th National Plan. At the time, a review of the programme concluded that it was “feasible to extend basic urban services on a scale adequate to cover all of the poor in the major urban settlements of developing countries within existing resources.”106 This was an under-estimation of the resources and strategies needed to tackle the persistence of deprivation in urban settings. Nevertheless, there are lessons to be drawn about enabling urban environments for children from past experiences.

6.1 URBAN GOVERNANCE AND INCLUSION

The increase in the number of urban dwellers, along with their rising expectations, represents an enormous challenge, especially to the local governments increasingly responsible to provide for their citizen’s needs. These local governments already face considerable backlogs in provision of housing and infrastructure. It is easy to point at government failure – but important to consider the constraints under which many governments operate, especially the local governments in

Asia and the Pacific that, with decentralization, are increasingly responsible for the services that underpin quality of life for most households and their children.107 Many local governments have limited powers and capacities to carry out their responsibilities adequately. In most countries, responsibilities are more decentralized than revenues or the capacity to raise revenues.108 This is especially true for smaller cities which lack the investment allure of the growing number of global cities in Asia.

Employment, housing, policing, infrastructure and social policies in urban settings are shaped through a complex set of interactions between various urban interests, public officials and institutions,109 and negative externalities can arise when these relationships are mismanaged.110 Scholars therefore increasingly agree that formal and informal local institutions, with particular attention to their municipal111 and political112 functioning, as well as their relationships with regional and national governance institutions,113 are they key building blocks of enabling urban environments. It is also agreed that the responsibility for service provision is allocated on the basis of the principle of subsidiarity (i.e. at the closest level consistent with efficient and cost-effective delivery of services), so that policies become more responsive to the needs of citizens.114 Depending on the size and context of the urban setting, the appropriate level might be the zone, ward or neighbourhood.115

There is growing evidence that people are best served where local governments are most

Creating enabling environments for urban children

6.


Jaideep Gupte28

empowered, and where there is effective follow through on decentralization and supportive multi-level governance. To support this principle of subsidiarity, local governments need roles clearly defined in legislation, with adequate financial, technical and managerial resources.

Realizing child wellbeing in urban settings cannot be the responsibility of any one programme or body alone. Getting governance arrangements right in rapidly changing urban settings is critical, but past experience has shown that this is easier said than done. However, there are examples of good practice and lessons learned to draw on, and prioritising children’s needs can help devise a roadmap for development. For example, physical infrastructure development can begin with children’s needs, such as road and traffic safety, safe recreation areas or public transport, rather than with re-engineering or retrofitting poorly planned infrastructure. Emerging and peri-urban areas have great potential to take on board good practice and lessons learned from more established urban areas.

Alongside the doubling of the urban population in the developing world over the next thirty years, built-up areas in cities are likely to triple.116 This is a clear indication that governance arrangements based on ‘city containment’ (those that look to exclude new area developments or new entrants, for example) will be less relevant in the future. At the same time however, an increase in the size of current governance institutions is unlikely to be adequate. Governance arrangements will need to look towards interconnected urban systems that are integrated enough to allow for economies of scale to occur, but also decentralised enough to be directly responsive to neighbourhood dynamics.

6.2 URBAN PLANNING, WITH A FOCUS ON EQUITY AND CHILD RIGHTS

There is an established consensus that safe and secure environments play a significant role in the wellbeing of children.117 And the idea that effective urban planning and design can reduce crime is not new.118

Well-planned, managed and designed urbanisation generates economic growth, social harmony, political advances and scientific progress, while the lack of effective planning generates social

exclusion, poverty, uncontrolled urban sprawl, pollution, and unsustainable consumption of land, water and other natural resources.119 Even though there has been an increase in urbanised areas, the space that children inhabit in urban settings is shrinking.120

A lack of sensitivity to children’s needs in the planning and design of affordable housing can increase children’s vulnerabilities. For example, survey data from urban residents in Hong Kong revealed that the negative impacts of over-crowding are only marginally related to constraints on the quantity of physical space but, instead, are significantly alleviated by architectural designs that meet the expectation of occupants.121

Uncoordinated urbanisation leads to development dead-ends, and it is always the weakest members of society who bear the most significant negative impacts. Cities and towns do not sit isolated in vacuums. They are intrinsically connected to the rural landscape that surrounds them, and these interconnections go much deeper than viewing rural areas as ‘food growers’ or solely agro-based and urban areas as ‘consumers’ or solely industry based. Urban settings are constantly changed by inward and outward migration, by national remittance flows; urban households, especially the poor, are often split across urban and rural contexts. Urban governance institutions, norms and practices therefore need to achieve a fine balance between ‘regulating’ urban spaces and fostering a symbiotic relationship with rural areas. This places great demands on governance systems to prioritise children’s rights and wellbeing outcomes within broader urban management.

Larger urban settings face different constraints when it comes to urban infrastructure develop-ment. The design and planning constraints created by pre-existing structures and services demand higher levels of investment than when building on a green-field site. New infrastructure may involve lengthy relocation and resettlement processes, with associated costs to both builders/providers and the communities being relocated.122 These challenges are context-specific and require an in-depth understanding of local community needs.

Informal solutions are a lifesaver for many poor households but the informal sector, whether in housing, tenure, school, livelihoods or services, can be supported to work as a bridge to formal solutions rather than becoming a trap that prevents mobility.

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Land management in urban settings

Effective land management and urban planning is key to ensuring that cities are good places to live, especially for children. It is becoming increasingly evident that urban settings need to set in place equitable, fair and efficient institutions for land management.123 To be productive, land use requires fair and effective land and property valuation systems. A balance needs to be struck between prioritising land used directly for children (designed for and by children)124 and allocating it in ways that allow for child-friendly infrastructure improvements as the city grows, and generating revenue through the sale of land for reinvestment. Successful land management systems have specifically looked for ways to increase the supply and reduce the cost of the cheapest legal housing plots. This includes provisions for improved public transport for example. It also includes effective monitoring of changes in land use, particularly of peri-urban and newly urbanised areas.125

6.3 DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE URBAN POOR AND POLICY-MAKERS

In keeping with the principle of subsidiarity, multi-level governance, based on genuine partnerships and drawing on the potential contribution of all stakeholders, is critical to realizing the potential of cities and their capacity to serve all their citizens.

There is a danger however that the challenges to achieving stakeholder inclusion are not fully recognised.126 It is important to reach out directly to children and young people, and value them as active participants and decision-makers in designing the spaces and services they use and are dependent on. UNESCO’s ‘Growing Up in Cities’ programme in Papua New Guinea is a good example of such an approach: the participation principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child were used to emphasise that cities should be evaluated by children themselves, which resulted in a set of indicators on quality of life by and for children.127 In the Philippines, the Child-Friendly Movement has established an accreditation mechanism for urban communities and municipalities, measuring improvements in 24 priority indicators of child wellbeing (in the fields of protection, health, nutrition, education, water and sanitation and participation).128

National and city legislation can help provide the impetus for local governance arrangements to prioritise children’s needs. In the Philippines, a ‘Presidential Award’ has been established which awards cities ‘child-friendly’ status if they can document that they have attained pre-determined goals on survival, development, protection and participation of children. In Pasay (one of the municipalities that make up Metro Manila), which regularly scores highly on these indicators, the city mayor delivers an annual ‘State of the Children Address’.129 Another approach is the School Excellence Programme (SEP) in Mumbai, India, which aspires to make Mumbai a benchmark in urban government school systems. The programme grew from a partnership between the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and national and international NGOs, and is the first and only citywide ‘school turnaround’ programme attempted in the country. It aims to improve the quality of learning in municipal schools through new teaching pedagogy, improving the capacity of teachers and heads of schools, and strengthening school management structures. End-of-term, monthly and quarterly scorecards keep track of progress in 1,327 schools, nearly 14,000 teachers and over 450,000 students in 7 city-zones.130

The Safer Cities Programme, set up in 1996 by UN-Habitat,131 includes local capacity-building and provides a framework within which local communities are enabled to tackle their own problems. In 2013, a congregation of mayors from across the world again affirmed their commitment to making their cities crime- and violence-free.132 The programme has also been implemented in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. In 2006, in collaboration with UN ESCAP, a three-year regional initiative on ‘Pro-Poor Urban Safety through Local Government Capacity Building in Asia-Pacific’ was launched. However, the uptake of this approach across Asia and the Pacific has been limited to date.

Successful approaches focus on integrated initiatives, which bring together various national and local state agencies under a collaborative umbrella, as well as foster key partnerships between state and civil society organisations. In rapidly changing urban environments, successful partnerships arise out of governance arrangements that are responsive to children’s needs and accountable to the voice of the urban poor and their organisations. They are also predictable and transparent.


Jaideep Gupte30

Where local governments work collaboratively with grassroots organizations and their federations, and with other civil society actors, with space for the urban poor to identify the solutions that work for them, progress can be made.

6.4 THE NEED FOR DISAGGREGATED DATA

Effective city management is seriously constrained by incomplete, fragmented city data. Data on child wellbeing in urban centres is currently neither systematised nor rigorous.133 Most survey data is collected at a national level, despite the fact that many of the most important decisions have to be made locally. As a recent Global Monitoring Report points out, there is more good information available on the nation of Fiji than on cities like Delhi or Shanghai.134

Much of the data ignores or under-represents those in illegal settlements; if data exists, it is seldom adequate or disaggregated enough to provide a good understanding of realities. Greater priority could be given to making census data available to local governments in a form that allows the identification of areas with deficient infrastructure and services, along with the careful inclusion of all settlements and better coordination between city departments in access to relevant data. It would also make sense to support and build on the innovative enumeration efforts of grassroots federations of the urban poor in documenting their informal settlements, often for an entire city.135 Longitudinal data, following children in urban settings over time, is equally rare. Finally, there is a need to unpack which child poverty and wellbeing indicators are of importance locally, and which are of national or regional importance.

Better data, disaggregated by location and with a focus on gaps as much as averages, are needed for more informed responses to urban poverty and exclusion. This can include better disaggregation within formal national surveys. There is a strong need to develop appropriate methods and instruments to correct the under-representation of some of the most vulnerable groups, and the excluded and marginalized ones.136 Given the rising importance of urban issues, filling the gap in data should be a key concern for researchers and practitioners alike in the future design and implementation of urban projects.

Monetary measures alone have little explanatory power when it comes to accurately describing

urban child poverty. The high cost of urban living, coupled with the high degree of variation within and between cities means income poverty thresholds under-estimate urban poverty.137 Data on other multidimensional poverty measures therefore need to be systematically collected.

When data is collected to monitor the quality of services, experience suggests that the route to meaningful stakeholder engagement and influence in the provision of services requires a service-delivery compact between users and providers.138 Information on services, user entitlements and user/provider/government responsibilities should be demanded by users (or their representatives), so that they can hold providers and government to account. At the same time, providers can share information for public scrutiny and use it to benchmark their own performance against that of other providers (for example the Standardised Service Level Benchmarking in India).139

Users have several tools, such as Citizens’ Report Cards, to monitor the provider’s performance and provide feedback against collectively determined standards and indicators. If these are undertaken periodically, trends can be analysed over time. User platforms or consumer membership bodies (which have a formal structure and legal entity) can also be used to reach consensus on service challenges (for example, the focus groups and user-forum consultations run by the Regulatory Office of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System in Manila).140 Providers can also conduct their own customer satisfaction surveys to monitor service, identify inefficiencies, and build in mechanisms that include compensation possibilities (as is done by the Public Utilities Board in Singapore).141

6.5 EFFECTIVE AND CO-ORDINATED ENGAGEMENT OF RELEVANT ACTORS

Urban development is extremely resource intensive. A market-driven process could direct resources, but the challenging nature of urban investment can make the mobilisation of financial investment difficult. Physical infrastructural installations can last for 150 years or more, and the financial investment needed bears the additional risk that changes in migration or livelihood patterns, for instance, may render the installation prematurely obsolete. Additionally, the areas where most of the population growth

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is set to occur are currently classified as small and medium-sized towns. Understandably, these towns have lower financial resources and human capacity, and therefore may find it difficult to attract investment. National planning is therefore needed to create effective pathways to attract investments to these areas. Mayors and key city officials can play an important role in championing child rights and take ownership of delivering and monitoring child wellbeing outcomes. Successful efforts are focussed on making financing structures locally relevant by first identifying who the potential large-scale and small-scale investors are, how they can support child wellbeing outcomes in smaller or emerging urban centres, and how they can be incentivised to make long-term sustainable investment

Many cities are increasingly relying on the private sector and public-private partnerships. The role of the private sector can be controversial, yet cities cannot grow and develop without the active involvement of the private sector in terms of both finance and expertise. While private sector involvement might focus on more affluent areas, there are also good examples of cross-subsidies and other equalization measures leading to more widespread improvements.142 The capacity of local governments to oversee and monitor private sector involvement, setting standards for investment in inclusive, equitable urban development is key.

Public-community partnerships have also been productive in many Asian cities. They tend to focus on such areas as solid waste management and sanitation, but in some countries have also moved into low-income housing – as in Thailand with the Baan Mankong programme.143 Approaches that allow marginalized urban dwellers to play a role in developing solutions that work for them and that encourage negotiation and collaboration between low-income communities and local government are a practical way of ensuring that action is targeted, efficient, effective and sustainable.

Asia is home to some of the most successful, well documented examples of community-driven action, supported by local governments and the aid community, creating citywide networks and platforms for action and new forms of urban governance, with far reaching effects for marginalized children and families. The Asian Coalition for Community Action (ACCA), for example, is now active in 150 cities in 19 countries.144 But the bottom line, across Asia, is that wherever urban living standards are high and the needs of children and their households well addressed, local governments have generally played an important role – whether through the

actual provision of infrastructure and services or through their regulation and oversight of the activities of other players such as the private sector.

In many urban contexts (particularly in peri-urban areas) in the Asia-Pacific region, small-scale private and informal service-providers are also significant and viable services. As seen in Table 5 below, significant amounts of water and electricity are provided in this way in a number of countries. However, the nature of these providers corresponds closely to the local level of coverage and quality of formal service provision. State institutions at the municipal level are more likely to succeed when they can readily recognise and interact with the wide range of autonomous and informal actors or governance arrangements that provide services in neighbourhoods.145 Indeed, municipal institutions that reach out to foster stronger ties with such providers also strengthen their bargaining power and capacity to organise poor or vulnerable households and children.146

Private sector involvement is crucial but requires effective regulation and oversight. It is especially important for local governments to gain the capacity to work collaboratively with the private sector – whether large international enterprises or informal entrepreneurs – harnessing their contributions to realize equitable provision.

Setting in place viable and predictable financing structures not only to support current service provision, but also to invest in infrastructure to meet children’s needs in the future, is one of the most severe challenges for cities in the region. Small and medium sized urban settings face this challenge twofold: firstly, as they grow, in sprawl or density, higher quality construction materials and more sophisticated buildings are required. However, if these higher costs must

Documented small-scale private service provider activity by region and sector

East Asia and the Pacific South Asia

Both water and energy

CambodiaIndonesiaLao PDRPhilippines

BangladeshIndiaNepalPakistanSri Lanka

Water only

MongoliaThailandVietnam

Energy only

China

TABLE 5: SMALL-SCALE PRIVATE SERVICE-PROVIDERS BY SECTOR AND COUNTRY147


Jaideep Gupte32

be fully internalized by firms or households, under-investment is the result. In addition, complementary physical infrastructure is critical: roads, drainage, street lighting, electricity, water and sewerage, together with policing, waste disposal, education, and health care. While a market-driven process could possibly gradually increase densities through shifting land values over time, the long-term and lumpy nature of urban investment often inhibits such a process.148 Second, with low levels of human capacity (owing to smaller populations) and lower levels of economic activity, it is often hard to attract the critical levels of financing necessary. Additionally, given the fluidity of population movements, it can be challenging to predict the type and extent of infrastructure upgrades necessary.

6.6 SOUTH-SOUTH LEARNING

Given the rate at which urban transformations are taking place in Asia and the Pacific, successful governance institutions will be those that foster shared learning of what works and what doesn’t work in different contexts. There is already a long history of South-South cooperation, beginning in the early 1960s. Asia’s emerging countries have been cooperating with their partner countries within and outside the region primarily through sharing experiences, cooperation projects, capacity building, technical assistance, and increasingly through subsidized lines of credit and grants,

and preferential market access on unilateral and reciprocal basis.149 Currently, South-South cooperation in the region continues to be a potent tool to further development goals, but now there are new actors and new practices. Cooperation has extended beyond technical assistance to include sectors such as health, education and social protection, and to also include regional cooperation between civil society organisations. South-South and triangular cooperation around urban issues in particular are gaining increasing support as a means to sustainable urbanisation.150

There are several forums already in place, such as the Consortium for Street-Children, the World Urban Campaign, and the Asia Pacific Urban Forum. One of the ways inter-city cooperation is taking place via such forums is through congregations of city mayors – these are important collectives to not only showcase achievements, but to learn from initiatives elsewhere. Far more can also be achieved nationally. Some national initiatives have broad-based commitments towards urban development, and they are beginning to create the space for inter-city dialogue. Examples include the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) and the Integrated Development of Small & Medium Towns (IDSMT) in India, the National Urban Planning in China, the National Urban Sector Policy Framework in Sri Lanka, and the League of Municipalities of the Philippines. These efforts have the potential to ensure that a wide range of local actors and agents are involved in these discussions and that they are not dominated purely by national policy debates.

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Maximize the potential of cities to become places for realizing child rights by addressing severe inequalities and exclusion

• Understand the interlinked deprivations facing children living in slums.

• Strengthen urban planning capacity, with a focus on equity and child rights.

• Promote dialogue and partnerships between the urban poor and policy makers.

• Maximize the impact of social protection policies by tailoring them to urban areas.

• South-South cooperation can help by: promoting collaboration between cities of similar size and challenges.

Collect and use disaggregated data on life in cities to inform policy action

• Collect disaggregated data within formal national surveys, paying particular attention to locations and excluded groups.

• Promote better coordination within city departments’ administrations for data collection, and involve community organizations in data collection.

• Conduct research and monitoring on children in mega-cities, middle-sized cities (population under 500,000) and towns.

• South-South cooperation can help by: facilitating the collection and sharing of effective research and data on urban inequalities and exclusion, and providing opportunities for regional capacity development and research.

Realizing equitable child rights in cities requires effective and coordinated engagement of local governments, informal and private sectors, and civil society

• Promote effective innovations by the private and informal sector.

• Provide well-enforced regulation and oversight by local and central government for the equitable provision of services for children.

• Promote effective governance structures and accountability frameworks at local level.

• South-South cooperation can help by: facilitating the development of regional quality standards and indicators for monitoring the quality and access to services for children in cities.

Policy issues on children and cities

7.


Jaideep Gupte34

In a world where urbanisation is a defining force in the lives of a vast majority, it is critical to understand what matters for children’s rights in urban settings. The sections above have explored the following questions:

• What enables children/youth/girls/boys/mothers/households to live well in urban settings?

• What evidence exists on the types of programmes and policy interventions that work or don’t work?

• How can existing gaps in data about urban poverty and informal urban settlements be more creatively addressed? (As well as greater inclusion, better disaggregation and easy availability of census and household surveys consider the citywide enumerations of informal settlements undertaken by federations of the urban poor.

• What are the implications of within- and inter-city variation on child wellbeing outcomes, policies and programmes?

• What can be done to stem the rising tide of evictions in the region, while still allowing for vital urban growth and development?

• How can the informal sector be better recognized and supported for its contribution to urban economies and to survival for many citizens?

• How can cities avoid the destructive spatial segregation that erodes public space, inclusive civic life and the urban social fabric?

• How can Asian countries best share their learning about the empowerment of local government and the effective multi-level governance that characterizes many of the most successful nations?

• What lessons can be shared on mechanisms to ensure that partnerships with the private sector incorporate a focus on equity for all?

• How can Asia-Pacific countries work together to ensure a regional post-2015 agenda focused not only on improving averages but also on closing the growing gaps between rich and poor, elites and excluded populations, that is so destructive for all?

A set of additional questions can help to frame the debate around children and urban settings, organized in four different groups of questions. A. What are the implications of within- and inter-

city variation on child wellbeing outcomes, policies and programmes?

B. What types of data are needed to systematically and longitudinally understand child wellbeing and deprivation?

C. What kinds of institutions and governance arrangements are best suited to foster child wellbeing in a diverse range of urban settings?

D. How can investment into urban infrastructure and service development, in small and large urban settings alike, be more responsive to children’s needs?

A. What are the implications of within- and inter-city variation on child wellbeing outcomes, policies and programmes?

• What are the implications of varying contexts, both within and between cities, on the normative framework of rights based approaches to attaining wellbeing outcomes for children?

• What impact might variation between urban settings have on how child deprivation and wellbeing are defined and understood?

• How might the pathways along which child rights are translated into child wellbeing outcomes vary?

• How might the actors, agents and institutions

Key policy questions

35

involved in bringing about vary between national and sub-national contexts?

• In what way might timescales for change vary between different urban contexts?

• In what way might the financing structures necessary for interventions be different between urban contexts?

• What impact might city- and neighbourhood-level disaggregation have on the monitoring and evaluation of interventions?

B. What types of data are needed to systematically and longitudinally understand child wellbeing and deprivation in urban contexts?

• How can existing gaps in data about urban poverty and informal urban settlements be more creatively addressed? (Aside from greater inclusion, better disaggregation and easy availability of census, DHS and MICS data, consider the city-wide enumerations of informal settlements undertaken by federations of the urban poor)

• Which child poverty indicators are of significance and hold the most explanatory power in urban contexts?

• What can these indicators tell us about the different needs and experiences disaggregated by boys and girls, and at different life stages?

• How, when and by whom might data be collected?

• What role can local state institutions (municipal) play in collecting and collating data?

• How might these data collection efforts be supported?

• How can these data strengthen planning and implementation cycles?

• How might such data be adequately representative in order to accurately capture impacts of urbanisation on poverty cycles (life stages) nationally, by city, by municipality or ward?

C. What kinds of institutions and governance arrangements are best suited to foster child wellbeing in a diverse range of urban settings?

• What types of institutions and governance arrangements (public, private, informal, and those based on state-civil-society partnerships)

are most conducive to translating child rights into wellbeing outcomes in urban settings?

• How might these institutional and governance arrangements be impacted by projected population growth (both in terms of absolute size of population as well as size of area urbanised)?

• How might these institutions be empowered to champion/prioritise child rights and to achieving child wellbeing outcomes?

• How can the most marginalised children be adequately represented?

• How might these institutions share learning, best practice approaches and experiences, both within and across cities?

• How can urban institutions support, and be supported by, institutions in non-urban and rural contexts?

D. How can investment into urban infrastructure and service development, in small and large urban settings alike, be more responsive to children’s needs?

• What and where are the most immediate infrastructural needs of children and what types of investment do these need?

• What types of national and international (donor) financing structures can support infrastructure and basic service provision in smaller towns/cities to achieve child wellbeing outcomes?

• What are the main barriers to investment (in terms of information asymmetries and logistical barriers) that these type of financiers face?

• What tools do municipalities require to effectively set-up land registration and usage-monitoring systems?

• What role can donor agencies play in reducing early-stage project risks?

• How can investment be made flexible enough to accommodate changes in land usage patterns?

• How might investment from the private sector, including local small businesses, be incentivised and directed to be responsive to children’s needs?

• How can effective housing finance be made available to the urban poor?

• How can urban development be innovatively and sustainably be financed at the municipal level?


Jaideep Gupte36

ENDNOTES

1 Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan

2 Mitlin, D and D Satterthwaite (2012) Urban Poverty in the Global South: Scale and Nature. Routledge, London

3 Iaquinta, D. and A. W. Drescher. 2000. “Defining the peri-urban: rural-urban linkages and institutional connections.” Land Reform, Land Settlement and Cooperatives. 2.8: 26.

4 UNESCAP and UN-HABITAT, State of Asian Cities 2010/2011: pg 33

5 Ranging from diverse markets and livelihood options to building activity, support services, social spaces and interactions.

6 WHO, Global Health Observatory Data Repository, http://apps.who.int/gho/data/view.main.947480

7 Gong, Peng, Song Liang, Elizabeth J. Carlton, Qingwu Jiang, Jianyong Wu, Lei Wang, and Justin V. Remais. 2012. Urbanisation and health in China. The Lancet 379 (9818): 843-852.

8 See Ahluwalia, I. J. 2011. Report on Indian Urban Infrastructure and Services. The High Powered Expert Committee (HPEC) for Estimating the Investment Requirements for Urban Infrastructure Services. Available at www.icrier.org/pdf/FinalReport-hpec.pdf.

9 The proportion of the urban population in the region increased from 33% in 1990 to 43% in 2011. United Nations Population Division. World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision.

10 United Nations (2012) World Urbanization Prospects, the 2011 Revision, (ESA/P/WP/224), (New York: UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs

11 United Nations (2012) ibid

12 Dobbs, Richard, et al. (2011) Urban world: Mapping the economic power of cities. The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). Available at http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/urbanization/urban_world

13 In 1980, only Tokyo, New York, Mexico City and Sao Paolo had more than 10 million official residents. By 1990, Mumbai, Osaka-Kobe, Calcutta, Los Angeles, Seoul and Buenos Aires had also acquired mega-city status. UN World Urbanisation Prospects, 2009.

14 Largest to the smallest South Asian mega-cities in 2000 were: Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta, Dhaka and Karachi

15 United Nations. 2007. World Urbanization Prospects: The 2007 Revision. New York: Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations. Available at http://esa.un.org/unup.

16 UNESCAP. 2011. World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision and World Urbanization Prospects: The 2011 Revision. Available at http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/unup/index_panel2.html.

17 United Nations (2012) op cit.

18 Global Monitoring Report 2013. Rural-Urban Linkages and the MDGs. World Bank and IMF

19 This has consequences on how exponential economies of scale might be harnessed. See Bettencourt, Luis, and Geoffrey West. “A unified theory of urban living.” Nature 467.7318 (2010): 912-913.

http://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_of_cities_and_corporations.html

20 UNFPA. 2007. State of World Population 2007. Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth. New York: United Nations Population Fund.

21 Census of India. 2011. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India (ORGI)

22 Sivaramakrishnan, K. C., Amitabh Kundu, and B. N. Singh. 2007. Handbook of urbanization in India: an analysis of trends and processes. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

23 Census of India. 2011. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India (ORGI)

24 Denis, Eric, and Kamala Marius-Gnanou. 2011. Toward a better appraisal of urbanization in India. Cybergeo : European Journal of Geography. Systèmes, Modélisation, Géostatistiques document 569. Available at http://cybergeo.revues.org/24798.

25 See for example He, Shenjing, et al. 2010. Social groups and housing differentiation in China’s urban villages: an institutional interpretation. Housing Studies 25.5: 671-691. And Gupte, Jaideep. 2012. The agency and governance of urban battlefields: How riots alter our understanding of adequate urban living. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Working Paper #122. Available at http://www.hicn.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/HiCN-WP-122.pdf.

26 See Bapat, M and I Agarwal. 2003. ‘Our needs, our priorities; women and men from the ‘slums’ in Mumbai and Pune talk about their needs for water and sanitation’, Environment and Urbanization 15:2, 71-86.

27 Mitlin, D. 2005. Chronic Poverty in Urban Areas. Urbanization and Environment, 17(2): 3-10

28 Giddens, A. 2006. Sociology. Fifth Edition. Cambridge, UK:Polity Press.

29 Simone, Abdoumaliq, and Vyjayanthi Rao. 2012. Securing the Majority: Living through Uncertainty in Jakarta. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 36 (2): 315-335.

30 Watson, Vanessa. 2013. Planning and the ‘stubborn realities’ of global south-east cities: Some emerging ideas. Planning Theory 12 (1): 81-100.

31 Mumbai Human Development Report. Various years.

32 Bartlett, Sheridan. 2010. “Children living in urban poverty: A global emergency, a low priority.” In Early Childhood Matters, ed. Teresa Moreno. The Hague: Bernard van Leer Foundation. 4-9.

33 See for example Jankowska, Marta, Magdalena Benza, and John R. Weeks. 2013. Estimating spatial inequalities of urban child mortality. Demographic Research S13 (2): 33-62.

34 Mercado, Susan, et. al. 2007. “Responding to the Health Vulnerabilities of the Urban Poor in the “New Urban Settings” of Asia. Background document for the Rockefeller Foundation Global Urban Summit. Available at http://csud.ei.columbia.edu/files/2012/04/Week3_Health_Asia_Mercado.pdf

37

35 Grant, Ursula. 2010. Spatial inequality and urban poverty traps. London: Overseas Development Institute. ODI Working Paper 326, CPRC Working Paper 166. Available at http://www.odi.org.uk/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/5502.pdf.

36 Begum, Sharifa, and Binayak Sen. 2005. Pulling rickshaws in the city of Dhaka: a way out of poverty? Environment & Urbanisation 17 (2): 11-25.

37 UNESCAP. 2012. Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific. Bangkok: Statistics Division, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Available at http://www.unescap.org/stat/data/syb2012.

38 UNESCAP and UN-HABITAT. 2010. State of Asian Cities 2010/2011. Pp. 148.

39 UN-Habitat. 2010. State of the World’s Cities 2010-2011 – Bridging the Urban Divide. London: Earthscan. Pp: 179.

40 United Nations (2011) op cit; UN-Habitat (2010) State of the World’s Cities 2010-2011 – Bridging the Urban Divide. London: Earthscan

41 Subbaraman, R et al (2012) Off the map: the health and social implications of being a non-notified slum in India, Environment and Urbanization 24 (2) 643-665

42 United Nations (2012) The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012, United Nations, New York

43 Dobbs, Richard, et al. 2011. Urban world: Mapping the economic power of cities. The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). Available at http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/urbanization/urban_world.

44 Ravallion, Martin, Shaohua Chen, and Prem Sangraula. 2007. New Evidence on the Urbanization of Global Poverty. Washington, D. C.: World Bank. Policy Research Working Paper 4199.

45 Wilkinson, Richard G and Kate Pickett (2009) The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, London: Allen Lane


47 Government of India (2012). Children in India 2012: A statistical appraisal. New Delhi, Social Statistics Division, Central Statistics Office, Ministry of statistics and Programme Implementation.


49 Kariuki, Mukami, and Jordan Schwartz. 2005. Small-Scale Private Service Providers of Water Supply and Electricity A Review of Incidence, Structure, Pricing and Operating Characteristics. Washington: World Bank - Energy and Water Department, Bank of Netherlands Water Partnership, Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3727. Available at http://elibrary.worldbank.org/content/workingpaper/10.1596/1813-9450-3727.

50 Unicef. 2011. Child Poverty in East Asia and the Pacific: Deprivations and Disparities. A Study of Seven Countries. Bangkok: UNICEF East Asia and Pacific. Available at http://www.unicef.org/eapro/Child_Poverty_in_EAP_Regional_Report.pdf.

51 Global Study on Child Poverty and Disparities. Vanuatu Country report. 2012

52 UNESCAP. 2012. Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific. Bangkok: Statistics Division, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Available at http://www.unescap.org/stat/data/syb2012.

53 Satterthwaite, David, Sheridan Bartlett, Yves Cabannes, Donald Brown (2012) The Role of Local and Regional Authorities in the UN Development Agenda Post-2015: Paving the Way to Habitat III, UCLG Working Paper

54 See discussion in Section X below for the appropriateness of income poverty lines.

55 Matthews Z, et al. 2010. Examining the “Urban Advantage” in Maternal Health Care in Developing Countries. PLoS Med 7(9): e1000327.

56 See Lopez Moreno, E. (2003). Slums in the World: the Face of Urban Poverty in the New Millennium. Monitoring the Millennium Development Goals, Target 11- World-wide Slum Dwellers Estimations. UN-Habitat. The Global Urban Observatory.

57 McGranahan, Gordon, Deborah Balk, & Bridget Anderson. “The rising tide: assessing the risks of climate change and human settlements in low elevation coastal zones” Environment & Urbanization 19 (1): 7-37.

58 Bicknell, Jane, David Dodman, David Satterthwaite (eds) (2009) Adapting Cities to Climate Change: Understanding and Addressing the Development Challenges, London: Earthscan

59 See Lebel, Louis. 2002. “Global change and development: a synthesis for Southeast Asia”, in P. Tyson, et al. (eds.) Global-regional linkages in the earth system, Berlin: Springer. Pp. 151–184

60 Ebi et al. 2006. Climate variability and change and their potential health effects in small island states: Information for adaption planning in the health sector. Environmental Health Perspectives 114(12).

61 Nicholls, R. et al. 2008. Ranking Port Cities with High Exposure and Vulnerability to Climate Extremes Exposure Estimates. Paris: OECD.

62 Douglas, Ian. 2009. “Climate change, flooding and food security in South Asia”, Food Security 1:127-136

63 Brown, Anna, Ashvin Dayal and Cristina Rumbaitis Del Rio (2012) From practice to theory: emerging lessons from Asia for building urban climate change resilience, Environment and Urbanization 24(2) 531-556

64 Bartlett, Sheridan. 2008. “Climate change and urban children: Implications for adaptation in low and middle income countries”, Environment and Urbanization, 20(2): 501-520.

65 Malalgoda, C, D. Amaratunga, and R. Haigh. 2013. Creating a disaster resilient built environment in urban cities: The role of local governments in Sri Lanka. International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment. 4 (1): 72-94.

66 See for example, Diagne, Khady (2007) “Governance and natural disasters: addressing flooding in Saint Louis, Senegal”, Environment and Urbanization. 19 (2): 552-562.

67 Bollens S (2012) City and Soul in Divided Societies. London: Routledge.

68 Silva, Raquel et al (2013) Global premature mortality due to anthropogenic outdoor air pollution and the contribution of past climate change. Environmental Research Letters 8(3) doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034005

69 United Nations News Centre (June 2013) UN official calls for urgent action to improve air quality in Asia-Pacific region, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=45239&Cr=pollution&Cr1#.UiyEfWTXgwG

70 United Nations News Centre (April 2013) Dangers of air pollution worse than previously thought, UN health agency warns, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=44586&Cr=pollution&Cr1=#.UiyDLGTXgwE

71 OECD. 2012. Environmental Outlook to 2050. OECD Publishing. Available at http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/oecd-environmental-outlook-to-2050_9789264122246-en

72 Burton, E. 2011. “The importance of the built environment to children’s well-being: what do we know?” Urban Age: London School of Economics.


Jaideep Gupte38

73 Burton, E. 2011. Ibid

74 Estimates of the need for basic infrastructure investment over the next 5-7 years, for instance, are USD 7.3 billion Indonesia, 3.5 billion Philippines, 21 billion India, and 83 billion China: ADB. Strategy 2020: The Long Term Strategic Framework of the Asian Development Bank, 2008-2020. Mandaluyong City: Asian Development Bank, 2011

75 UNICEF and WHO (2012) Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation: 2012 Update, WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation

76 UCLG (2013) GOLD III: The Governance of Basic Local Services: Providing Access for All, Barcelona, UCLG

77 UHRC (2006) Key Indicators for Urban Poor in Delhi from NFHS-3 and NFHS-2, Urban Health Resource Centre and USAID, Delhi

78 UNESCO (2008) EFA Global Monitoring Report 2009: Overcoming Inequality: Why Governance Matters, Paris and London: UNESCO, Oxford Press

79 Nandy, S. and Gordon, D. (2009). Children living in squalor. Children, Youth and Environments, 19 (2), 202-228

80 Montgomery, M. Hewett, P. 2005. Urban poverty and health in developing countries: households and neighbourhood effects. Demography 42 (3), 397-425.

81 Agarwal, Siddharth. 2011. ‘The state of urban health in India; comparing the poorest quartile to the rest of the urban population in selected states and cities’, Environment and Urbanization 23:1, 13-28.

82 Sverdik, Alice (2011) Ill-health and poverty: a literature review on health in informal settlements, Environment and Urbanization 23(1) 123-155

83 Shi, A (2000) How access to urban potable water and sewerage connections affects child mortality, Development Research Group, World Bank, Washington DC

84 Sverdik (2011) op cit

85 Islam, M., A. Azad. 2008 “Rural–urban migration and child survival in urban Bangladesh: are the urban migrants and poor disadvantaged?” Journal of Biosocial Science, 40 83-96

86 Fry, S, B. Cousins, and K. Olivola. 2002. Health of Children Living in Urban Slums in Asia and the Near East: Review of Existing Literature and Data. Washington DC: Environmental Health Project. Available at http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/Pnacq101.pdf.

87 as cited in Bartlett, Sheridan. 2003. Water, sanitation and urban children: the need to go beyond ‘improved’ provision. Environment and Urbanization 15 (2): 57-70.

88 United Nations (2012) The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012, United Nations, New York

89 Van de Poel, Ellen. Owen O’Donnell and Eddy van Doorslaer (2007) Are urban children really healthier? Evidence from 47 developing countries, Social Science and Medicine, 65 (10) 1986-2003

90 WHO/UNICEF (2008) World Report on Child Injury Prevention, Geneva: WHO

91 Chatterjee, Sudeshna (2007) “Children’s role in humanizing forced evictions and resettlements in Delhi”, Children, Youth and Environments 17(1) 198-221; Dizon, AM and S Quijano, (1997) The Impact of Eviction on Children: Case Studies in Phnom Penh, Manila and Mumbai, Urban Poor Associates (UPA), Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP)

92 Cameron, Stuart (2010) CREATE Pathways to Access, Research Monograph no. 45, University of Sussex

93 Rampal, A (2007) Ducked or bulldozed? Education of deprived urban children in India, in W Pink and G Noblit (eds) International Handbook of Urban Education, Springer

94 Pink and Noblit (2007) ibid

95 Yaqub, Shahin (2009) Independent Child Migrants in Developing Countries: Unexplored Links in Migration and Development, Innocenti Working Paper IWP-2009-01, Florence: Innocenti Research Centre.

96 ILO (2010) Global Employment Trends for Youth: Special Issue on the Impact of the Global Economic Crisis on Youth. Geneva: ILO

97 ILO (2013) Global Employment Trends for Youth 2013, Geneva: ILO

98 Baker, R. et al. 1996 “Methods Used in Research with Street Children. Childhood 3(2): 171–193.

99 West, Andrew. 2003. At the Margins: Street Children in Asia and the Pacific. Asian Development Bank. Poverty and Social Development Papers #8. Available at http://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/at-the-margins.pdf.

100 Krug et al (eds) (2002) World Report on Violence and Health. Geneva, World Health Organization, 2002; Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) op cit

101 Choon Piew (2007) Securing the “civilized” enclaves: gated communities and the moral geographies of exclusion in (post) socialist Shanghai, Urban Studies 44:8, 1539-58

102 Siddiqui, Roomana N and Janak Pandey (2003) Coping with environmental stressors by urban slum dwellers, Environment and Behavior 2003 35: 589

103 Whitzman, C 2008, The Handbook of Community Safety, Gender and Violence Prevention: Practical Planning Tools, Earthscan, London.

104 See: http://www.unhabitat.org/urbansafetytoolkit/toolkit.htm

105 See Unicef History. Children and urban development: Past and present. Available at http://www.unicef.org/about/history/index_61883.html.

106 Cousins, William. 1992. Urban Basic Services in Unicef: A historical overview. Unicef History Series: Monograph XIV. Unicef. Pp. 60.

107 Recent surveys with mayors in 98 cities in 15 Asian countries show that most responsibility for the basic services essential to the health and well being of young children lie with local governments – for instance 83% for solid waste management; 77% for sanitation; 61% for water supply, 58% for slum upgrading. Lacquian, A (2013) Asia- Pacific chapter, in GOLD III, op cit

108 Lacquian, A (2013) ibid

109 See for example, Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan. 1994. The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Bombay 1900-40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

110 Desai, Raj. 2010. The political economy of urban poverty in developing countries: Theories, issues, and an agenda for research. Washington: Wolfensohn Center for Development. Working Paper #20. Available at http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2010/06/urban-poverty-desai.

111 See for example, Malalgoda, Chamindi, Dilanthi Amaratunga, and Richard Haigh. 2013. Creating a disaster resilient built environment in urban cities: The role of local governments in Sri Lanka. International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment 4 (1): 72-94.

112 See for example, IDS. 2010. An upside down view of governance. Brighton: INstitute of Development Studies and Centre for the Future State. Available at www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/Upside.pdf‎.

113 See for example, Leck, Hayley, and David Simon. 2013. Fostering Multiscalar Collaboration and Co-operation for Effective Governance of Climate Change Adaptation. Urban Studies 50 (6): 1221-1238.

114 UN-HABITAT. 2002. The Global Campaign on Urban Governance: Concept Paper 2nd Edition. Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-Habitat. Available at www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/2099_24326_concept_paper.doc‎.

39

115 Hasan, A., Patel, S., and Satterthwaite, D. (2005) “How to Meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Urban Areas,” Environment and Urbanization 17(1), 3-19.

116 Angel, Shlomo, Jason Parent, Daniel L. Civco, and Alejandro M. Blei. 2010. The Persistent Decline in Urban Densities: Global and Historical Evidence of ‘Sprawl’. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Working Paper (WP10SA1). Available at www.alnap.org/pool/files/1834-1085-angel-final-1.pdf‎.

117 See for example Caldeira, Teresa Pires do Rio. 2000. City of walls : crime, segregation, and citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley ; London: University of California Press.

118 See for example Ramsay, Malcolm. 1982. City-centre crime : the scope for situational prevention. Research and Planning Unit paper. London: Home Office. And Schneider, Richard H., and Ted Kitchen. 2002. Planning for crime prevention : a transatlantic perspective. London; New York: Routledge.

119 UN-Habitat. Safer Cities: Building urban safety through Urban Planning, Management and Governance. Available at http://www.unhabitat.org/content.asp?typeid=19&catid=375&cid=9204&activeid=9202.

120 See UN-HABITAT. 2013. State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013: Prosperity of Cities. New York: UN-HABITAT. Available at http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=3387.

121 Chan, Y. K. 1999. Density, crowding, and factors intervening in their relationship: Evidence from a hyper-dense metropolis. Social Indicators Research 48: 103-124.

122 Benjamin, Solomon. 2008. Occupancy urbanism: radicalizing politics and economy beyond policy and programs. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32 (3): 719-729.

123 See Childress, M. et. al. 2004. Regional Study on Land Administration, Land Markets, and Collateralized Lending. EAP Regional Study. Washington: EASRD Rural Development & Natural Resources East Asia Pacific.

124 Spencer, C. et al. 2006. Children and their Environment. Learning, Using and Designing Spaces. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

125 See Singh, Nina, and Jitendra Kumar. 2012. Urban Growth and Its Impact on Cityscape: A Geospatial Analysis of Rohtak City, India. Journal of Geographic Information System 4: 12-19.

126 Balakrishnan, S and Sekhar, S. 2004. Holding the State to Account: Citizens Voice through Report Cards in Bangalore. Document for Regional Seminar and Learning Event: Local Governance and Pro-poor Service Delivery. Manila: Asian Development Bank

127 Chawla, L. 2002. Ed. Growing Up in an Urbanising World. Earthscan. Available at http://www.unesco.org/most/guic/guicguuw.htm

128 Racelis, Mary, and Angela Desiree M. Aguirre. 2006. Making Philippine Cities Child Friendly: Voices of children in poor communities. Siena, Italy: Innocenti Research Centre: Unicef. Available at http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/philinsight.pdf.

129 http://www.pasay.gov.ph/Departments/PCCWC.html

130 Interview with Tejinder Sandhu (Unicef), 7th June, 2013

131 See Safer Cities Programme at http://www.unhabitat.org/categories.asp?catid=375

132 on 14th March, 2013. Steering Committee of the Global Network on Safer Cities (GNSC), United Nations, New York.

133 Satterthwaite, D. 2010. “Urban myths and the mis-use of data that underpin them.” In Urbanization and Development: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, eds. Jo Beall, Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis and Ravi Kanbur. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 83-102.

134 World Bank and IMF (2013) Rural-urban Dynamics and the Millennium Development Goals: Global Monitoring Report 2013, Washington DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank

135 See the special issue of Environment and Urbanization 24 (1) April 2012: Mapping, enumerating and surveying informal settlements and cities

136 See Roelen, K. and F. Gassman. 2008. Measuring Child Poverty and Well-Being: A Literature Review, Maastricht, The Netherlands, Maastricht Graduate School of Governance Working Paper Series No. 2008/WP001.

137 Satterthwaite, D. 2004. The under-estimation of urban poverty in low- and middle-income nations London: IIED. Working Paper on Poverty Reduction in Urban Areas No. 14 Available at http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/9322IIED.pdf.

138 See for example user and provider engagement in the provision of water in Castro, V and Morel, A. 2008. Can Delegated Management Help Water Utilities Improve Services to Informal Settlements? Water Lines. 27(4): 289-306.

139 See for example Government of India (GoI). 2009. Urban Handbook on Standardised Service Level Benchmarks. Available at www.urbanindia.nic.in/programme/uwss/slb/handbook.pdf‎.

140 Franceys, R and Gerlach, E, Eds. 2008. Regulating Water and Sanitation for the Poor – Economic Regulation for Public and Private Partnerships. London: Earthscan.

141 See Muller, Mike, Robin Simpson, and Meike van Ginneken. 2008. Ways to improve water services by making utilities more accountable to their users: A review. Washington: World Bank. Water Working Note No. 15.

142 Laquian, A (2013) op cit

143 Archer, Diane (2012) Baan Mankong participatory slum upgrading in Bangkok, Thailand: Community perceptions of outcomes and security of tenure, Habitat International 36 (1) 178-184

144 See the special 2012 issue of Environment and Urbanization 24(2): Addressing poverty and inequality – new forms of urban governance in Asia

145 See for example, Coelho, Karen, and T. Venkat. 2009. The Politics of Civil Society: Neighbourhood Associationism in Chennai. Economic and Political Weekly 44 (26/27): 358-367.

146 Mitlin, Diana, and D Satterthwaite, eds. 2005. Empowering Squatter Citizens: Local Government, Civil Society and Urban Poverty Reduction. London: Earthscan.

147 Kariuki, Mukami, and Jordan Schwartz. 2005. Small-Scale Private Service Providers of Water Supply and Electricity A Review of Incidence, Structure, Pricing and Operating Characteristics. Washington: World Bank - Energy and Water Department, Bank of Netherlands Water Partnership, Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3727. Available at http://elibrary.worldbank.org/content/workingpaper/10.1596/1813-9450-3727.

148 Global Monitoring Report 2013. Rural-Urban Linkages and the MDGs. World Bank and IMF: p.13

149 Kumar, N. 2009. South-South and Triangular Cooperation in Asia-Pacific: Towards a New Paradigm in Development Cooperation. Bangkok, Macroeconomic Policy and Development Division, UNESCAP. Available at http://www.unescap.org/pdd/publications/workingpaper/wp_09_05.pdf

150 See Tibaijuka, A. 2007. “Promoting South-South and Triangular Cooperation in Support of Sustainable Urbanisation”, at the Fifteenth Session of the High-Level Committee on South-South Cooperation, May 2007, New York.


Jaideep Gupte40

Regional Office for South Asia (ROSA)P.O. Box 5815, Lekhnath Marg Kathmandu, Nepal

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