本帖最后由 满仓 于 2014-9-22 09:13 编辑
【中文标题】钢铁丛林中的万千沙丁鱼
【原文标题】10 Million Sardines in a Sea of Skyscrapers
【登载媒体】外交政策
【原文作者】Jonathan Kalan
【原文链接】http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/08/think_again_sprawling_megacities_lagos_mumbai_urbanization
“大城市给二十一世纪带来了最可怕的发展危机。”
——错。
两百年前，全世界人口中只有百分之三居住在城市中。今天，城市容纳了地球上超过一半的人口。城市居民数量每年增长将近6000万人，这个趋势是快速工业化、城乡结合和全球化进程带来的结果。如果按这个速度发展，到2050年，将有超过70％的人口把城市当作家乡。
当今世界最大的城镇中心被称为“大都市”，每个容纳着无数紧紧挤在一起的人类的庞然大物都有超过100万的人口。在1950年，只有纽约市符合这个标准，今天有24个城市，而且还有至少十多个城市将会在2050年加入这个俱乐部。大部分大都市都在发展中国家，比如德里、雅加达、上海和拉各斯。
如果只看统计数据，大都市很容易被看作是这个世纪的发展危机。联合国在2006年报告，在孟买的达拉维贫民窟，平均1440人有一个厕所坑位。在开罗，交通问题极为严重，世界银行估算交通堵塞所造成的生产力下降，每年给经济带来80亿美元损失。
很多记者、环境保护者和非政府组织的领导人过分纠结于这些黑暗的细节，他们把大都市描绘成灾难——巨大、开放式的污水沟滋养着贫穷、收入和医疗分配不均的恶性循环，环境因此而退化。非政府组织通过讲述人们绝望的故事，异口同声地强调大都市的黑暗面（他们专门收集了相关的证据）。大型的国际机构，比如国际卫生组织，喜欢强调数字，比如说开罗居民每天吸入的污染空气相当于一包香烟，这都是国际媒体提供的信息。其它人的批评就更加直截了当，一位研究城市发展的教授乔尔•柯特金在2011年《福布斯》杂志上的一篇文章中说：“发展中国家的大城市本质就是它们展示出来的样子：重现曾经在西方发生过的大规模城市化进程中最糟糕的一面。”
的确，大都市中的数千万人口都生活在贫困和污染中。但是，强调大都市的经济、社会和环境问题掩盖了它给居民们提供了基本的机会和巨大的能力这个现实。简而言之，流行的观点是不完整的。
实际上，大都市中数量庞大、密集的人口资源是最宝贵的财产，他们贡献了全世界14％的经济量。它们可以真正被用来驱动经济发展、消除贫困、提升居民能力。
正确使用这个工具是至关重要的，因为大规模城市化进程不可避免。从欧洲到北美到亚洲，每一个国家的发展都伴随着城市化进程。而且，世界已经看到了大都市如何出现、如何以可持续的方式发展的过程。比如首尔，从60年代开始的基础设施建设和经济改革，帮助韩国从世界上最贫穷的经济体（相当于今天的贝宁）发展成第15大经济体，成为全球商业集散地。
转化发展中的大都市和准大都市当然需要花费一些时间，而且没有两个城市的转化方式是一模一样的。首尔有高度集中的政府机构，其它城市并非如此，尤其是在那些贫穷的国家。但还有其它办法可以均衡权力的集中度、科技和经济的规模。大都市掌控着发展中国家的核心价值，我们希望它们用这些核心价值作为转化的起点，而不要期望这一切变成灾难。
“大城市太拥挤了。”
——有时候更大的确会更好。
几十年前，保罗•埃尔利希著名的著作《人口炸弹》展示了一个人口过度拥挤的星球的末日场景，其中包括动乱、饥荒和大规模的死亡。今天，大部分专家都认为埃尔利希是过虑了。但是一个类似的观点指向了大都市。2012年，一位城市政策专家温德尔•考克斯写了一篇文章“巴基斯坦：人口炸弹已经爆炸”，其中提到了卡拉奇的大规模增长。2011年时任全球城市研究所主任的保罗•詹姆斯在接受《经济学人》采访时说：“限制城市的发展——我指的是限制城市的扩张和人口膨胀——将在总体上改善世界人口的生活质量。”
现存的和那些演化中的大都市毫无疑问规模巨大，而且发展迅速，似乎在西方人看来这就代表这混乱。但大不一定都是不好。
世界银行经济发展部的印德米特•吉尔在接受采访时说，大都市过分拥挤的说法“从经济学角度来看并不成立”。他认为，随着国家的发展，人口和经济活动越来越多地集中在城市中。这个“集聚经济”的过程是一件好事，因为它会降低生产成本、让商业活动共享基础设施、提供大量的劳动力市场。在大都市中，这种现象的规模要比其它城市来得更大。
大都市和其它城市中廉价劳动力和工业市场趋向于“巨型”的集中，对一个国家来说是至关重要的。据大卫•萨特思韦特提供的数据，孟买一个城市提供了印度全国GDP 的6％，但人口只占1.5％。而且，大都市的人均GDP远高于全国平均水平，发展中国家的大都市差别尤其明显。例如，孟加拉国统计局提供的数字是全国人均GDP是1044美元，但达卡的人均GDP是3000美元。这样趋势还将会继续。麦肯锡咨询公司在2011年的报告中说：“大型和中等规模城市的新兴市场……从2007年到2025年将会贡献全球超过45％的经济增长。”
大城市还能让政府更好地提供公共服务。麦肯锡估算，在人口密集的城市地区提供基础服务——比如住房、饮水和教育——要比农村地区便宜30％到50％。这可以解释为什么发展中国家90％的城市家庭通电，而农村家庭电力的普及率只有63％。政府应当为所有的居民提供这些公共服务，无论他们居住在哪里，但是在大都市中，政府做这些事情速度会更快、更有效率。
随着人口增长，大都市的人口密度会逐渐降低——人们财富的积累会促进政府建设新的居住区（看看那些高档的卫星城和新德里的郊区，比如古尔冈和诺依达）。但是，这样的趋势让大都市的重要性在新的方面得到体现：政府会努力提升人员的流动性，同时让人口和资源得以紧密衔接。亚洲的政府多年来致力于此，开发高速铁路和其它运输方式。其它国家的政府也在迎头赶上：坦桑尼亚达累斯萨拉姆正在修建一个高速公路转运系统，尼日利亚正在修建一个连接拉各斯和其它城市的高速铁路网络。
换句话说，政府逐渐认识到密度带来的好处，他们想方设法地把人口留在城市中。
“但是大都市并没有让贫民窟中的居民得到好处。”
——从某种程度上说是这样。
大都市中生活在贫民窟中的穷人已经不是新鲜事了，拥挤的棚屋和垃圾形成了可怕的景色。在巴基斯坦，城市化进程进本上是以贫民窟的方式来扩张。在拉各斯，贫民窟容纳了城市70％的人口。联合国人居署把贫民窟叫做“最难以忍受的城市居住条件”，迈克•戴维斯的书《贫民窟星球》把这片地区描述成后工业化时代的废土。还有一些城市发展专家呼吁铲平贫民窟，重新安置居民。
但是，尽管贫民窟不是一个理想的居住地，但十亿人口在那里定居是有一定原因的。农村地区的贫困率远高于城市地区，因此人们纷纷涌入大都市，追求更好的生活质量。贫民窟是他们的集散地，利用廉价的住房和非正式的工作快速地吸收移民。在非洲、亚洲和拉丁美洲，这种现象最明显。《城市的胜利》一书的作者爱德华•格莱斯尔说：“城市里充满了穷人并不是因为城市让这些人变穷，而是因为城市吸引了其他地方的穷人。”
贫民窟是在城市中深入发展的第一个阶梯。大城市项目专门研究全世界的城市管理状况，其创始人珍妮斯•波尔曼从1969年开始，在里约热内卢的贫民窟对居民的流动性进行观察。她在1999年发现，最早随机选择的居民群体中，大约有36％还可以被追查到。其中67％的居民以及65％的后代已经搬离了贫民窟，40％的人成为了独栋房屋或者公寓的房东，27％的人住房条件得到改善。那些依然居住在贫民窟中的人，在调查期间也都得到了更好的公共服务条件和住房条件。
贫民窟中的大部分商业机会都是灵活、非正规的市场。基本上每一条小巷中都是密密匝匝的商业和服务业活动：理发馆、食品店、服装店等等。在孟买的达拉维，大约17％的建筑物都不是住宅，而是工厂、商店和办公室，而且都生意兴隆。达拉维那些小规模的皮具、布匹和陶瓷工厂的年产量超过5亿美元。
为满足每一个基层需求所产生的解决方案也带来了商业机会。在东非地区的贫民窟，尤其是在肯尼亚，一些没有足够财产可以抵押来获取正规银行贷款的女性，参与了一个“旋转木马”的组织。她们把零钱凑在一起——每个星期每人贡献不到1美元——在这个基金池中获取贷款。
这些非正规的市场和社交网络，通常让贫民窟的生活不是那些大都市的批评者所设想的那样，而是一个主动、清醒的选择。从这个意义上讲，一些旨在改善人们生活条件、重新安置居民的“贫民窟提升”计划往往会遭到抵制。《城市之影：十亿贱民和城市新世界》的作者罗伯特•纽维尔斯就曾提到过这一点。例如在奈落比，政府试图重新安置聚居在市区内最大贫民窟基贝拉的数百名居民和商业机构，让他们在2003年搬到新的公寓楼中。但是很多人把分到的新房出租，拿着租金又回到贫民窟居住。因为那里有他们的工作、买卖和社会关系网络，这些东西在新地方不大容易被复制。
这并不是在美化贫穷。贫民窟中现实存在的那些创造性和企业精神，不应当妨碍政府采取有力的举措和更大力度的投入，包括居民的医疗和基本需求，这些问题亟待改善。例如，在奈落比的贫民窟中，新生儿死亡率是城市里其它地区的2.5倍，原因包括糟糕的卫生条件和极为有限的医疗资源等等。
总之，我们不能草率地说贫民窟就是化粪池，需要被清理、被拆除。正如格莱斯尔所说，贫民窟不是一个祸害，它是一个健康城市的象征。
“大都市永远不会变得‘健康’，它们会毁掉这个星球。”
——实际上，大都市恰恰会拯救这个星球。
大都市是很多环境保护者最喜欢攻击的目标——一个“当代人类的悲剧”。批评者指出，城市占据了全部二氧化碳排放量的70％，虽然一些西方大都市逐渐具备了有效的垃圾处理能力、污染物排放标准和清洁能源的大规模运输能力，但大部分发展中国家的大都市还不是这样。例如在北京，空气质量已经极为糟糕，媒体开始把这种现象称为“大气末日”。专门研究大都市污染物排放问题的科学家查尔斯•科尔布，在2009年美国化学学会全国大会上说，城市中心排放的污染“已经成为环境变化的主要驱动力”。根据他的演示内容，化学学会认为，“控制发展中国家的城市发展是改善全球空气质量的关键所在”。
但实际上，大都市比很多人想象中更加清洁，而且它们还可以越变越好。
首先，大城市有农村地区所不具备的环境保护优势。在所有发展中国家里，70％的家庭可以使用现代化烹饪燃料（电、燃气、煤油），农村地区的比例只有19％，那里主要依靠燃烧煤、木材和其它生物燃料，从而导致了乱砍滥伐和空气污染。斯图尔特•布兰德是可持续性生活指南《全地球目录》的创办人，他写道：“在发展中国家，城市清洁主要原因是它们放弃了对农村废弃物的依赖。”
近期的数据还显示，城市变得越来越大，排放物的增长幅度反而会越来越小。专门研究城市问题的马丁繁荣研究所在2009年的报告中说：“就像有机生物一样，大都市的能量代谢过程会随着规模的增加而变缓，越大的城市，人均能源需求量就越少。”人们居住得越密集，基础设施和资源利用就越有效。大城市的人均道路面积很小，更多的人会使用公共交通工具，电力输送的距离会更短（意味着“电力损失更少，二氧化碳排放量就更低”）。
高密度也可以让大都市以更大的步伐提升绿色项目的进度。在过去十年中，若干个大都市已经让公交车、出租车和动力三轮车，从汽油燃料转化为使用更加环保的天然气。2010年在孟加拉国达卡实施了一项政策，让这座城市中40％的机动车改用天然气。据报道，这项政策减少了由于空气污染导致的2045初生死亡病例，节省了大约4.09亿美元（约占孟加拉国年度GDP的0.4％）。奈落比的一个公司Sanergy安装了数千个付费公共卫生间，城市居民的粪便将被转化为有利用价值的东西——农民廉价的肥料和沼气中提炼出来的可再生能源，用来为城市提供电力。还有很多有价值的设想：劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室2008年的一份研究报告中提到，如果世界上前100座大城市把所有建筑物的屋顶刷成白色，并且使用反光涂料，将会减少440亿吨温室气体。这是因为具有发射效果的表面吸收更少的热量，城市温度会整体降低，从而会消耗更少的制冷能源。
而且，贫民窟的绿色优势不仅仅来自它的高密度和低能源消耗，还是丰富物质资源带来的结果。在达拉维，400个非正式的回收机构和3万名“拾荒者”每天处理6000吨垃圾，几乎没有任何东西会被浪费。在开罗，同样有7万名拾荒者靠上门回收垃圾维持生计，他们通常会把收集到的80％的垃圾做分拣，而大部分西方垃圾回收企业只能分拣20％左右。
布兰德写道：“环境保护主义者还没有抓住城市化进程带来的机会”，他们很快会发现这个金矿的，是时候“让新型城市彻底绿色化了”。
“要想把握住机会，大都市需要清晰、明确的城市规划。”
——丢掉蓝图。
虽然这些大都市蕴藏着巨大的潜力——无论对环境、贫穷，还是对经济——但依然需要一个重要的转型过程，来让它们完全释放出自身的力量。一些机构和经济学家给出了一些政策和规划方面的建议，来加速这个转型的过程（包括基础设施和服务等等）。很多政策和建议都来自，或者至少是演化自西方的城市规划模版。例如，经合组织曾经主张决策者们效仿荷兰，采取“紧密型城市”政策（高居住密度、有限的城市范围）。纽约大学城市课题组的保罗•罗默尔更进一步主张完全从零开始建设大城市。他所谓的“包租城市”是完全独立的商业区，用经济学家和社会学家所设计出的最有效的方式规划、建造、运作这个城市。
来自境外的投资、指导和建议并不都是坏事，但是发展中国家的大都市规划没有一成不变的模式，从下至上的方案和从上至下的政策同样重要。纽约大学高级研究学者艾伦•伯陶德说：“这些大城市在历史上并没有可以效仿的先例，拉各斯、孟买和上海必须找到适合自己的解决方案。它们不能幻想在一夜之间就可以变成哥本哈根和阿姆斯特丹。”
寻找最佳方案要从全员参与开始。萨特思韦特认为，国际援助机构和发展银行的决策依据，主要是为了支持一个国家整体，而不是某个地区和政府。因此，它们“不（直接）对低收入群体负责”，尤其是在城市地区。萨特思韦特指出，一个很好的例子是基层机构的成功案例，比如一个城市联合机构“棚屋/贫民窟国际”。这个来自社区的组织在33个国家直接与当地政府合作，致力于改善贫民窟中居民的基本权利和服务条件。
同样，为了给大都市中的贫困人口提供更好的卫生、教育和其它必需服务，政府和国际机构应当设法支持、改善那些居民已经组建的非正规的组织，而不是用所谓更新、“更好”的什么制度去取代它们。成功的案例不胜枚举。从80年代开始，卡拉奇基于社区的奥林奇试点项目已经培训了诸多活动人士、筹集地方资金，并投资超过100万美元，为超过10万户家庭修建了卫生间和排水沟。这个项目极为成功，政府追加投资了800万美元，把他们修建的排水沟与市政排水网络连接起来。圣保罗政府把闲散的拾荒人员整合成一个半官方的组织，在全市范围提供服务。其它拉丁美洲城市也召集了拾荒人员，让他们加入官方的保洁机构。
科技也可以提供大都市中生活的关键信息，并且让人们能了解如何做出改善。在基贝拉，公共信息平台让人们可以通过短信息和带有GPS的智能手机标记学校、药店、水龙头和其它主要地标的位置。这些信息可以帮助非政府组织选择基础设施的建设地点，比如新的卫生间，奈落比政府也可以同样受益。在开罗，一个公共交通信息软件Bey2ollak（大约100万注册用户）让通勤人员可以实时上传城市的交通信息，当地一家报纸最近说，这款软件“比交通信号灯更加重要”。政府可以利用这些现有的数据更好地了解城市的交通模式，并与专家合作开发新的系统，来管控突发性事件。
所以，大都市已经保存了很多信息，为未来的成长和改变做好准备。政府当然可以向境外寻求帮助，但他们首先应当找到自己的人民，他们最了解这座城市的犄角旮旯和错综复杂的现状。
“可惜的是，大都市所需要的政府永远不会出现。”
——这一点可以改变。
充分利用人民的智慧、非官方经济体和自下而上的创新方案，需要一个好的政府。但是让很多发展专家担忧的是，相关的领导人和领导机构往往既腐败又软弱，无法胜任这项工作。罗默尔和他的一位同事写道，城市化进程在那些“缺少管理能力”的地方突飞猛进。城市政策专家理查德•弗洛瑞达也写道，世界上的很多大都市“缺少”有能力的政府和进行有效管理所必需的资金。
但前景并非一片黑暗。格莱斯尔说：“管理大都市当然是一项艰巨的工作”，但并非绝不可能。尽管政治意愿——有时候体现在卓越的领导人身上——是一个重要因素，但它所产生的英明政策也可以来自诸多方面，比如简单的经济体和社会压力。而且，私有经济体也可以扮演重要的角色。
看看哥伦比亚的第二大城市麦德林（它被称为“未来大都市”或者“明天大都市”）。二十年前，麦德林是一个暴力、腐败、危险的城市。今天，它被称为世界最“富有创新力的城市”。在进步领导人塞尔西奥•法哈多市长的带领下，城市大量投资公园、图书馆、学校和廉价的公共交通（公交车和缆车），主要针对贫困社区。一项学术研究结果显示，一条2003年的缆车线路把麦德林环山附近的贫困地区和市中心连接起来，在5年时间里让谋杀案件数量下降了66％。
尽管法哈多是一个少见的特例——《纽约时报》说他是“新教徒”——但他也不是从天而降。在90年代末，法哈多发起了公民承诺运动，这是一项由艺术家、知识分子和商人发起的运动，旨在减少贫困、暴力和不平等现象。他在2000年竞选失利，2003年终于成功，得到了麦德林中产阶级和贫困人群多年以来的大力支持。换句话说，麦德林发展的种子在社区中播下，经过多年灌溉，最终达到盛花期。
在有些城市里，商业经济遇到的问题推动了政府的改革。90年代末，孟买的私有企业发现糟糕的基础设施、公共服务和城市规划阻碍了经济的发展，限制了投资。私有企业管理者和孟买工商总会联合成立了“孟买第一组织”。这是一个非营利机构，目标是让这座城市变成一个更适宜生活、工作和投资的地方。2003年，他们发布了《孟买远景》报告，提出全市范围的改进计划，并且得到了地方、邦、联邦政府和世界银行的首肯。孟买第一组织现在运作着40多个城市改进计划，政府官员占据执行委员会的两个席位，确保私有经济体与政策制定者之间的直接沟通。
还有奈落比，早先政府依据自身的机构利益做出城市规划的相关决策。这座城市的交通网络简直是一场噩梦：混合着半官方色彩、财团利益驱动和激烈竞争的2万多台小型和大型公交车。车费全部以现金支付，收入被车辆所有人、司机和调度瓜分，整个系统充满了腐败和逃税行为。为了解决这个问题，奈落比政府正在实施一系列新的规定，包括小型公交车司机领取基本工资；车辆凭押金和信用证明注册。到2014年7月，根据政府提供的信息，所有小型公交车必须取消现金付费方式，而要使用支付系统，比如智能公交卡和手机钱包。这样的举措不但增强了透明度，提升了责任感，还帮助政府回笼税收资金——理论上将被用来投资修建基础设施。
好的大都市管理模式多种多样，发展的动力可以来自政治角色，也可以来自经济角色。这种自我调解和自我适应的能力超越了政府的职责范畴，直接深入到社区、经济体和公民中间。世界不应当弱化大都市合理的发展需求，应当把这些城市看作是一个有弹性的、不断发展的有机体，这是它们的本质。任何与此相悖的理论都是在忽视大都市在二十一世纪即将产生的正面、深层次的影响。
原文：
10 Million Sardines in a Sea of Skyscrapers
How sprawling megacities -- from Lagos to Mumbai -- might just save the world.
"Megacities Pose the Most Dire Development Crisis of the 21st Century."
WRONG.
Two hundred years ago, just 3 percent of the world's population lived in cities. Today, cities hold more than half of all people on Earth. The number of urban residents is growing by nearly 60 million every year, a trend driven by rapid industrialization, rural-urban migration, and globalization. If this pace continues, by 2050 over 70 percent of people will call cities home.
The largest of today's urban centers are known as "megacities." Behemoths of tightly packed humanity, each megacity holds more than 10 million people. Back in 1950, only New York City held that distinction. Today 24 cities do, and at least a dozen more are expected to join the club by 2025. Most megacities are and will continue to be in the developing world -- Delhi, Jakarta, Shanghai, and Lagos, to name a few.
It's easy to look at statistics and view megacities as the looming development crisis of this century. The United Nations estimated in 2006 that there was just one toilet for every 1,440 people in Mumbai's Dharavi slum. In Cairo, meanwhile, traffic has gotten so bad that a recent World Bank report estimated that congestion costs the economy upwards of $8 billion each year in lost productivity.
Seizing on these gritty details, many journalists, environmentalists, and leaders of NGOs and development organizations portray megacities as calamities -- vast, open sewers that fuel a vicious cycle of poverty, increase income and health disparities, and degrade the environment. NGOs routinely highlight the worst of megacities (and garner support for their work) by telling stories of human desperation. Larger institutions like the World Health Organization emphasize figures, such as the fact that Cairo residents inhale the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes in air pollution each day, on which the international media feed. Others are more direct in their criticisms: Joel Kotkin, a professor of urban development, argued in a 2011 Forbes article that "megacities in developing countries should be seen for what they are: a tragic replaying of the worst aspects of the mass urbanization that occurred previously in the West."
To be sure, tens of millions of people in megacities do live in poverty and pollution. But emphasizing megacities' economic, social, and environmental problems discounts the fundamental opportunities they provide and the enormous capacity their residents possess. The popular perception is, in a word, incomplete.
In fact, the vast size and dense concentration of people and resources in megacities, which currently produce some 14 percent of the world's economic output, are their greatest assets. They are tools that can actually be used to drive economies, diminish poverty, and empower residents.
Making proper use of these tools is critical because mass urbanization is inevitable. From Europe to North America to Asia, no country has ever developed without it. Moreover, the world has already seen how megacities can emerge and grow in a sustainable way. In Seoul, for example, infrastructure projects and economic reforms from the 1960s onward helped transform South Korea from one of the world's poorest economies (equivalent to modern-day Benin) into the 15th largest, becoming a global commercial hub.
Transforming developing megacities -- and soon-to-be megacities -- will certainly take time, and no two cities will transform in the same way. Seoul had highly centralized governmental structures that not all cities do, especially those in poorer countries. But there are other ways to leverage the power of density, technology, and economies of scale. Megacities hold enormous value for the developing world, and ensuring that they deliver this value starts, fundamentally, with no longer seeing them as utter catastrophes.
"Megacities Are Too Crowded."
SOMETIMES BIGGER REALLY IS BETTER.
Decades ago, Paul Ehrlich's famous book, The Population Bomb, offered an apocalyptic vision of an overpopulated planet subsumed by social upheaval, starvation, and mass death. Today, most experts agree that Ehrlich's concerns were overblown. Yet a similar argument is now being directed at megacities. In 2012, Wendell Cox, an urban policy expert, wrote an article titled "Pakistan: Where the Population Bomb Is Exploding" that highlighted Karachi's massive growth. In 2011, Paul James, then director of the Global Cities Research Institute, told the Economist that "restricting the growth of cities -- in the sense of limiting their sprawling and bloating -- will, overall, improve the quality of life for humans on this planet."
Existing and emerging megacities are big, of course, and growing fast, which can make them seem chaotic and crushing to the Western eye. But big is not always bad.
To say megacities are too crowded "doesn't make sense from an economic point of view," Indermit Gill of the World Bank's development economics unit said in an interview. He explained that as countries develop, people and economic activity always become more concentrated in urban areas. This process of "agglomeration economics" is a good thing because it reduces production costs, allows businesses to share infrastructure, and provides large labor markets. In megacities, the scale of the phenomenon is even greater than it is in other cities.
Already, concentrations of cheap labor, industry, and markets in megacities and other urban centers heading toward "mega" status are vital to their countries. According to researcher David Satterthwaite, Mumbai contributes some 6 percent of India's GDP, despite having less than 1.5 percent of its population. In addition, megacities have per capita GDPs that are significantly higher than national averages. The difference is even more extreme in developing megacities. For example, Bangladesh's per capita GDP is $1,044, according to the country's Bureau of Statistics, but Dhaka's is more than $3,000. And these trends seem likely to continue. "Emerging market mega- and middleweight cities together … are expected to contribute more than 45 percent of global growth from 2007 to 2025," consulting firm McKinsey found in a 2011 report.
Bigger cities also better enable governments to deliver public services. McKinsey has estimated that it is 30 to 50 percent cheaper to provide fundamentals like housing, water, and education in populated urban areas than it is in rural ones. This helps explain why 90 percent of urban households in the developing world have access to electricity, compared with just 63 percent of rural households. Governments should provide such essentials to all their citizens no matter where they live, but in megacities they can often do so more quickly and efficiently.
As their populations grow, megacities' human density will eventually decline -- a natural progression in which residents get richer and new areas are built to accommodate them. (Consider glitzy satellite cities and suburbs of New Delhi like Gurgaon and Noida.) As that happens, however, the importance of agglomeration manifests in a new way: Governments work to enhance physical mobility in order to keep people and resources closely connected. Governments in Asia have been doing this for years, developing high-speed rail and other transportation options. Governments in other parts of the world are catching on: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, is installing a rapid-transit bus system, and Nigeria is building a high-speed rail network to connect Lagos with other cities.
Governments, in other words, increasingly recognize that density pays, and they are working to keep people in a tight urban embrace.
"But Megacities Aren't Benefiting People in Slums."
IN SOME WAYS THEY ARE.
It's certainly not news to say that, within megacities, the poor often live in slums: eyesores of crowded shanties and trash. In Pakistan, slum growth has accounted for nearly all recent urbanization. In Lagos, slums hold more than 70 percent of the city's population. U.N.-Habitat has called slums "the most intolerable of urban housing conditions," while books like Mike Davis's Planet of Slums portray the areas as post-industrial wastelands. Some development experts have even called for them to be bulldozed and their residents relocated.
But though slums may not be desirable places to live, a billion people call them home for good reason. Rural poverty rates are much higher than urban ones, and people thus go to megacities seeking better lives. Slums are their gateways, quickly absorbing migrants by offering cheap housing and informal work in close proximity; this is especially true in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. As Edward Glaeser, author of Triumph of the City, puts it, "Cities aren't full of poor people because cities make people poor, but because cities attract poor people."
Slums provide the first rung on the ladder of urban opportunity. Consider Rio de Janeiro, where Janice Perlman, founder of the Mega-Cities Project, which researches urban management around the world, began tracing the mobility of residents in the city's favelas in 1969. She found in 1999 that of the 36 percent of her original random sample group that she was able to locate, 67 percent, as well as 65 percent of their children, had moved out of the slums; 40 percent had become renters or owners of houses or apartments in other neighborhoods, and 27 percent were in improved public housing. Those who remained in the favelas cited better access to public services and better household amenities over the survey period.
Much of the economic opportunity that slums offer is through vibrant, informal marketplaces. Typically, every alleyway is a thicket of businesses and services: barbershops, food stalls, clothing shops, and more. In Mumbai's Dharavi, some 17 percent of structures are not actually homes but factories, shops, and offices, many of which are thriving. Small-scale leather, textile, and pottery factories in Dharavi have an estimated annual output of over $500 million.
Grassroots, demand-driven solutions to everyday problems also create opportunity. In East African slums, particularly those in Kenya, women without enough assets to obtain formal bank loans participate in "merry-go-round" systems in which they pool money together -- less than a dollar a week per person, typically -- from which members can take loans.
These informal markets and networks often make living in slums more of a conscious choice than critics of megacities assume. For this reason, "slum upgrading" projects, meant to improve people's lives by moving them elsewhere, have routinely faced local opposition, according to Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World. In Nairobi, for example, the government attempted to relocate several hundred residents and businesses of Kibera, the city's largest slum, to new apartment blocks starting in 2003. But many people rented the apartments out, took the cash, and moved back to the slum, where they had jobs, businesses, and social bonds that could not easily be replicated elsewhere.
This is not to romanticize poverty. The creativity and entrepreneurship on display in slums should not preclude governments from taking a stronger interest -- and making larger investments -- in residents' health and well-being, which are in dire need of improvement. In Nairobi's slums, for instance, child mortality is 2.5 times greater than in other parts of the city due to factors such as poor sanitation and minimal health care.
That said, it is also wrong to write off slums as cesspools or to say that they just need to be cleaned up or torn down. As Glaeser argues, slums are not a curse; they are signs of a healthy city.
"Megacities Can't Be 'Healthy,' Because They're Killing the Planet."
IN FACT, THEY JUST MIGHT BE ABLE TO SAVE IT.
Megacities are among many environmentalists' favorite targets -- a modern "tragedy of the commons." Critics point out that cities are responsible for 70 percent of carbon dioxide emissions and that while Western megacities generally have efficient waste management, emissions regulations, and clean mass transit, most in the developing world do not. In Beijing, for instance, air quality has become so bad that media outlets have started referring to the phenomenon as the "airpocalypse." Scientist Charles Kolb, who has studied megacity emissions, said at the 2009 national meeting of the American Chemical Society that pollution from these urban centers "make them immense drivers of climate change." Based on his presentation, the society reported, "Controlling urban growth in the developing world is key to improving the world's air quality."
Yet megacities are greener than many people think -- and they can become even more so.
For starters, large cities offer environmental benefits that rural areas do not. Across all developing countries, 70 percent of urban households have access to modern cooking fuels (electricity, gas, kerosene), compared with just 19 percent of households in rural areas, where heavy burning of coal, wood, and other biomass contributes to deforestation and air pollution. As Stewart Brand, an environmentalist and the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, a guide to sustainable living, has written, "[I]n the developing world, their [cities'] greenness lies in how they take the pressure off rural waste."
Recent data also show that as urban areas enlarge, the growth rate of their emissions actually decreases. "[J]ust like biological organisms, the energy metabolism of metropolitan areas slows down as they increase in size: larger regions burn less energy per capita than smaller regions," the Martin Prosperity Institute, which studies urban issues, reported in 2009. When people are closer together, infrastructure and resource usage becomes more efficient. Larger cities have less road area per person, more intense use of public transportation, and shorter electrical transmission cables (which means "less loss of electricity and in turn lower CO2 emissions," according to the institute).
Density also allows megacities to scale up green projects in a big way. In the past decade, several megacities have made buses, taxis, and auto-rickshaws convert from burning petrol to using more environmentally friendly natural gas. A policy implemented in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2010 has converted over 40 percent of the city's vehicles to natural gas, reportedly averting 2,045 premature deaths from air pollution and saving an estimated $409 million (around 0.4 percent of Bangladesh's annual GDP). Sanergy, a company in Nairobi, is installing thousands of pay-per-use toilets that will convert the city's human waste into productive assets: cheap fertilizer for farmers and renewable energy from biogas that can help fuel the city's electrical grid. And other scalable ideas abound: According to a 2008 study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, if the world's 100 largest cities painted all their structures' roofs white and used more reflective paving material, it would offset nearly 44 metric gigatons of greenhouse gases. This is because more reflective surfaces absorb less heat, which can reduce overall urban temperatures and also lead to a decrease in energy use.
Meanwhile, slums' green advantage lies not only in their maximum density and minimum energy use, but also in their material resourcefulness. In Dharavi, 400 informal recycling units and 30,000 "ragpickers" sort more than 6,000 tons of trash every day, ensuring that, almost literally, nothing goes to waste. In Cairo, similarly, 70,000 garbage-pickers support themselves by collecting trash door to door; they recycle upwards of 80 percent of the waste they gather, while most Western garbage-collection companies only manage some 20 percent.
"[E]nvironmentalists have yet to seize the opportunity offered by urbanisation," Brand has written, but they should -- and soon. It is time, he says, to "green the hell out of the growing cities."
"To Seize Opportunities, Megacities Need Clear, Tight Urban Planning."
THROW OUT THE BLUEPRINTS.
While existing and soon-to-be megacities hold enormous potential -- for the environment, for the poor, for economies -- important transformations are still needed to ensure that they can fully deliver on their inherent promise. To speed up these transformations (of infrastructure and services, among other things), some institutions and economists offer prescriptive policies and top-down planning recommendations. Many of these copy, or at least draw heavily from, Western urban-planning models. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, for instance, argues that policymakers need to look to places like the Netherlands and embrace "compact city" policies (high residential density, little urban sprawl). More radically, Paul Romer of New York University's Urbanization Project has proposed building major cities from scratch; called "charter cities," these would be independent urban free enterprise zones, planned, built, and run in ways that economists and sociologists thought would be most efficient.
Foreign investment, guidance, and advice are not necessarily bad. But there is no one-size-fits-all approach to megacities in the developing world, and working from the bottom up is as important as working from the top down. "There are no historical precedents for such large cities," explains Alain Bertaud, a senior research scholar at New York University. "Lagos, Mumbai, and Shanghai have to find their own solutions. None of them can pretend to become one day successful blown-up models of Copenhagen or Amsterdam."
Finding better solutions begins with greater citizen participation. Satterthwaite argues that most policy decisions by international aid agencies and development banks are set up to support national, not local, governments. Thus, they are "not [directly] accountable to low-income groups," especially in urban areas. As a better model, Satterthwaite points to the success of grassroots efforts like Shack/Slum Dwellers International, a federation of urban, community-based organizations in 33 countries that interacts directly with local governments to improve basic rights and access to services for people in slums.
Similarly, as part of efforts to provide better sanitation, education, and other necessities to megacities' poor populations, governments, as well as international agencies, should seek to support and improve informal systems that citizens have already built -- rather than replace them with whatever is new and "better." There are numerous examples of how this can work. Since the early 1980s, the community-based Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi has trained activists, mobilized local funds, and invested over $1 million in toilets and sewer lines for more than 100,000 homes. The work has been so successful that the government has invested an additional $8 million to connect the project's lines to the city's main sanitation network. Sao Paulo, meanwhile, has incorporated informal recyclers into semiofficial cooperatives that operate around the city, and other Latin American cities have similarly integrated waste-pickers into their official sanitation systems.
Technology can also provide critical information about how megacities live and breathe -- and how they can be improved. In Kibera, crowd-mapping platforms are enabling residents to map schools, pharmacies, water taps, and other essential landmarks through text messaging and GPS-enabled smartphones. The maps have in turn helped NGOs choose locations for things like new toilet facilities; they could help Nairobi's government do the same. In Cairo, meanwhile, Bey2ollak, a crowd-powered traffic information app (with around 1 million registered users) allows commuters to post real-time information about the city's traffic. One local paper recently called the app "more essential to traffic than traffic lights." The government could use this existing data to better understand the city's traffic patterns and work with experts to develop new systems for managing the chaos.
Megacities, then, already contain many of the ingredients for their future growth and change. While governments may look beyond borders for some support, their first stop should be with the people who know the nooks, crannies, and other intricacies of these cities best.
"Sadly, Megacities Need Governments That They'll Never Have."
THAT CAN CHANGE.
Harnessing citizens' input, informal economies, and bottom-up innovation requires good governance, and a deep concern among many development experts is that the relevant political leaders and institutions are often too corrupt or weak (or both) to get the job done. Romer and a colleague write that urbanization is peaking in places where "the capacity to govern is still in short supply." Urban policy expert Richard Florida, meanwhile, writes that many of the world's megacities "lack both" competent governments and the money they need to govern effectively.
But the outlook isn't so bleak. "It's certainly true that managing megacities is incredibly hard," says Glaeser, but it can be done well. Although political will, sometimes embodied in exceptional leaders, is an important ingredient here, that will and the policies it leads to can be produced and shaped by everything from simple economics to social pressure. Moreover, the private sector can play a critical role.
Consider Medellín, Colombia's second-largest city. (It is considered a "megacity of the future" or "megacity of tomorrow.") Two decades ago, Medellín was a city of violence, corruption, and dangerous cartels; today, it has been called the world's most "innovative city." Under the progressive leadership of Mayor Sergio Fajardo, the city invested heavily in parks, libraries, schools, and affordable public transportation (buses and cable cars), targeting poorer neighborhoods. According to one academic study, a cable car system installed in 2003, linking poor areas on Medellín's surrounding hills to the city's downtown below, reduced the murder rate in those areas by 66 percent in just five years.
Although he is a standout example -- the New York Times called him "nonconformist" -- Fajardo didn't emerge out of nowhere. In the late 1990s, he formed the Citizens Commitment movement, an initiative of artists, intellectuals, and businesspeople focused on decreasing poverty, violence, and inequality. He ran unsuccesfully for office in 2000 before finally winning in 2003, with wide support garnered over time from Medellín's middle class and poor. In other words, the seeds of Medellín's improvements were planted at the community level and cultivated over several years before finally blossoming.
In some cities, businesses' economic concerns have driven changes in governance. In the late 1990s, Mumbai's private sector realized that poor infrastructure, services, and urban planning were hampering growth and limiting investment. Leaders in the sector, along with the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, formed Bombay First, a nonprofit initiative with the goal of making the city a better place to live, work, and invest. In 2003, their work led to "Vision Mumbai," a report with recommendations for citywide improvements that have been endorsed by the local, state, and federal governments, as well as the World Bank. Bombay First now runs more than 40 urban improvement projects, and government officials chair two of the organization's action committees, enabling direct communication between the private sector and policymakers.
Then there is Nairobi, where the government is making some urban-planning decisions based on institutional self-interest. The city's transportation system has long been a nightmare: a semiformal, cartel-driven, fiercely competitive, and chaotic mix of over 20,000 small and large buses. Payments for rides are cash-based and split among owners, drivers, and conductors, making the whole system rife with corruption -- and tax evasion. To fix this, Nairobi's government is in the process of implementing new regulations stipulating that minibus drivers receive a basic salary and that vehicles be registered with savings and credit cooperatives. By July 2014, all minibuses, according to the government, must be cashless, using payment systems like smart cards and mobile money instead. In addition to enhancing transparency and accountability, once implemented, the new system will help the government collect taxes -- theoretically to invest in better infrastructure.
Better governance in both existing and emerging megacities can come about in many ways, from political and nonpolitical actors. And this ability to adjust and adapt extends well beyond governments, down to neighborhoods, economies, and citizens. While the world should not minimize megacities' legitimate development needs, it should view these cities as the resilient, growing organisms that they are. Anything less would be to discount the profound and positive impact they can have in the 21st century.
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狗仔卡
发表于 2014-9-22 09:13
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发表于 2014-9-24 20:54
