Understanding urban boundaries
What defines an urban environment?
A blog piece from the World Bank describes the urban planning lines around world's cities, towns and rural areas...
All urban environments face challenges
We can solve the world's urban challenges by working together...
The world's municipalities that oversee cities and towns face many problems and challenges to become thriving, greener and more resilient places. From those situated in war-torn conflict areas, in which lives are ruined and lost and the urban fabric in need of complete rebuilding, to those in peaceful liberal democracies that need to overhaul their urban fabric to reduce emissions and create a more equitable society, improvements are required everywhere. Seven factors are put forward in a model (provided below) for creating and maintaining good urban environments.
Each city / town has specific context to its geography, demographic make-up (now and in the future), the laws and governance it applies, the way its local economy works and the availability of resources and finance for new investments. An oft-cited factor - usually a "brake" - to improving urban areas is a lack of funds. Funding availability is of course important to implementing change, but it is not the only key factor. Citizens and businesses can drive real change by changing their behaviours and taking part in action (which is ideally linked up to a system), to make urban places better for their families, their neighbours and their local communities. Citizens can make small changes that really count to their streets. Businesses can change their business models in a way that can enhance the urban environment(s) where they operate.
People need to be inspired and engaged to take action that contributes towards a better way forward - to "build forwards better". Local councils and city teams need to be engaging in a meaningful way, in person and online, with people and debating tough and complex issues. Agreeing ways forward to deal with complex issues is hard. It requires input from everyone in the local area and learning from others. Urban masterplans need to reflect these agreements to help shape and improve the urban landscape.
Whilst problems and challenges exist, there are many examples around the world of municipal and local teams, organisations, groups and individuals that are making a positive difference to the cities and towns where they live and work. Good things happen when individuals, teams and organisations listen to and respect each other's views, and they work together to achieve shared goals. We need to find the time to draw inspiration from the good examples. They exist everywhere - but do we have the time to find out about them, and do we then have the time to consider the learnings we can gain from them in our specific context and situation?
A large, dispersed knowledge bank of information on what's happening around the world exists, and it is continually being added to. Online meetings and presentations recordings, news articles, videos, reports, books and academic papers are constantly being published. Case studies and stories are regularly presented at in-person and virtual events and forums, from large global-scale ones such as COP events and the UN-Habitat-convened World Urban Forum (a hybrid event held every two years, most recently in 2022 in Katowice, Poland) through to equally important city and specific focus events such as MCR2030 webinars, city climate weeks such as the annual London Climate Action Week (LCAW) and Climate Week NYC, and city resilience weeks such as one held in October 2023 in Bordeaux.
Given the wealth of information that we can all benefit from, one of the purposes of this Suredis Cities website is to pull together links to various information sources. Whilst this website cannot include everything, it is hoped that the consolidated information it provides can help people quickly and easily find examples and lessons (good and bad) that matter to them.
As Jane Jacobs described in her seminal 1961 work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, cities (and I would add towns) can provide something for everybody only because, and only when, they are created by everybody. So let's learn from the knowledge that's out there, think collectively about where we should move towards, and work out how to create and maintain thriving, green and resilient cities and towns around the world.
The world's urban population is growing
Urban areas are (mostly) expanding around the world
In the year 1800, just three per cent of the global population of approximately 1 billion – that’s 30 million people – lived an urban life. From 1800 to the early 2020s, a period of two hundred and twenty years, urban living has grown to accommodate about 4 billion people. Over half the world’s population of approx. 8 billion now live in urban areas. The rise in urban dwellers has been particularly noticeable in the 70 or so years since 1950 – during which time the proportion of people who lead an urban life has risen by about 50 per cent – a huge increase when global population growth is taken into account.
Whilst continued urban growth rates vary, the number of urban citizens around the world continues to grow. The UN estimates that 2007 was the first year in which more people were classified as living in urban environments than rural areas (3.35 billion versus 3.33 billion people). The gravitational pull that compels people towards urban environments looks set to continue. By 2050 it is anticipated that about two thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas. If the global population grows as forecast (by the UN, as of 2023) to about 9.7 billion by 2050, this could add some 1.6 billion more people to urban environments on top of today’s 3.9 billion – a 40 per cent increase.
How we shape our urban environments and find a balance of ecology, the urban physical layout and structure, and how society functions – is crucial to how humanity moves forward and how we protect and value the world's rich biodiversity and natural systems.
Much of the projected future growth in urban environments is forecast to take place in Africa and parts of Asia, which are seen as the biggest engines of population growth. In 2018, the UN Urbanization Prospects survey found that 17 of the top 20 fastest growing cities in the world were located in Africa (four being in Nigeria; Bangladesh, India and China contain the other three). In 2023, the World Population Review described how Africa, India and China play a leading role in urban growth.
Urban growth is not globally uniform. Europe and North America are growing slower than Africa and South Asia. Europe and North America are already densely urbanised – there’s an 80 per cent chance today that a person living in the US lives in an urban area; in Europe it is 75 per cent (and forecast to rise to 84 per cent by 2050). Populations are ageing in various parts of the world, which has implications on how these urban environments need to be designed for the future.