World Cities Summit Issue, Jun 2008

Human Development and Urbanisation
Richard Leete

As countries become more urban, levels of human development tend to rise. This phenomenon is clearly visible for the countries of Southeast Asia (Figure 2). For example, Malaysia and the Philippines, where urbanisation levels have reached 67% and 63% respectively, have attained or are close to attaining high human development. By contrast, Cambodia and Laos, where urbanisation is just 20%, are a little above low human development.⁹

FIGURE 2. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND THE PROPORTION URBAN, SOUTHEAST ASIAN COUNTRIES. (SOURCES OF DATA: UNITED NATIONS DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS, WORLD URBANIZATION PROSPECTS: THE 2005 REVISION;⁵ UNDP, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT, 2007/08¹⁰)

ACHIEVING THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS IN CITIES
Although cash income is more important in cities than in villages, income poverty is only one aspect of urban poverty. The other indicators of poverty are poor health and lack of education, poor quality and overcrowded shelter, and lack of public services such as piped water, sanitation facilities, and garbage collection, as well as insecure land tenure.

Water, for example, is a scarce and expensive resource for the urban poor.¹¹ It is obtained in small quantities from street vendors, which entails higher unit costs than those incurred by people who have running water in their homes. If there is piped supply, obtaining it may involve long journeys to the neighbourhood standpipe (commonly by women and girls), long waits, tiring trips back home with full containers, careful storage to minimise wastage, and reuse of the water several times, increasing the risk of contamination.

As levels of urbanisation rise and the benefits of modernisation spread, gender gaps tend to diminish. Thus, in the most urbanised Southeast Asian countries, the ratio of girls’ to boys’ enrolments in secondary school is at, and even above, parity. However, where urbanisation has made limited progress, such as in Cambodia and Laos, the proportion of girls’ enrolments in secondary school is much lower than that of boys.

Accessing healthcare, especially reproductive healthcare, is critical for women, not only because of their reproductive function and that they are disproportionately burdened with providing care for the elderly and the sick, but also because they do more to relieve poverty at the community level. Not all urban women have equal access to reproductive healthcare or contraceptive services. For poor women, lack of time, money and freedom to make household decisions, can negate these advantages of urban location. In Southeast Asia, for example, the estimated unmet contraceptive need is 23% among the urban poor, compared to only 16% among the urban non-poor.¹

But, in general, urban populations tend to have better health outcomes than their rural counterparts. In countries where urbanisation levels are highest, child mortality levels are lowest (Figure 3). This is because access to health services, including clinics and hospitals, as well as the quality of care, tends to be superior in urban areas.

FIGURE 3. CHILD MORTALITY RATES AND PROPORTIOS URBAN, SOUTHEAST ASIAN COUNTRIES. (SOURCES OF DATA: UNITED NATIONS DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS, WORLD URBANIZATION PROSPECTS: THE 2005 REVISION;⁵ UNITED NATIONS STATISTICS DIVISION¹²)

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