chapter 4 - DRK

Strictly under embargo until Wednesday 22 September at 00:01 GMT (02:01 Geneva time)But only a very small proportion of urban centres in low- and middle-income nationshave a comparable web of institutions, infrastructure, services and regulations, althoughthere are very large variations between urban areas in these nations as regards the extentof both provision and coverage. For instance, the proportion of urban populations livingin legal homes that were constructed in accordance with appropriate building regulationsvaries from 10–20 per cent to close to 100 per cent. The proportion of the populationliving in homes adequately served by sanitation, waste-water removal and stormdrains also varies enormously – most urban centres in Africa and Asia have no sewers andfor many of those that do, these serve only a very small proportion of the population. Nofamily in urban areas in high-income nations, however poor, expects to have to walk severalhundred metres to collect water from a communal standpipe shared with hundredsof others, to have no toilet in their home or to have no service to collect household waste.It is common that between one-third and one-half of the population of cities in lowandmiddle-income nations lives in informal settlements. And this is not just the casein cities with little economic success – around half the population of Mumbai andNairobi, both of which are successful economically, lives in informal settlements. It isalso common in such cities for the local authorities and utilities to refuse to extend toinformal settlements (or to be prevented from doing so by law or regulation) all theinfrastructure and services that do so much to reduce disaster risk. There are no statisticson the proportion of the urban population covered by good-quality fire services orrapid response to serious injuries or illnesses (including ambulances and hospitals ableto provide rapid treatment), but the inadequacy or complete absence of such servicesis evident in many informal settlements. Only 1 per cent of households and businessesin low-income countries and 3 per cent in middle-income countries have catastropheinsurance, compared to 30 per cent in high-income nations.Urban mythsThe discussion of urbanization is still full of myths (see Box 1.1). It is often seen as ‘theproblem’ (nations being ‘too urbanized’, cities growing ‘too fast’, ‘too many migrants’flooding the city) when it is associated with economic success. All high-income nationsare predominantly urbanized and most of their rural population are ‘urbanized’ in thatthey no longer work in agriculture and a high proportion of them commute to urbanareas. All low- and middle-income nations that have had the greatest economic successhave urbanized; most of those that have not had economic success are among theworld’s least urbanized nations. There are worries about ‘mega-cities’ with more than10 million inhabitants but there are relatively few of them (17 in 2000, the last yearfor which census data were available for most cities) and they are concentrated in theworld’s largest economies. There is an economic logic to where urbanization and largecity development is taking place – and also good evidence to show that in successfuleconomies that are urbanizing and where the competence of city governments isstrengthened, urban development decentralizes to community and urban district levels.World Disasters Report 2010 – Focus on urban risk17