12 strategic points of urban development

1. Cities will be the hub of human evolution in the 21st century. Already now, urban dwellers make up half the world’s population.

2. By 2025 the urban population in developing countries will have almost tripled. Nine city dwellers out of ten will live in the South.

3. Urbanisation has been recognised as the major worldwide development of the 21st century. It will affect societies, values and modes of life deeply, lastingly and irrevocably.

4. Cities will be the focus of the worldwide global changes that reinforce the interdependence of capital flows and international migration, the spread of knowledge and innovation - as well as collective risks relative to the environment, health, poverty and exclusion.

5. Cities drive economic growth, social change and cultural diversity in the evolution of a country. They indirectly contribute to greater productivity and better living conditions in rural areas.

6. Cities also function as living laboratories of democracy and participatory governance, the integration of minorities, and the conservation of cultural values that strengthens national identity.

7. Globalisation has grown much stronger in recent years. It generates a competitive environment that benefits some cities, but increases inequalities between and within most of them, as well as inequalities between the North and the South.

8. "Informal" or "clandestine" cities are spreading in the countries of the South; illegal procedures regulating housing, work, transport, and other services affect 40 to 60% of the population, leading to permanent insecurity and to the need for survival strategies.

9. Poverty increases much faster in urban than in rural areas. Within the next 20 years, the number of poor city dwellers will have gone from 1.1 billion today to 1.5 billion.

10. Most people living in shantytowns and other informal city districts have no access to drinking water, sanitation or other basic services. They are thus denied the right to water, to health and to education that guarantees their survival and a life in dignity.

11. Urban pollution and urban resource consumption have a highly negative impact on the neighbouring rural areas.

12. Intermediate cities have a relevant role to play since they act as the regional fabric and interface between the hinterland and urban trade and service centres.

*President of the S-DEV Geneva 05 International Advisory Board