ABSTRACT
The world is in the midst of a global urban transition that, together with economic globalisation, is shifting the loci of economic power from the urbanised North towards the urbanising South. It is also shifting, somewhat more ambiguously, from national to city economies. The large and emerging economies of the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – are particularly prominent agents of this change. The BRICS’ integration into the world economy has been wellscrutinised, but the specific role urbanisation and urban growth played in these countries’ recent economic and demographic transformation is still understudied and undervalued. This book, the product of a multi-year collaboration between the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and UNFPA (the United Nations Population Fund), reviews the individual experiences of urbanisation in each of the BRICS countries with the object of comparing the policies, trajectories and impacts of this process. It identifies key features that will help other countries in the developing world follow pathways and adopt policies that will enhance the synergies between urbanisation and development. In general terms, it asks whether a positive and opportunistic approach to urbanisation is a prerequisite for modern economic growth. More specifically, it assesses how the character of each country’s urban trajectory has influenced both past developments and future prospects. Learning from such experiences is critical since the future of humankind will be an urban one. The vast increases in the number and proportion of urban dwellers (urban growth and urbanisation) in developing countries are among the most significant socio-economic transformations in the 21st century. In 2008, for the first time, more than half of the world’s population became urban. The population living in urban areas is projected to grow by 2.62 billion by mid-century, going
from 3.63 billion in 2011 to 6.25 billion in 2050 (United Nations 2012). This scale of urban growth is without precedent in human history, and it calls for an unprecedented response. The paramount significance of this urban transition for economic, social, environmental and demographic advances in developing regions challenges the public and private sectors to adequately plan ahead for this growing number of urban dwellers. Examining the diverse urban transitions undergone by the BRICS yields some powerful lessons for other developing countries. The manner in which countries accommodate urban growth has proven to have enormous economic, social and environmental consequences. Cities have huge potential to ensure those consequences are advantageous, but making that happen demands an appropriate policy framework. The BRICS yield some inspiring examples of how to seize the opportunities that urbanisation can provide and show how to pursue inclusive urban development. They also highlight the problems inappropriate policies bring. All these countries have gone through difficult periods during their urban transitions, and several still bear the heavy burdens of past failures to process urban growth equitably and efficiently. Researchers linked to private investment companies were at the forefront of the calls to recognise the importance of the BRICS because of their implications for global markets. It would be misleading, however, to present these countries as sleeping giants only now beginning to emerge. For much of the 20th century, Russia and China led the Second World of communist countries, vying for global dominance with the capitalist First World. Meanwhile, India (and more intermittently, Brazil and South Africa) were among the leaders of the non-aligned Third World. In the novel world of globalised capitalist competition, however, the BRICS countries are taking up new roles and are emerging as key players, economically as well as politically. China, in particular, has burst onto the global scene, with its very urban-centric model of capitalism. The BRICS have long had imposing geography and demographics. Together, they account for around 29 per cent of the world’s land area, and, even with a slow decline in their population share, they still account for 42 per cent of world population. Despite the enormous disparities in their past histories and future prospects, all five BRICS countries have been stirred in recent decades by the powerful winds of globalisation. Thus, their economies have begun to impose on the world stage as well. Led by China, the BRICS countries accounted for about 47 per cent of real growth in the gross world product between 2000 and 2010 (The World Bank 2011, using GDP in constant 2005 dollars at purchasing power parity). As a result, their combined share of gross world product increased from 17 to 26 per cent in the interim. Their economic importance is expected to increase further in the coming years. Four of the BRICS were listed among the planet’s ten biggest economies in 2010, and they are all predicted to raise their ranking in coming years. History shows that as economic activity becomes more concentrated in some places, and as a country’s income rises, the share of the population living in
urban localities grows, often sharply. For the most part, people migrate to urban areas because they rightly perceive they will benefit economically. As a result, an ‘urban transition’ occurs, wherein low levels of urbanisation give way to higher levels, a process that parallels the better-known ‘demographic transition’, in which mortality and fertility rates both tend to fall as countries achieve social and economic success. It is an undeniable fact that higher levels of income are generally associated with higher levels of urbanisation, and the BRICS are no exception (see Figure 1.1).
