Inclusive urbanization: Can the 2030 Agenda be delivered without it?

Abstract

Governments are wary of rapid urbanization, yet eager for the economic benefits that cities bring. The resulting tension is reflected in exclusionary cities created through strategies that privilege economic growth and result in many people being left behind. There is both exclusion from the city and exclusion and segregation in the city. This paper’s redefinition of inclusion moves beyond a focus on identity-based disadvantage, to frame inclusion as a counter to both overt discrimination and structurally created disadvantage. It explores three levels of inclusive urbanization: eliminating discriminatory exclusion, giving the disadvantaged a bigger voice in existing institutions, and guaranteeing human rights.

 Drawing on examples of emerging economies, the paper points to the dangers of pursuing a growth-first strategy for urbanization, as exclusion can become entrenched and difficult to reverse, even with increased prosperity. It then examines how more inclusive urbanization can be achieved and how this relates to the Sustainable Development Goals (part of the 2030 Agenda). The world’s governments have committed themselves to balanced development that integrates economic, social and environmental goals, and have pledged that “no one will be left behind”. Inclusive urbanization is needed to achieve this balance, and to move the world towards the progressive realization of human rights for all.

I. Introduction

Urbanization and cities have been receiving increasingly positive attention in the international arena, evident in such publications as Triumph Of The City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier,⁽¹⁾ If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional States, Rising Cities,⁽²⁾ and Cities Are Good for You: The Genius of the Metropolis.⁽³⁾ There has also been sustained attention from the private sector, focusing on the growth potential of the urban transition.⁽⁴⁾ The multilateral development community, slow to start, is following suit. Most notably, the 11th of the recently agreed 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”.⁽⁵⁾ This suggests that the world’s governments see a critical role for cities in global development, one that requires cities to be inclusive.

At the same time, a biennial survey of governments by the UN Population Division suggests that many governments are highly dissatisfied with their rates or levels of urbanization. In 2013, 70 per cent of governments in less developed regions desired a major change in the spatial distribution of their population, and 84 per cent had policies to lower migration from rural to urban areas.⁽⁶⁾ In 1996, the same statistics were only 48 and 41 per cent, respectively.

Underlying these opposing urban development perspectives – often from the same stakeholders – is a key distinction between: 1) cities as sources of economic growth and social development, and 2) urbanization⁽⁷⁾ as a perceived threat to the functioning of cities and their contribution to national development. In other words, cities – and to a lesser extent smaller urban centres with fewer than half a million inhabitants – are seen as forces for development, but the process that leads to them (urbanization) is considered to undermine their functioning.⁽⁸⁾ For urban centres, large and small, the message is to compete to attract investments and formal enterprises, in order to be at the centre of national economic growth and sustainable development, but to be wary of attracting too many unskilled people.

Reinforcing this message, planners and elites, long focused on aesthetics, tend to see disorder, squalor and non-conformity as causes of poverty rather than its products. Roy writes, echoing Jane Jacobs, that for planners “an efficient city is one that looks regimented and orderly in a geometric sense”.⁽⁹⁾ Urbanization – especially when it involves large numbers of rural–urban migrants who cannot afford formal housing or secure employment – is a threat to this vision and the related agenda of attracting investment. The result has often been the production of exclusionary cities.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development⁽¹⁰⁾ sets the central objectives that “no one will be left behind” (second paragraph of the preamble) and that it will “reach the furthest behind first” (paragraph 4). Urban areas will be an increasingly critical terrain for pursuing these objectives, and for integrating the social, economic and environmental goals set forth. The available evidence, including that reviewed in this paper, shows that an exclusionary course of urbanization sets in motion a path-dependent trajectory of inequality that it is hard or even impossible to alter in the long term. Rather than maintaining order, it can create fragility and insecurity that are particularly harsh for those who cannot obtain informal homes and jobs, who end up physically and economically of the city but subject to multiple exclusions within it. Exclusionary cities are therefore a major barrier to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda.

Yet urbanization is increasingly recognized as a promising vehicle for the achievement of major aspects of the 2030 Agenda, especially given urban resource and service delivery efficiency as well as links to economic growth. This paper argues that to fully realize the potential of urbanization for the 2030 Agenda, the urban transition must be inclusive. This means cities and urban authorities that are more welcoming of migrants and more accommodating to disadvantaged inhabitants, and that work with their constituents and social movements to secure a flourishing economy that also contributes to social and environmental goals. If inclusion, a principal theme of the 2030 Agenda, can be achieved in how urban areas emerge, grow and develop, urbanization can generate a powerful foundation for the realization of human rights and the achievement of broad-based sustainable development.

II. Inclusion: What It Is and Why It Matters

The language of social exclusion and inclusion has become common within the international development community. The World Bank authored 202 publications relating to inclusion in the 2000s; from 2010 to August 2015 there were already 325 more.⁽¹¹⁾ The terms are often loosely defined, but their popularity is significant.

While poverty relates to outcomes, exclusion and inclusion have to do with relations and mechanisms. The World Bank’s flagship report on inclusion describes it as “The process of improving the ability, opportunity and dignity of people, disadvantaged on the basis of their identity, to take part in society”.⁽¹²⁾ This focus on disadvantage based on identity risks ignores disadvantages that arise from the structure of society or the economy. Yet structural disadvantages also exclude people from markets, services and spaces – for example, because they are residents of informal settlements, migrants, low-skilled workers, or simply too “poor”.

a. Urban exclusion in the era of neoliberalism and globalization

Although urbanization has been strongly associated with poverty reduction, the “stubborn realities” of inequalities in cities have persisted, particularly in the global South.⁽¹³⁾ At the root of many of these inequalities is contestation over urban space. Growing urban populations, and the increasing importance of securing a good urban location, intensify competition and contention over land, including between those concerned with using the land themselves (use value) and those wanting to speculate in land (exchange value).⁽¹⁴⁾ Land contestation is rarely planned, and need not emerge directly from land markets, but can be a key source of inequality.⁽¹⁵⁾

Neoliberal state policies resulting in the state withdrawing from regulating capital have afforded powerful actors the ability to promote their interests via land development.⁽¹⁶⁾ Liminal lands inhabited by people with insecure tenure come to be seen as ripe for private redevelopment, putting these residents, established and newly arrived, in intense competition with private/formal developers. Outcomes of these competing claims over “slum real estate”⁽¹⁷⁾ can lead not only to conflict, but to de-legitimization of citizenship rights of the residents potentially displaced by development, especially when they are recent migrants.

Reforms in many countries have been accompanied by opening of markets to the global economy, and successful cities are increasingly seen as sites for attracting foreign investment (as seen in numerous private sector reports⁽¹⁸⁾). The concept of “world class cities”, which succeed in attracting investment, has been a dominant theme in scholarship highlighting increased socioeconomic exclusion of the urban poor in cities of emerging economies.⁽¹⁹⁾

Cities have become magnets for professional aspirants aiming for high-paying jobs and for the “creative class”.⁽²⁰⁾ Of course cities also attract low-skilled workers looking for opportunities, often within the informal sector. The divergence in the purchasing power of professional and low-skilled jobs invariably leads to the creation of spatial hierarchies as each category claims – or is shunted to – residence in different parts of the city.⁽²¹⁾ The result is a template for urban development that does not include the interests of the urban poor, let alone rural populations aspiring to come to cities.

This divergence follows the dynamics of marginalization linked to identity. There is strong evidence of residential segregation based on caste in India⁽²²⁾ and race in South Africa⁽²³⁾ that align closely with place hierarchies. Intersecting these aspects of marginalization is persistent gender inequality, with women and girls bearing higher burdens of productive and reproductive care work, and in many contexts disproportionately left out of secure work, housing, health, education, and representation and participation in urban governance.⁽²⁴⁾

Exclusion drives these outcomes and also results from them. Bhan argues that “the poor within the discourse of ‘world class cities’ are seen as economically unviable, environmentally harmful and criminal… inseparable from the built environments of the illegal “slums” that they inhabit”.⁽²⁵⁾ Caldeira’s work in São Paulo highlights how low-income rural people entering the urban space are stereotyped as criminals and blamed for the ills of the city.⁽²⁶⁾ Ramanathan shows how the term “encroacher”, applied to newly urbanizing citizens of Indian cities, begins to show up in court orders in the late 1990s.⁽²⁷⁾ There is a tendency for policymakers to see urban population growth as messy, uncontrolled, and detrimental to the health and safety of other residents and the overall quality of life in cities⁽²⁸⁾ – and therefore to the economic growth and investment attraction potential of cities.

At the other end of the classificatory spectrum is the representation of individuals in the new consumerist middle class. They are seen as “rightful owners of the city”, whose rights are legitimated in legal judgements and everyday associational practices of middle-class organizations, especially residential welfare associations, which lobby for promotion of their rights to the urban space. In cities like Nairobi and Luanda, urban development appears heavily driven towards the provision of luxury housing to the middle class within gated communities.⁽²⁹⁾ The stated aim of the Nairobi 2030 Metro Strategy, released in 2008, is to make Nairobi “a world class African metropolis”. As Ballard argues, “middle-class gains do not automatically translate into development for others. Indeed, efforts to centre the middle class threaten to displace, and justify the displacement of, economically marginalized groups seen as surplus to development”.⁽³⁰⁾

City governments use policies and planning tools to constrain access to and organize urban spaces in ways that advantage the urban wealthy and middle classes, and often ignore or are hostile to low-income residents, and rural–urban migrants in particular. “Growth machines”⁽³¹⁾ emerge, in which public–private coalitions, composed of local politicians with private sector interests and other influential actors, come together with a coordinated vision of urban development intended to spur investment and maximize growth. Central to this vision is the prioritization of economic growth at the expense of other objectives, together with a focus on increasing land and property prices. These elite coalitions claim the pathway to inclusive growth, asserting that “intensive development benefits virtually all groups in a locality”.⁽³²⁾

The results, however, often include anti-migration policies, land use and building regulations, and Euclidean or single-use zoning (the separation and distinction of specific land uses from built forms) that have long excluded those who cannot afford to conform.⁽³³⁾ They carry implicit values regarding ideal land uses, appropriate densities and built forms, and preferred travel modes (e.g. automobiles versus walking). They also neglect prevailing economic and social conditions and predictions of rapid population growth. The growth of underserved informal settlements can be an outcome of this neglect, although where planners and policymakers avoid infrastructure investments for fear of attracting more migrants, this might better be described as intentional exclusion.

b. Redefining inclusion

The nature of urban development highlights the limits of an identity-focused definition of social inclusion. As Hickey, Sen and Bukenya point out,⁽³⁴⁾ inclusion can designate radically transformative development, if priority is given to equitable and empowering inclusion. The broader language of inclusion/exclusion provides a strong basis for pursuing human rights and equity, provided this attention to equity and empowerment is maintained. It is also more consistent with contemporary concerns with inequality, and has the advantage of “forcefully emphasizing—and focusing attention on—the role of relational features in deprivation”.⁽³⁵⁾

In this article, we accept the part of the World Bank’s definition⁽³⁶⁾ that describes inclusion as improvements to the terms on which people gain access to the means of securing wellbeing, including most notably markets, services and spaces. However, unlike the World Bank authors, we do not treat inclusion as applying only to identity-based disadvantage.⁽³⁷⁾ We are interested in empowering and equitable inclusion that counters not only overt discrimination, but also structurally created disadvantages. From this perspective, there are three levels of inclusion:

• Removing discriminatory exclusions, such as denying migrants the right to settle in the city (space), buy property (markets), send their children to school or access health care (services);

• Ensuring that prevailing institutions (regulating markets, the provisioning of services and the use of space) incorporate the voices and reflect the needs of disadvantaged groups; and

• Ensuring that the human rights of otherwise disadvantaged groups are fully met through, among other means, markets, services and access to spaces.

In effect, inclusion extends from eliminating discriminatory exclusion (a), to actively intervening in creating more equitable markets, services and spaces (b), as well as to guaranteeing human rights (c).⁽³⁸⁾ This broader definition illuminates a wide range of barriers that must be addressed to achieve inclusion, along with its truly transformative potential.

III. Drivers and Mechanisms of Exclusion

Exclusion could be seen as an unfortunate but “natural” response when cities and towns face rapid population growth and lack the resources to cope with the resulting demands. Yet common misconceptions amplify concerns about urbanization and fuel prejudices against migrants and the worst-off urban dwellers generally. On the one hand, the rates and risks of urbanization tend to be exaggerated⁽³⁹⁾ and used to suggest an impending crisis in need of urgent attention. On the other, the difficulties and risks of intervening to inhibit urbanization are underappreciated.

It is common, for instance, to blame “slum” growth on urbanization. The United Nations estimates that in 2014 almost 30 per cent of the world’s urban population lived in slum-like⁽⁴⁰⁾ conditions,⁽⁴¹⁾ mostly concentrated in urbanizing countries. Yet the concern that such conditions are a symptom of excessive rural–urban migration and urbanization is misleading.

There is little evidence that rapid urbanization is associated with growing rates of urban poverty. Where there is such an association, it could simply reflect that people living in poverty have moved from rural to urban locations, or it could be the effect of exclusionary responses to urbanization. Moreover, presenting overly rapid urbanization as the reason for urban poverty can reinforce exclusionary policies. Existing informal and underserviced settlements may already be in part the result of policies to avoid attracting rural migrants. Disparities in sanitation and health services, addressed below, are clearly linked to such policies. Policies are rarely justified in such terms, but it is not uncommon to hear concerns like those expressed by Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai in 2014, that if the corporation provided water to illegal “slum” dwellers this would encourage encroachments on public and private lands.⁽⁴²⁾

Spatial exclusion during urbanization was highlighted in a recent review of urbanization in Brazil, China and South Africa, part of a broader project on the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).⁽⁴³⁾ It would be difficult to come up with more iconic symbols of poverty and inequality than Brazil’s favelas, China’s hukou (household registration) system and the apartheid system of South Africa. Each is a powerful manifestation of elite fears of excessive urbanization, and each involves a complex combination of exclusion both from the city and in the city. Favelas reflect Brazil’s passive resistance to urbanization during the second half of the 20th century: Residents were not kept out of the city, but were not planned for, or allowed in on equal terms. China’s hukou system, initially a way to limit mobility and prevent access to the “iron rice bowl” of the city, was further adapted during liberalization to allow controlled “temporary” urbanization without social inclusion. The apartheid system represents exclusion by a white racist regime that allowed highly temporary and insecure labour migration by some Africans – spatially, economically and socially isolating them while completely restricting access for others.

In most rapidly urbanizing countries, informal employment and housing involve an intra-urban form of exclusion for those unable to secure formal jobs or set up enterprises in the formal economy, or unable to afford homes in the formal housing market. Rigorous enforcement of regulations designed with the formal economy and formal housing in mind – which those operating or living in informality are often unable to afford – would probably expel disadvantaged people from their homes, jobs or enterprises, and eventually even out of the city. It would also harm the urban economy. In practice, even under relatively authoritarian regimes, regulations are rarely implemented this vigorously. Often, however, they provide the basis for harassment and corruption, and make life difficult for informal settlement residents and informal sector workers.

In Harare, for example,⁽⁴⁴⁾ Kamete documents how public safety forces repeatedly removed or dispersed (often by force) juvenile informal street merchants, claiming their activities were not permitted in bus terminals, parks and shopping malls, and that their presence was invasive, disruptive and dangerous. Dube and Chirisa⁽⁴⁵⁾ document other spheres of informality in Harare, including street performances, urban agriculture and informal car parking, each of which runs counter to approved uses of public space. These scholars argue that confrontation and violent enforcement of planning regulations are ineffective and feed into larger political tensions about migrant residency, inequality and rights to the city.⁽⁴⁶⁾

Informal systems can be costly to residents, even when they provide valuable services. In Eldoret (Kenya), “slum” residents pay over five times more for water from kiosks of private vendors than residents in formal urban areas pay for municipal council water.⁽⁴⁷⁾ Kariuki and Schwartz,⁽⁴⁸⁾ who analysed data from 47 countries (93 locations), concluded that average water prices charged by private vendors were 4.5 times higher than formal network prices for all water point sources commonly found in peri-urban or unplanned settlements with unclear tenure. This is in part because utility water supplies are subsidized, but also because their piped systems, difficult to manage without formal authorities’ support, are generally less costly, with large returns to scale.

Residents in informal settlements often face disproportionate risk from environmental disasters such as flooding and landslides, because the available spaces are often undesirable and precarious.⁽⁴⁹⁾ Even the threat of eviction and displacement – whether due to insecure tenure or the threat of disasters like floods – can have deeply destabilizing consequences. And those who are forced out of central informal settlements often end up on urban peripheries where the cost of transport creates a de facto exclusion from the benefits of labour markets.

a. Gender, services and structural aspects of exclusion

While many of the Millennium Development Goal targets are being met, the targets for sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, maternal health, and sanitation all lag far behind.⁽⁵⁰⁾ These services are strongly gendered, and the associated mechanisms of exclusion couple gender with structural issues of markets, services and space. Aggregate indicators for both sanitation and SRH show that urban populations are far better off than their rural counterparts, yet this advantage is unevenly distributed within the urban population.

A common feature of urban peripheries is their spatial exclusion from municipal services, especially networked services such as water and sanitation. As a result, the access of the peri-urban poor to sanitation may be more like that of the rural poor than the urban poor,⁽⁵¹⁾ with greater impacts on public health due to population density. Informal settlements also often lack services, not just because of residents’ low incomes, but because utilities may not be encouraged to invest in areas where people are not meant to be living.

For SRH services, in many low- and middle-income countries progress has been concentrated among upper-income populations. In some, the bottom two or three wealth quintiles have seen no progress or even regression.⁽⁵²⁾ Women in deprived urban communities suffer from much worse maternal health outcomes, linked to a lack of quality care options⁽⁵³⁾; the unmet need for contraception is much closer to that of rural residents, and lifetime abortion rates are high.⁽⁵⁴⁾ City governments have less motivation to provide services to people they think should not be in the city, particularly if they believe or can claim that provision will encourage “undesirable” people to move in.

Better access to reproductive health care and sanitation, ostensibly a benefit of moving to urban areas, can be drastically reduced by spatial exclusion. Since women carry a heavier burden of unpaid household activities, the lack of adequate water and sanitation provision affects them disproportionately through major time costs and insufficient access to public services.⁽⁵⁵⁾ Pregnant women face even greater difficulties when having to walk long distances to use communal facilities that are often badly maintained. Many women wait to relieve themselves until dark, increasing the risk of not only urinary tract infections but also of sexual harassment and assault when defecating in isolated public spaces.⁽⁵⁶⁾ A recent study in India using a probability sample of 5,033 migrant women living in makeshift “slum” settlements found a strong relationship between lack of access to hygienic conditions and reproductive tract infections.⁽⁵⁷⁾ Lack of access to adequate sanitation facilities and products has also been linked to higher dropout and absentee rates among adolescent girls, related especially to menstruation.⁽⁵⁸⁾ And a large-scale quantitative study in India found that construction of school toilets increased female enrolment more than male enrolment.⁽⁵⁹⁾

Studies in Bangladesh, Brazil and Kenya suggest that adolescent girls in informal settlements are also at risk for unplanned pregnancies due to poor education, high levels of insecurity, and lower ability to exercise autonomy over sexual relationships.⁽⁶⁰⁾ Studies from Nairobi found higher levels of risky sexual behaviours (early sexual debut, transactional sex, and multiple sexual partnerships) in adolescents in “slums” compared to those in other communities.⁽⁶¹⁾

A health system that is unequally distributed across space is always a major factor in SRH disparities, typically depicted as an urban–rural divide. While health workers are indeed over-concentrated in urban areas, they are dramatically underrepresented in poor urban communities.⁽⁶²⁾ Urban health systems are much more likely to be private than rural systems, even at the primary health care level.⁽⁶³⁾ Coupled with exclusion from health care for non-registered migrants in many countries, the private market in urban areas becomes another means of excluding rural and poor populations.

What is often described as a major rural–urban divide is more accurately understood as a divide between advantaged urban populations and everyone else – urban and rural.⁽⁶⁴⁾ Addressing this elite urban health system – for instance by incentivizing rotations of health workers across deprived urban areas and rural areas – is critical to reversing urban exclusion,⁽⁶⁵⁾ especially as it undermines the wellbeing of women and girls.

IV. The Problems with Going for Economic Growth first and Worrying about Inclusion Later

Inclusion is central to the 2030 Agenda, appearing in SDGs 4, 8, 9, 11 and 16 (on, respectively, quality education; decent work and economic growth; industry, innovation and infrastructure; sustainable cities and communities; and peace, justice and strong institutions). Cities are explicitly linked to the concept, implying that the world’s governments think cities are critical to addressing poverty and inequality, and that inclusive and sustainable urbanization is part of the recipe. However, some of the most powerful bodies in most governments (ministries of finance or the equivalent) still tend to prioritize economic growth.

There is a long history to the idea that it is natural and right to prioritize economic growth, and worry about social issues later. The well-known “Kuznets curve” suggested that a market economy would initially lead to increasing inequality that would later decline, as in mid-20th century North America.⁽⁶⁶⁾ More recently, the economic success of China’s growth-first strategy, supported by Deng Xiaoping’s maxim of “letting some people get rich first”, seemed to imply that a single-minded focus on economic growth worked: it was accompanied by the biggest economic and political transformation the world has seen, catapulting China from a low-income economy to a global economic contender, and creating inequality but also reducing poverty. China’s economic success was rooted in turning cities into the equivalent of economic growth machines,⁽⁶⁷⁾ with claims that cities should pursue growth first. Another argument to justify the priority given to economic growth is that governments in low-income cities and towns lack the economic capacity to address exclusion. Many also believe that all cities in this era of globalization are like companies that have to compete for investment and markets to survive.⁽⁶⁸⁾

There are, however, a number of problems with this growth-first approach to urbanization. The Kuznets curve no longer holds.⁽⁶⁹⁾ The benefits of highly unequal economic growth look quite different when environmental burdens are factored in, or when they are assessed in terms of improvements to health or subjective wellbeing.⁽⁷⁰⁾ Moreover, some growth strategies are far more exclusionary than others, and prioritizing urbanization that fosters economic growth now, without considering the implications for exclusion and inequality, could create enormous hardship for minimal economic gain. Indeed, by neglecting other dimensions of human development and capabilities, a narrow focus on the accumulation of capital and economic growth may actively undermine economic development.⁽⁷¹⁾ Rather than becoming easier to deal with over time, exclusion can leave a toxic social legacy of socio-spatial inequality, segregation and compromised formal authority, and rising violence.

Growth-first strategies gain indirect support from economic lobbies and the assumption that economic aspects of urbanization can be divorced from the politics of the environment and inequality. The World Bank explicitly excluded “the social and environmental effects of a changing economic geography” from the World Development Report on Reshaping Economic Geography.⁽⁷²⁾ As David Harvey interprets this, “the authors felt no obligation to consider how increasing social inequality and poverty along with environmental degradation might actively be produced through capitalism’s market-led uneven geographical development.”⁽⁷³⁾ Presumably, these same World Bank authors would argue that the approach they advocate is not especially unequal or damaging to the environment. But this approach is largely devoid of politics, while the implementation of growth policies in particular cities and countries will not be. The objectives of growth coalitions in cities are as likely to undermine as to enhance the economics of agglomeration through which urbanization can make the economy flourish.

A serious danger is that those empowered by a growth-first urbanization strategy will not only accept growing exclusion and inequality as an unfortunate side effect, but will benefit from and favour such exclusion and inequality – even when it is not contributing to economic growth. At the local level, coalitions of officials and business leaders/developers may derive their legitimacy from their claim to be acting for the interests of all. However, examining the growth machine framework in Metro Manila,⁽⁷⁴⁾ or Delhi and Mumbai,⁽⁷⁵⁾ reveals that relevant exchanges between state actors and powerful private actors were organized around particular rent-seeking opportunities represented “by an assemblage of highly discretionary, negotiated transactions”.⁽⁷⁶⁾ Shatkin’s study of Metro Manila revealed an acute form of “privatization of urban planning” and demonstrated how “large developers conceive of corporate visions, then convene public sector entities (a hodgepodge of local governments, national agencies, and special-purpose agencies) to pursue their own objectives of urban transformation for corporate profit.”⁽⁷⁷⁾ In such examples, going for growth first or exclusively clearly favours certain affluent groups at the expense of others.

Cities in market or mixed economies do need to be places where private as well as public enterprises can flourish, or the very value of inclusion is lost. However, citizens benefit when use values and exchange values are protected and brought into balance.⁽⁷⁸⁾ Enterprises need to be able to secure well-serviced, well-located land, but at a cost that reflects its scarcity, not less.⁽⁷⁹⁾ Bureaucratic procedures need to be streamlined and simple, so that productive, sustainable enterprises can start up and operate efficiently, but not so streamlined that the savings in administrative and compliance costs are outweighed by environmental or social burdens.⁽⁸⁰⁾ Such balancing is important even before a level of affluence has been achieved. A government with close ties to industrial elites is not necessarily in a good position to achieve such balancing. A recent review of the politics of the developmental state argues that such ties can be can be counterproductive.⁽⁸¹⁾ Above, the favelas of Brazil, the apartheid system of South Africa and the hukou system of China were used as examples of very different forms of exclusion that can arise in the attempt to avoid inclusive urbanization. They also reveal how exclusion can become embedded and extremely difficult to reverse even after considerable economic success.

Under apartheid, South Africa had a draconian system of control over rural–urban migration, rooted in both economic aspirations and racial discrimination. More than two decades after the system was dismantled, a heavy legacy remains. Many townships, created on the periphery of cities under apartheid, remain poverty traps today. South African cities are still “among the most unequal and visibly divided in the world”.⁽⁸²⁾ Despite a democratically elected government, the socio-spatial legacy of apartheid has not been comprehensively tackled, with negative consequences for inequality, the economy and the environment. There is still a strong spatial legacy, even if it is increasingly based on class.⁽⁸³⁾ South Africa is a comparatively affluent country, but nevertheless has faced serious problems handling the pent-up urbanization that the followed the dismantling of the controls.

Still a highly unequal society, Brazil has become known for its innovative, ambitious attempts to develop more inclusive forms of governance, many pioneered in cities.⁽⁸⁴⁾ Yet there are social divisions in highly urbanized Brazil that are rooted in past failures to accommodate the predictable influx of low-income migrants.⁽⁸⁵⁾ Rio de Janeiro’s renowned favelas provide stark examples of Brazil’s difficulties overcoming its legacy of informal spatial exclusion. A comparative study in Rio’s favelas in early 1970s and the early 2000s⁽⁸⁶⁾ found that while physical and economic conditions had improved, social exclusion had worsened, and residents were exposed to far more violence. The inherited exclusion did not fade away, but festered. The burdens were greatly amplified when gangs organized around guns and drugs found their way into the local power structure, taking advantage of the poor relations between the residents and local authorities. There are ongoing attempts to “pacify” favelas with the intensive use of force,⁽⁸⁷⁾ and the challenges of turning Rio into an inclusive city are still daunting.

China, with its hukou system, is already dealing with a legacy of exclusionary urbanization, but has been adapting it incrementally.⁽⁸⁸⁾ The hukou system once clearly divided the population into urban and rural/agricultural people, creating a firm barrier between the two. With liberalization, the spatial controls were loosened; rural hukou holders could move to urban jobs, but not secure urban rights. Part of the urban residential population was labelled as outsiders, excluded because of their registration. The hukou system as recently as 2008 was presented as “perhaps the most crucial foundation of China’s social and spatial stratification and arguably contributes to the country’s most prevalent human rights violations”.⁽⁸⁹⁾ The government is scrambling to find ways to adapt the system so that that the sharp rural/urban distinction is attenuated, the boundaries more porous, and the exclusion less overt. It is not yet clear how well it will succeed, however, and if handled poorly, exclusionary urbanization from the hukou could become China’s great legacy.

V. Achieving More Inclusive Urbanization

For government authorities in an urbanizing country, it is easier to try to turn a city into a “growth machine” than an “inclusion machine”. Economic growth is easily measurable. Inclusion is not.⁽⁹⁰⁾ Economic growth and urbanization are correlated, and inherently complementary.⁽⁹¹⁾ Inequality, which is related to inclusion, is negatively associated with urbanization,⁽⁹²⁾ and many would argue that rising inequality is an inevitable result of urbanization. As described above, key members of powerful public and private elites can form urban growth coalitions, gaining substantial advantages for themselves, while claiming to promote economic growth and serve the public interest. Elite interests in inclusion are ambiguous, at best.

In effect, inclusion needs to be grounded in a different politics. Like economic growth, inclusion can claim the mantle of the public interest, but is a more suitable goal for social movements of the sort described by Castells⁽⁹³⁾ than for the elite coalitions described by Logan and Molotch.⁽⁹⁴⁾ Especially during periods of rapid urbanization, the risks of exclusion and conflict are high. Cities are not just economic centres but are where many political struggles critical to societal change are being played out, whether in the squares of protest or the backstreets of the everyday. Even in undemocratic situations, the excluded in cities typically find some means of developing “agency”. And even very bourgeois states can turn inclusion to their own ends.⁽⁹⁵⁾

Unfortunately, even if inclusion and growth are not inherently in opposition, their politics can easily make them so. An urban growth coalition is unlikely to be a force for inclusion, and social movements striving for inclusion are unlikely to be driving economic improvement at least not directly. And successful urbanization must accomplish both if it is to serve the wider public interest and achieve human wellbeing.

The following two sub-sections look first at inclusive urbanization from below and then from above – a crude but useful distinction. Authorities are unlikely to plan for inclusive urbanization without pressure from below, and ideally the plans and policies from above emerge from a more inclusive politics. Whether from above or below, it is important that the pursuit of inclusion avoid unnecessarily sharp trade-offs, which set inclusion against the economy. Neither sub-section deals explicitly with the role of the private sector in achieving inclusive urbanization, but the role is implicit in each.

a. More inclusive urbanization from below

Achieving inclusive cities can be a means of realizing human rights, including those of aspiring migrants and rural dwellers wanting to access urban markets, services and spaces. The “right to the city” deriving from Henri Lefebvre’s work⁽⁹⁶⁾ provides a specifically urban concept of inclusion. The heart of Lefebvre’s conception is his notion of a city co-produced through the labour, actions and daily exchanges of the urban residents who have a right not only to inhabit the city but also to be the architects of urban transformations.⁽⁹⁷⁾ In effect, the right to the city “depends on the exercise of collective power [of urban residents] to reshape the process of urbanization” through engagement with the state.⁽⁹⁸⁾ When construed in this manner, the right to the city suggests a central role of social movements in negotiating the production and distribution of urban resources, and in the process creating opportunities for participatory models of governance.

In practice, approaches to realizing the rights of excluded urban dwellers vary widely. The human rights-based approaches (HRBAs) most widely promoted by international development organizations are inevitably far less politically radical than that associated with Lefebvre and Harvey. Some better-known networks of urban community-based organizations try to avoid relying on an HRBA, not for conceptual or ideological reasons, but on practical and structural grounds.⁽⁹⁹⁾ Most excluded urban communities would probably like their rights to be met by the state, but a strategy that relies primarily on making demands on the state is often ineffective and can create conflicts most community members would prefer to avoid. While there is widespread agreement in development circles that human rights must be realized, there is less agreement on how this should be pursued.

The approach of Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI), a network of federations of urban poor groups working in alliance with support NGOs, provides an example well documented in this journal.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ Appadurai celebrated the work of the Indian Alliance, a founding member of SDI, for adopting an approach to human rights rooted in “deep democracy”, rather than in the international system of human rights.⁽¹⁰¹⁾ SDI’s federations are mostly rooted in women’s savings groups that are unaligned politically and ethnically. They do not just demand their rights, but offer to cooperate in their realization. Their strategy, in effect, is to co-produce their own inclusion, developing a better relationship with and more influence over local authorities along the way.⁽¹⁰²⁾ Their tactics often involve making demands on the state with demonstrable solutions in hand. Some argue that such approaches fail to sufficiently challenge the underlying politics creating the exclusion.⁽¹⁰³⁾ Others point to their tangible achievements and argue that the SDI-affiliated federations tend to avoid overtly confrontational approaches because they represent the considered views of their members.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾

The rights of aspiring migrants and rural dwellers hoping for better access to urban markets, services and spaces fit somewhat uneasily with the right to the city and narrowly urban-based social movements and organizations. Often the compromises asked of urban organizations of the urban poor involve closing off spaces or livelihood opportunities previously open to the urban homeless or destitute. An urban homeless people’s federation negotiating better housing for pavement dwellers, for example, is likely to be asked to help ensure that the pavements are not re-occupied. A waste pickers’ federation negotiating a role in the city’s formal waste system may be asked to ensure that informal pickers do not continue to operate outside the system. Creating bottom-up organizing through citizen–government partnerships is not just a tool of the excluded, and indeed can be used by the middle class as a tool of exclusion, as Bhan argues was the case with the “citizen–government partnerships” introduced in Delhi in 1998.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾

In short, the tools and principles of human rights can be used by those struggling for more inclusive urbanization, but are unlikely to be the basis for a bottom-up approach, which will depend on local circumstances and politics. Organizations of residents and of informal sector workers have demonstrated that they can play a critical role in negotiating for inclusion and bringing constructive pressure to bear on the state.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ The importance of accommodating urban population growth efficiently and fairly can pose a special challenge, however, particularly when the tactics of exclusion are also changing.

b. More inclusive urbanization from above

Many wide-ranging debates over urban democracy, citizenship and participation are central to urban inclusion and the role of the state. In this sub-section the focus is more narrowly on the issues that relate to rapid urbanization and urban population growth, and to make a few points often missing from the broader debates. The first relates to decentralization, which can be conducive to inclusion, but only if central governments act to ensure that local authorities are not left competing to exclude low-income migrants – a competition that often spills over to adversely affect other disadvantaged groups. The second relates to informality, and the importance of finding more inclusive ways of accommodating and upgrading informal settlements and enterprises, not treating this as a choice between persistent informality and incorporation within existing formal systems. The third relates directly to how city governments can become more accommodating of their growing low-income populations, through facilitating efficient and equitable urban expansion and densification.

In the 1990s, decentralization was advocated by neoliberals disillusioned with the role of central governments, by neo-communitarians hoping that decentralization would encourage grassroots democracy, and by more narrowly pragmatic supporters of local governments claiming they are in the best position to meet the large number of local public needs.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ It is still often presented as a means of making government responsive to the governed,⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ and hence more inclusive. However, with upward of 75 countries having attempted to shift state responsibilities to lower tiers of government,⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ the results have been mixed. Bardhan and Mookherjee⁽¹¹⁰⁾ argue that while central authorities are less responsive to the location-specific needs of their citizens, urban authorities have shown themselves to be more prone to elite capture, as might be predicted by the prevalence of growth machines. Alternatively, Devarajan, Khemani and Shah⁽¹¹¹⁾ argue that most decentralization has only been partial, and has not been done in a way that fosters inclusion.

To achieve inclusive urbanization, decentralization would need to be implemented with more attention than is typically given to local state capacity and better relations between the state and the groups vulnerable to exclusion. This would fit with the progressive politics of the developmental state recently set out by Evans and Heller.⁽¹¹²⁾ It would help to encourage participatory innovations, such as the participatory budgeting that grew out of Brazil’s democratic decentralization.⁽¹¹³⁾ However, to rely heavily on decentralization would miss one of the special challenges of rapid urbanization: some of the groups most vulnerable to exclusion are not yet citizens of the city, or are not considered to be. This includes aspiring migrants. The exclusionary politics associated with attempts to resist urbanization are not addressed by decentralization, which may, indeed, amplify fears that more inclusive policies will increase the inflow of unskilled migrants. The national government has an important role to play in achieving inclusive urbanization, since national policies are needed to help local authorities support rather than exclude disadvantaged groups. Decentralization needs to be pursued in ways that help existing urban citizens gain more control over their cities, but not at the expense of excluding others.

Within cities in rapidly urbanizing countries, informal settlements and the informal economy also pose special challenges for achieving greater inclusion. Informality can be an expression or a cause of exclusion, and takes many forms. While it can just reflect a failure to enforce good policies and regulations, it most often involves policies and regulations better suited to more affluent residents and workers and to a better-resourced state. In either case, informality is likely to result in the establishment of (informal) institutions and physical structures that resist the ex post imposition of the formal rules and regulations. Simply pushing for a more vigorous enforcement of existing regulations can make matters worse. On the other hand, authorities have little inclination to develop regulations and policies supportive of the unacceptably poor, particularly when local elites believe “people who couldn’t afford to live in cities shouldn’t live in them”.⁽¹¹⁴⁾ Moreover, while residents will fight hard to resist evictions, they are rarely inclined to protest about regulations that, for example, require lower residential densities than they can afford, or do not allow them to settle in unplanned settlements that they can afford. Yet this is the thicket of “wicked”⁽¹¹⁵⁾ planning problems that both government authorities and those dependent on the informal sector must enter, in order to co-produce better regulations and policies, and create a progressive transition towards formality and eventually acceptability.

One of the most prevalent and damaging sources of exclusion linked to urbanization, and of the awkward informalities described above, is the failure to plan for anticipated population growth, and the growth in the number of low-income residents in particular. Ideally such planning would make it easier for everyone, including unskilled rural migrants, to secure space and basic services for their homes, and markets for their labour or the products of that labour. For the wealthy, the lack of such planning can be an inconvenience, but for more disadvantaged residents it can be disastrous.

In very simple terms, more urban residents can be accommodated by opening up new areas for residential and mixed-use expansion, or increasing residential density in already built-up areas (or at least reducing its decline). In the interests of inclusion it is critical to prepare for expansion in advance, and to consider how many people there are likely to be as well as what their incomes will be. It is also critical to prepare for densification, and to ensure that those working for low pay, often in the informal sector, are not simply going to be displaced prematurely and without adequate compensation as land prices rise.

The report of the 20-year review of the International Conference on Population and Development presents a simplified series of steps towards a more inclusive and developmental urbanization process.⁽¹¹⁶⁾ It begins by accepting the reality and inevitability of urbanization, which is critical for the political will to take an inclusive path. This in turn enables planning for urban population growth, going beyond urban administrative boundaries to a balance among national, regional and local. The third and fourth steps bring together sustainable and inclusive use of space, through participatory planning and implementation, as a means of preventing the sprawl, exclusion, environmental degradation and spatial mismatch that have characterized so much historical urban development. Within each of these steps, major existing approaches point the way forward.

Some of the practicalities of an inclusive approach to the inevitable expansion of urban areas are presented at http://urbanizationproject.org/blog/urban-expansion. The webpage starts by observing that:

• We are in the midst of the urban transition;

• Urban built-up areas are expanding faster than urban populations;

• This expansion is predictable but not being planned for; and

• Advance planning of transport networks and open spaces in particular would cost little and have large and multiple benefits as a city expanded.

The key initial steps outlined in the primer for this Urban Expansion initiative⁽¹¹⁷⁾ are:

1. Preparing maps of surrounding areas to be converted to urban uses over the coming decades, based on realistic projections of the population and density;

2. Altering jurisdictional boundaries so the local municipal government has the authority to develop and implement plans for this extended area;

3. Surveying the area for a “25-to-30-meter wide arterial road grid with a 1-kilometer spacing” and transferring rights of way to the municipality; and

4. Creating a “civic-municipal” organization to identify suitable public spaces within the expansion area, purchase the land rights, and protect them from incursion by formal or informal development.

The term “inclusion” does not come up, but a key objective is to open up sufficient land to keep land and house prices affordable in formal and informal markets.

A more inclusive approach to densification is presented at: http://urbandensity.org/. In a Karachi study,⁽¹¹⁸⁾ a problem identified was that low-income settlements were planned as though they would remain low-density indefinitely, with no regulatory mechanism for enabling incremental densification. As in many Asian cities, as low-income, low-rise settlements became more central, they became vulnerable to redevelopment, and residents were displaced to the periphery. The formal alternative, medium-rise settlements built by developers, were often unaffordable to existing residents or unsuitable to their livelihoods. The alternative suggested by Hasan and colleagues, in response to meetings and surveys in low-income settlements, was smaller plots with more support for adding floors as households expanded, along with other innovations. Like the expansion-oriented approach, incremental densification would require changes in regulatory systems as well as modest financial support.

While such approaches can be undermined by powerful private interests and compromised public authorities, they should be reasonably resistant to manipulation. These approaches to housing are radically different from that critiqued in the article by Buckley, Kallergis and Wainer in this issue, which also suggests that is important to focus on the inclusiveness of housing policy.⁽¹¹⁹⁾ The challenge is to build sufficient support for their implementation. Ultimately, the political basis for inclusive urbanization is fragile, despite the fact that it could serve both economic growth and social equity. Some of the key policies face difficulties getting support from growth coalitions, but also from those demanding change from below. The goals of the expansion strategy include keeping land prices and the excess profits of developers down. The goals of progressive densification include removing the unfair advantage developers gain from the restrictions placed on incremental plot-based development by residents. Depending on local politics, the fact that both are economically efficient may not be sufficient to make them attractive to the growth coalitions. On the other hand, advance expansion and progressive densification are likely to appear too conservative and modernist for those interested in radical social change. Detractors can also present such approaches as encouraging both unacceptably high population growth rates (since both would greatly increase the scope for low-cost construction by residents themselves) and unacceptably low housing quality (since both would have to be affordable to the unacceptably poor).

Yet some means of increasing the availability of land for low-income housing is necessary if urbanization is to become more inclusive. If done properly, with strong community engagement and a balance of nationally driven incentives and local control, the approaches just described should enable urbanization to serve some combination of economic flourishing, inclusion and environmental sustainability, and to avoid unduly sharp trade-offs. If at all successful, they should ensure that developers can no longer make the same profits from unproductive speculation and rent seeking, and put both low-income renters and prospective owner-occupiers in a stronger position to resist regimes of exclusion.

c. Inclusive urbanization in the 2030 Agenda

Urbanization, mentioned in just a single target of the SDGs, gets far less attention than inclusion and cities within the SDGs. Yet it cuts to the heart of the 2030 Agenda, both in the prospects it generates – for greater resource efficiency, economies of scale in service provision, new opportunities for mobilization, education and livelihoods – and in the contradictions it highlights. This paper suggests that prospects for social inclusion and equality, central tenets of the 2030 Agenda, are powerfully linked to the process and shape of urbanization. But the hardening of exclusion in many cities, linked to the resistance to urbanization, has the potential to derail key objectives within that agenda.

Governments commit in paragraph 2 of the 2030 Agenda’s political declaration to “achieving sustainable development in its three dimensions – economic, social and environmental – in a balanced and integrated manner”.⁽¹²⁰⁾ This is no small task in an incredibly broad, undeniably ambitious agenda, and requires an overall, systemic shift across many spheres of society. The 17 goals and 169 targets of the agenda indeed add up to an agenda that reflects such a balance. Yet they are also complex and far reaching and inevitably will not be implemented anywhere as a complete package. Zooming in to the level of the growing urban policy space shows the powerful politics at play that rejects balance in favour of elite coalitions, maximizing of exchange value, disregard for the environment, and persistent exclusion. At the centre of this politics are fundamental contradictions among the three dimensions of sustainable development, and too often the solution they proffer is that only through growth first can urban areas develop and ultimately deliver for all.

Aspects of the 2030 Agenda could be used to enable such an elite-led, growth-first approach. The means of implementation resides mostly in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA), which maintains and strengthens two major aspects of development financing that emerged in Doha and Monterrey: an increased focused on domestic financing for development, “first and foremost generated by economic growth”,⁽¹²¹⁾ and increased links to the private sector as a development partner. These components will only increase the pressure for growth in urban centres, which already encompass over 80 per cent of global economic activity.⁽¹²²⁾ Greater focus in international development on domestic and private sector considerations aligns with the realities of many cities, which rely on growth coalitions dominated by particular private sector interests. Further, in the least developed countries (LDCs), where urban growth rates are projected to be 3.8 per cent annually for 2015–2020,⁽¹²³⁾ target 8.1 sets an incredibly ambitious economic growth objective of a sustained 7 per cent per capita per year. As in many other contexts, the pressure to grow first in LDCs will be significant. It is precisely in these places that urbanization will result in inclusive or exclusive cities now and for the foreseeable future, and where seeking a balance among economic, social and environmental objectives may seem most contradictory.

This perceived contradiction is a political construct, though, not a certainty. There is nothing fundamentally contradictory about a balanced approach to urbanization, although the balance does require a new politics from both below and above, which creates a system of markets, services and space that enables the inclusive, sustainable settlements to which Goal 11 – and indeed the 2030 Agenda as a whole – aspires.

There are goals for that new politics. Goal 10 addresses inequalities, and not just of income: also included are empowerment; political inclusion including on the basis of identity – the still critical centrepiece of the World Bank definition; removal of discriminatory laws; equality of opportunity and outcome; and facilitation of migration and mobility. Goal 16 aims for good governance, including rule of law, reduced corruption, improved institutions and participatory decision making. Indivisibility means pursuing Goal 11 on the basis of Goal 10 and Goal 16, and together they demand an inclusive urbanization process. Otherwise, the aspirations of the overall agenda will be out of reach for many of the one billion projected new urban residents by 2030, the more than 3.9 billion already living in cities and towns, and the billions more rural residents linked to them through family and work.

It is crucial that this new politics include both national and local, top-down and bottom-up approaches, engaging a balance of stakeholders in the production of urban forms that enable instead of preclude integration. The 2030 Agenda has remained globally negotiated by national-level representatives. The final parts of the 2030 Agenda will unfold over 2016, ending with the Habitat III conference that will put forward a new global urban development agenda, intended to generate a local lens on the SDGs. Inclusive urbanization – with a central focus on the prospects and trajectories of growing cities and towns, and their capacity to combat the predominant tendency towards exclusion and to be part of sustainable development for all – must be at the heart of Habitat III, as well as the urban agenda more broadly, to support the achievement of the 2030 Agenda.