Weekly Urban News Update

July 19, 2019

In This Update:

The "Garbage Problem" in Kenya's Slums

Understanding Why China is Pulling Ahead of the U.S. on Smart Cities

Why One Engineer Remains Unconvinced by Smart Cities

Making Room for Street Vendors in Manila

Women in Sri Lanka Oppose Car-Free Day, Citing Safety Concerns

Brazil's "Great Urban Experiment" Comes to an End as the Ministry of Cities Closes

India's Water Crisis Extends Well Beyond Chennai

UN-Habitat Develops New Urban Resilience Standards

In the News and Around the Web

The "Garbage Problem" in Kenya's Slums

A new program in Kenya, supported by the World Bank, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and Agence Française de Development will help Kenyan slums better manage solid waste. The Kenya Informal Settlements Improvement Project (KISIP) is developing a community-based and context-sensitive strategy to promote effective and sustainable waste management. KISIP Environmental and Social Safeguard Specialist, John Wafula asserts: "We must tackle the garbage crisis in slums." Wafula explains that past interventions have had low success rates. For instance, placing trash cans across settlements resulted in vandalism, theft, and non-collection which created mini-dumpsites. But, he enthuses that since 2011 KISP has "positively and directly impacted the lives of 1.2 million people in 14 counties."

Read more here.

Understanding Why China Is Pulling Ahead of the U.S. on Smart Cities

"When it comes to building smart city infrastructure, China is at a clear advantage," writes Harvard University Professor Graham Allison at Axios. Graham explains the advantage stems from different political systems. In the United States public concern about privacy from Big Tech, varying stakeholder opinions, and the over 80 city/county lawsuits currently filed against the FCC over the 5G infrastructure are among some of the impediments the United States faces as it attempts to develop smart cities. The Chinese political system, however, means it can avoid or stifle opposition to the installation of smart technologies. Furthermore, the installation of 200 million surveillance cameras across China has accompanied the development of its smart cities, offering the Chinese government "unprecedented omniscience" for monitoring its citizens.

Read more here.

Why One Engineer Remains Unconvinced by Smart Cities

In the New York Times, Dr. Shoshanna Saxe of the University of Toronto explains why she is not convinced that smart cities will solve significant urban problems. Dr. Saxe points out that the much lauded mass data gathered and algorithms produced by smart city technology are not meaningful on their own: "No matter how much data a city has," she writes, "addressing urban challenges will still require stable long-term financing, good management and effective personnel." For example: if smart technology reveals a city road that needs repairs, it "still needs people to show up with asphalt and a steamroller." Dr. Saxes urges policymakers to remember that "cities are populated by people not technology," and to return to planning that prioritizes urban necessities like durable infrastructure over the "shininess" of smart technology.

Read more here.

Making Room for Street Vendors in Manila

In the Philippines, 15 million people - or 38% of the population - are employed in the informal economy sector, contributing to 1/3 of the country's GDP. In Manila, street vendors compose a large number of this population, says Ragene Andrea L. Palma at CNN, face frequent eviction and displacement by authorities and residents who want to "clean" the city. According to Palma, clearing out street vendors can create more problems then it resolves. Relocating these workers mainly prioritizes middle-class issues, and excludes the needs of those in the lower-class or living in poverty. She asserts that planning for informality, while challenging, is doable. It does not need to be a choice between unregulated and non-formalized use of public space and whole-sale clearing of these stalls. Instead, cities can create policies that set hygiene standards and enforce waste management and sanitation without clearing away the street vendors.

Read more here.

Women in Sri Lanka Oppose Car-Free Day, Citing Safety Concerns

Sri Lankan women opposed the capital city's "car-free day" last week. The Mayor of Colombo sought to alleviate traffic congestion and to promote a 'healthier' lifestyle by banning cars for a day. But, women in Colombo argue that travel by car is a necessary way to avoid rampant sexual harassment on the street and on public transportation. According to one interviewee Pabasara Palletanne:"Street harassment is kind of getting worse. I can't walk 10 steps without being stared at or cat-called." While Randima Jayasinghe, spokeswoman for UNFPA said it highlighted patriarchal attitudes in prevalent in societies- graduate student Misha'ari Weerabangsa focused on the fact of transport itself: "They fail to take into consideration the ground realities that are faced by commuters, especially women."

Read more here.

Brazil's "Great Urban Experiment" Comes to an End as the Ministry of Cities Closes

In January, President Jair Bolsonaro closed the Ministry of Cities, established by former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to tackle the problems of unplanned rapid urbanization in Brazil. In fifteen years of operation, the Ministry of Cities pursued one of the "most ambitious social housing and neighborhood building schemes" reports Greg Scruggs at The Guardian, and managed to house 4 million Brazilians, create new infrastructure, improve transport, renovate Brazil's favelas, and upgrade sewage. For its work, the ministry received the UN-Habitat "scroll of honor" in 2006. The Ministry, however, faced significant problems throughout its short-lived reign, some of which were its own, if inadvertent, making: choosing quantity over quality in housing construction, the unintended consequence of rent hikes by government housing subsidies, and mass forcible eviction in Rio de Janeiro before the Olympics and World Cup, under the pretext of favela upgrading.

Read more here.

India's Water Crisis Extends Well Beyond Chennai

India's water crisis extends beyond the city of Chennai. Chennai has been featured prominently in international news recently as it may soon run out of groundwater, but India as a whole is experiencing the effects of unpredictable weather and climate change. "Welcome to the new India," writes Arati Kumar-Rao at National Geographic: "Hot and desiccated and wet and flooded all at once, the fates of 1.3 billion people...riding upon increasingly unpredictable rains." The city of Bangalore may soon follow on Chennai's heels and run out of groundwater by 2020. Kumar-Rao explains that while climate change and unpredictable weather are the immediate triggers, the"dire predicament of these two urban areas," is in fact "demonstrative of water management in the soon-to-be most populated country in the world."

Read more here.

UN-Habitat Develops New Urban Resilience Standards

UN-Habitat is developing a new framework for urban resilience to clarify main principles and concepts and assist users in identifying, implementing, and monitoring their resilience strategies. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the expertise of its technical advisors will support UN-Habitat's efforts to set new standards for urban resilience. Esteban Leon, head of the city resilience profiling program at UN-Habitat explains: "This is a tall order and most cities need clearer guidance on what this means in practice and how they can reach that goal. The ISO standard will support these cities and help them enhance the lives of people living there."