United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), Maimunah Mohd Sharif, in a message to commemorate the 2018 World Cities Day that is observed on Wednesday, October 31, says that numerous cities today face repeated risk from a wide range of both human-made and environmental threats and as such need to invest in resilience to stem the tide in terms of the costs on economic, social, political and human terms

As Urban October comes to an end, a month dedicated to raising awareness on urban challenges, successes and sustainability, faced by cities and human settlements around the world, I am delighted to learn that an unprecedented number of global celebrations marking this month have taken place around the world.

This month, over 100 events have taken place across almost 50 cities and nearly 30 countries.

For World Cities Day on 31 October, we expect some 20 events to take place around the world, with the global observance being celebrated this year in the city of Liverpool, United Kingdom. Urban October is a key platform to raise the global consciousness of the importance of cities and human settlements in Building Sustainable and Resilient Cities, this year’s theme. Sustainability and resilience are an underlying commitment of the New Urban Agenda.

Many cities today face repeated risk from a wide range of both human-made and environmental threats: droughts, floods and fires to economic shocks, unemployment, disease outbreaks, migration, war and conflict.

World Cities Day is therefore a key platform for Member States and partners to highlight the need to increase resilience to natural and human-made risks.

If cities do not invest in resilience, the costs on economic, social, political and human terms will only grow. We need only to read the news to be aware of recurrent disasters that challenge our cities and human settlements everywhere, from rich to poor, from developed to developing, devastating families and entire communities, creating turmoil that can last for years. Cities are also a melting pot where inequalities are exacerbated, leading to social unrest and the potential for conflict. Investing in resilience is a wise investment.

With more and more people making cities their homes, the risks also increase. We need to find innovative and flexible ways to anticipate threats whether they are human-made or natural. We need to protect cities and their residents and enable them to adapt, survive and thrive. As with most disasters, it is usually the most vulnerable: women, youth, the poor, refugees and those on the move, such as migrants and internally displaced persons, who are hit the hardest and have the least ability to cope. At the same time, this year we have also seen natural disasters destroying communities in the global north, demonstrating that resilience is an important issue for all.

It has been estimated that without action on climate change – which accounts for just one facet of resilience – some 77 million urban residents risk falling into poverty. Urban resilience does not just mean building strong infrastructure, it also requires strong economic, social and governance systems to support physical and intangible resiliency. If cities do not invest in resilience now, the cost only increases. Current economic losses from disasters are unsustainable. They pose another challenge for countries in galvanising the potential of the global development agendas and moving towards eradicating poverty.

UN-Habitat supports resilience building in several ways. We help poor and marginalised communities find practical ways to adapt to climate change – increasing social inclusion through promoting participatory governance and planning, addressing land and property rights enabling access the improved living standards, and developing profiling and interactive tools, holistic, integrated approaches and support to communities from Paraguay to Mozambique, Sri Lanka to Somalia. UN-Habitat also support countries to improve their building and planning standards, both before after crisis.

I would like to sincerely recognise and thank the People’s Republic of China for founding World Cities Day, through a United Nations General Assembly resolution. Since 2014, the cities of Shanghai and Guangzhou, together with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development of China, have graciously financed the celebrations of World Cities Day. Thank you very much for your generous sponsorship, enabling cities and communities around the world to come together on this important platform to learn and share best practices on sustainable cities and their practices.

The need for resilient cities is recognised in the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement for Climate Change, the Sendai Framework and in the New Urban Agenda. Urban resilience is not just strong infrastructure, it requires strong economic, social and governance systems. UN-Habitat calls for action on building sustainable and resilient cities to protect urban populations today, tomorrow and in the future. Let us all work together to ensure that no only do we protect our cities and ensure they can respond to crises, but that we turn challenges into solutions, and solutions into opportunities. I would like to especially thank the city of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, for hosting the global observance of World Cities Day 2018.

A leading expert and thought leader on urbanisation and sustainability, Xuemei Bai, has painted a grim picture of the spatial status of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital city.

Bai, who is of the Future Earth Urban Knowledge Action Network, was recently awarded the Volvo Environment Prize 2018. She is a professor in Urban Environment and Human Ecology at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

A leading expert on how to make rapidly growing cities more livable, sustainable and resilient, her focus is on Asia and the global South.

According to her, while cities in the North try – and sometimes succeed – in becoming smart, green and carbon-neutral, cities such as Lagos, have grown 100-fold and are environmental nightmares.

She submitted that, in just two generations, Lagos went from a population of 200,000 to nearly 20 million.

“It is wealthy in parts, but largely chaotic and with many residents living in slums not connected to water or sanitation systems, and with momentous traffic congestion and air full of fumes. Projections show that if Nigeria’s population continues to grow, Lagos could become the world’s largest metropolis, home to perhaps 85 million people, with drastic environmental consequences,” said the human settlements development expert.

She opined however that other megacities are growing at an even faster rate, such as Guangzhou and Beijing in China and Kinshasa in Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“In fact, all of the top 10 fastest growing megacities are in Asia or Africa,” she said, adding: “It is sometimes said that sustainability will be won or lost in cities. I would go one step further and say that sustainability will be won or lost in cities in the Global South.”

“We need to approach cities as a human-dominant complex ecosystem and manage them as such. If we do that I believe there is a bright future for humans and their cities,” says Bai.

She adds: “More than half of the world’s population lives in cities, and the trend keeps growing at an unprecedented rate. In future we will need drastically different ways of planning, building and governing cities.

“Cities have been the cradles and powerhouses of new ideas and movements from time immemorial. They still are – from the industrial revolution in Birmingham in the 18th century to the breakneck speed of economic growth in Bangalore, India, today.

“The lure of a better life attracts millions of people to the cities of the world. For the first time in history more people are living in cities than in rural areas. And this way of living is set to continue: by 2050 more than two thirds of the world population will live in urban areas.

“Urbanisation is arguably one of the biggest social transformations of our time.”

Born and raised in China and living in Japan for many years, she is now an Australian citizen. Bai is one of the founding members of the Future Earth Urban Knowledge Action Network and is said to have been influential in building its vision.

The motivation of the jury of the Volvo Environment Prize Foundation: “Professor Xuemei Bai is one of the most active global thought leaders in urban sustainability research, working across scales and tackling both theoretical and applied challenges with a focus on urban development in East Asia. Her work is an outstanding example of the application of research to policy and practice.”

Vice Chancellor of the Australian National University, Professor Brian Schmidt, a Nobel Prize laureate in Physics: “Xuemei Bai is an excellent researcher, well in front of the times. Her work here in Asia is absolutely poignant to the problems of the day. Study of urbanization and making that sustainable is something that is very real today and it is almost certainly going to be established as a broader discipline around the world.”

Owen Gaffney of the Future Earth Media Lab and Stockholm Resiliance Centre: “Xuemei is an outstanding academic and a leading thinker and analyst on cities in the Anthropocene – the local to global scale impacts of urbanisation. She has published widely on China’s urbanisation strategies. This is perhaps the largest human-resettlement experiment in history. China’s urban population could reach one billion within two decades. Exploring how this migration from rural to urban can enhance Earth system stability rather than undermine it is one of the most challenging questions of our time. Xuemei’s work reaches to the heart of this question.”

Wendy Broadgate, Global Hub Director of Future Earth in Sweden: “Xuemei’s research puts science at the centre of sustainable urban futures particularly for cities in the global south, when much research is focused on the north. She is a visionary leader within Future Earth’s Urban Knowledge Action Network and played an important role in setting research priorities for addressing climate change in city development.”