Infrastructure Resilience against Urbanisation and Demographic Change (Part 3)
Urban and Demographic Trends
Urbanisation and demographic change is a highly complex subject area spanning many facets of human society, not just on a local or national level, but also on a global level. To fully understand urbanisation and demographic change, a broader perspective than just a single city must be taken.
Almost by definition, urbanisation and demographic change are intrinsically interlinked. Urbanisation, by virtue, is concerned with the general increase in people living in urban areas (cities and towns etc.). As a consequence of urbanisation, the population structure (demographic) within existing and new urban areas changes in direct correlation with this movement of people. It is in the broad idea of people movement that the highly complex nature of urbanisation and demographic change becomes clear. People can be motivated to move for a wide range of reasons ranging from the economic to the existential. These reasons can likely be categorised in many ways, but one paper written by Chaolin Gu [1] has suggested that there are five main drivers for urbanisation: (1) industrialisation, (2) modernisation, (3) globalisation, (4) marketisation and (5) administrative/institutional power. Without delving in the minutia of each driver, the broad narrative from Chaolin describes a world in which mass production, technology development, global markets, global manufacturing and institutional intervention have all created new opportunities for people inside cities and urban areas.
Ironically, the growth in cities, particularly in coastal regions that have benefited significantly from global trade, has increased many people’s exposure to the effects of climate change, and in particular, to rising sea levels. Within their Global Risks 2019 report [2], the World Economic Forum (WEF) specifically highlighted the ‘vicious cycle’ represented by urbanisation in concentrating ‘people and property in areas of potential damage and disruption’. The WEF also highlighted that the growth of these urban areas often results in the destruction of natural sources of resilience further exacerbating the problem [2]. In addition to this, as developing countries continue to grow and industrialise, their use of fossil fuels will only increase to support their ever-growing energy needs [3]; this will only go on to further compound the impending threat proposed by climate change. Unsurprisingly, the WEF list environmental factors as some of the most likely and impactful global risks in their subsequent 2020 report [3], see Figure 1.
As global societies and cities continue to develop, and as populations increasingly concentrate around urban centres, it can be seen that there is an ever-pressing need to secure the improvements made over the past century that are now at risk due to climate change. This is a challenge facing all societies, developed and developing, but it is in developing countries that the greatest repercussions are likely to be felt [2]. This said, the world exists in a state of extreme interconnection, meaning consequences felt in one part of the world are likely to be experienced in another. This challenge is too considerable to be tackled by any one country or through any one lens; a combined approach of strategic urbanisation, intelligent governance and policy, technological innovation and resilient infrastructure is required.
Figure 1 – Global risk factors as highlighted within the World Economic Forum Global Risks 2020 report [3].
The Challenges
Reflecting on the discussion above, it is clear that there are a wide range of challenges to be tackled in order to create cities and liveable environments that are able to support urbanisation and demographic change, while also mitigating against the potential consequences and increased exposure to risk. Focusing on the role infrastructure has to play in overcoming these challenges and in providing resilience to future change, there are several elements that are valuable for consideration:
Planned Urbanisation
The rapid urbanisation and demographic change experienced by developing countries has rarely be planned for and has been reacted to, from an infrastructure provision perspective, on a very ad-hoc and reactive basis [4]. While this has been an effective strategy for infrastructure scaling [4], with populations set to only increase further, it is the view of this author that in the long-term this strategy will only result in increasingly inefficient and unreliable infrastructure. Taking the unreliability of power networks in many developing countries as a case in point [5], many systems are already operating at the edge of their capacity due to unplanned scaling of demand. Therefore, strategic planning of urbanisation and its infrastructure is a crucial activity for delivering scalable, sustainable and reliable infrastructure provisions.
Decarbonisation
Climate change is a central cause of many of the challenges facing human society. As explained above, currently, urbanisation is not only contributing to climate change (namely through the use of fossil fuels) [2], but also reducing the resilience of many of the societies. Decarbonisation of energy production is therefore a non-negotiable step to delivering not only resilient infrastructure, but infrastructure that supports the resilience of society.
Equitable Provisions
Linked into the concept of planned urbanisation is the need for infrastructure to support equality and improving standards of living for all people. As infrastructure becomes over-stretched resulting from urbanisation expanding beyond any design redundancy originally built into the infrastructure, people will be inevitably excluded from having access to infrastructure. A lack of running clean water, sanitation and power have all been highlighted as factors contributing to the perpetuation of poverty [6]. Building resilient infrastructure that is scalable to increasing populations and urban sprawl, as a result, becomes central to facilitating better standards of living.
Utilising Nature
While only mentioned in passing, it is important to acknowledge that nature provides many natural features that can provide useful resilience to cities and urban areas. As mentioned within the Global Risks 2019 report by WEF [2], urbanisation has often led to the destruction of natural barriers in an effort to find more land to support the population growth. This seems self-defeating if cost-prohibitive investment is then required to secure the continued use of this land for its new occupants.
Leapfrogging
Much of the discussion in this section has considered the risks facing cities within developing countries. However, there is also a significant opportunity for these cities to invest in “leapfrog” technology that enables them to skip many of the incremental development infrastructure steps taken by cities in more developed countries. Such leapfrog opportunities span infrastructure areas such as energy [7], communication technologies [7], and even sanitation [8]. Leapfrog opportunities could offer a potentially expedited route to infrastructure resilience and provision that even exceeds the capabilities of infrastructure found in developed countries.
Bibliography
[1] C. Gu, “Urbanization: Processes and driving forces,” Sci China Earth Sci, vol. 62, no. 9, pp. 1351–1360, 2019, doi: 10.1007/s11430-018-9359-y.
[2] World Economic Forum, “The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition,” 2019. [Online]. Available: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risks_Report_2019.pdf.
[3] World Economic Forum, “The Global Risks Report 2020,” 2020. [Online]. Available: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risk_Report_2020.pdf.
[4] L. Criqui, “Infrastructure urbanism: Roadmaps for servicing unplanned urbanisation in emerging cities,” Habitat Int, vol. 47, pp. 93–102, 2015, doi: 10.1016/j.habitatint.2015.01.015.
[5] T. Levin and V. M. Thomas, “Can developing countries leapfrog the centralized electrification paradigm?,” Energy Sustain Dev, vol. 31, pp. 97–107, 2016, doi: 10.1016/j.esd.2015.12.005.
[6] A. Jerome, “Infrastructure, Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction in Africa,” J Infrastructure Dev, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 127–151, 2011, doi: 10.1177/097493061100300203.
[7] World Bank Goup and China Development Bank, “Leapfrogging: The Key to Africa’s Development? From Constrains to investment opportunities,” 2017. [Online]. Available: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/28440/119849-WP-PUBLIC-Africa-Leapfrogging-text-with-dividers-9-20-17-web.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
[8] A. I. Schäfer, G. Hughes, and B. S. Richards, “Renewable energy powered membrane technology: A leapfrog approach to rural water treatment in developing countries?,” Renew Sustain Energy Rev, vol. 40, pp. 542–556, 2014, doi: 10.1016/j.rser.2014.07.164.
