SIEMENS

The United Nations (UN) calculates that in the year 2050 about 6.3 billion people will live in cities — a number almost as large as today’s entire global population. What will the quality of life be like in these conurbations? Will they be safe, clean, tolerant, and energyefficient? Eduardo López Moreno believes that all these factors have a decisive influence on the quality of life in every city. Moreno, a native of Mexico, is an urban geographer and head of the Global Urban Observatory department at the UN Habitat in Nairobi, a United Nations organization. He coordinated and co-authored a comprehensive survey of the cities of the world called “State of the World’s Cities 2010/2011.” According to Moreno, “overcoming urban divides” is the most important job of the future. In many cities imbalances have increased considerably since 1980, he says, with disparities evident in income distribution and access to education, nutrition, and healthcare.

However, these issues are hardly touched on in the city rankings published by business consultant Mercer and lifestyle magazine Monocle. The reason is their target audience: decision-makers with a high degree of mobility. Mercer, for example, lists 29 variables, including political stability, economic and socio-cultural conditions, infrastructure, living space, and the environment. The rankings, which were produced in 2010, cover 221 cities. Among the top ten are Vienna, Zurich, and Geneva in the leading three spots, and Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, and Munich ranked sixth to eighth. The 2011 city ranking of the Economist Intelligence Unit tends to give high marks to major English-speaking cities, with Melbourne at number one, followed by Vienna, Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, Sydney, and Helsinki. The disparity lies in the weighting of the data, which in this case emphasizes the supply of goods and services, safety, and the efficiency of the infrastructure.

Finally, the lifestyle magazine Monocle puts Helsinki at the top of the list of “most livable cities 2011,” followed by Zurich, Copenhagen, and Munich — and bases its assessment on factors such as safety, international flight connections, climate, quality of architecture, and the balance between a pleasant atmosphere rich in tradition and progressive urban planning. However, the differences between the top-ranking cities are marginal. New York, which was assigned 100 points as a reference city for the Mercer index, comes in at 49th place — and only 8.6 percentage points behind the number one city, Vienna. The African cities with the best ratings, Cape Town and Tunis, rank 86th and 94th. The leading city in South America, Buenos Aires, ranks 78th. Far down on the list are cities such as Havana (192) and Dhaka (206).

Many of the city rankings only confirm what anyone would expect: that cities in highly developed countries are the most likely to offer a high quality of life. In many of these studies, the dynamic development of a number of major cities in developing countries and emerging markets is not considered at all. One example is the development of slums; the UN Habitat report on the state of the world’s cities has both good and bad news in this regard. Whereas the proportion of people living in slums worldwide is falling, the absolute number of slum dwellers is increasing. In 2010 it was 828 million persons, compared with 657 million in 1990.

From 1995 to 2005 the urban population in developing countries increased by 165,000 — per day. The population of Dhaka alone, a metropolis of 15 million, is growing by half a million people every year. This process is most pronounced in Africa, which is still largely a rural continent whose cities are growing at a rate of only 3.2 percent per year. Nonetheless, economic development is not keeping pace with growth, and the result is the formation of new slums. Northern Europe is still the most urbanized area on earth, with 84.4 percent of the population living in cities, whereas only 23.7 percent of the people in east Africa live in cities. By 2050, however, this situation will have radically changed. By then, 91.4 percent of the population in South America will be urban, according to UN Habitat.

“In general, the quality of life in Third World cities can only be raised if poverty can be overcome. That requires economic growth, political stability, and above all, the willingness of decision-makers to plan for the long term and act accordingly,” says Moreno. An excellent example is Chile, he says, where government has not only backed strong economic growth but also enabled people to take their destinies into their own hands by expanding social services and education programs, particularly in slums. According to the foundation “A Roof for Chile,” the number of families living in slums has decreased by 77 percent to 29,000 within 13 years.

On the other hand, the global increase in economic imbalances, as measured by the Gini coefficients compiled by UN Habitat, presents a more disquieting picture. A coefficient of 0 means equality, and 1 means absolute inequality. Values between 0.3 and 0.4 signal comparatively egalitarian societies, and values greater than 0.5 indicate stark imbalance. At that point, the poorest fifth of the population earns only three percent of the total income, while the richest fifth claims half. The current Gini coefficients show that wealth and income in many cities of the U.S. are now distributed as unevenly as in some major cities of the developing world. Forty major U.S. cities, including New York, Washington D.C., and Chicago, have values over 0.5. This is the same level as Mexico City, Ho Chi Minh City, and Nairobi.

These imbalances have increased throughout the western world since 1980 — especially in the cities. Even in Canada, one of the most egalitarian countries, urban centers have a Gini coefficient of 0.36, compared with an average of 0.28 for the country as a whole. Similar trends can be seen in Europe, says Moreno. They are reinforced, he adds, by the fact that migrants and ethnic minorities are especially affected: “This is potentially a very explosive situation socially, because it’s not just a matter of absolute numbers but also the perception of inequality.” The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, whose large cities offer a relatively high quality of life for developing countries, were largely carried out by the educated classes, which were practically excluded from the labor market, Moreno says.