Data | South America Conference | December 2008

Since 2007 more than half of humanity has been living in the globe’s urbanised areas. Every hour since, as people migrate at increasingly high speeds to cities, we are fast moving beyond that mark. But the distribution of this growth across the surface of the earth is unequal.

               

Today, metropolitan regions accommodate over one billion people, reflecting their roles as centres in the global flows of capital, people and culture. The number of cities with over one million inhabitants has grown dramatically over the last 50 years, reaching close to 450 in 2008. While many of these larger urban clusters were historically based in the developed countries, today 15 out of the 20 largest city regions of the world – with populations of between 10 and 20 million – can be found in the less economically advanced countries, many of them in the global South. The number of cities with over one million people in Asia, Africa and Latin America combined grew from 39 to 308 between 1950 and 2005. In the same period the numbers grew from 37 to only 96 in Europe and North America.

The cities of South America have a long history within the social and physical context of high urbanisation. South America is one of the most urbanised places on earth, with 83 per cent of its national populations living in cities. By 2050 this will be closer to 90 per cent, close to the twentieth-century urban heartland of North America, and ushering in a new generation of megacities with significant social, economic and environmental consequences.

The movement to cities sparks push-and-pull dynamics of new and emerging economies, and embodies the intersection of the physical and material nature of the city with changing social behaviours and beliefs. Answering the question of our ‘Urban Age’ requires us to take stock of where cities are, who lives in them, how they are run and what obstacles they face. Tackling the problems of our urban future demands us to move beyond the present to manage increasingly scarce resources, develop sustainable ways of living, and take the intersection of growing inequality and the city seriously.

The information contained in this ‘data section’ summarises the findings of research undertaken by Urban Age since 2005. It includes an overview of new research carried out on five South American cities – São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Lima and Bogotá – and places them in a comparative context with other world cities including New York, Shanghai, London, Johannesburg, Mexico City, Berlin and Mumbai. By investigating the differing patterns of urban density, transport and governance, together with a wide range of social and economic indicators, the information provides a unique insight into the DNA of cities today.

A hundred years ago, Buenos Aires was the only South American city with a population larger than one million. Today, there are 36. São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, Buenos Aires and Bogotá represent the five largest metropolitan regions. These cities are typical of urbanisation in South America, having exhibited their fastest and largest population growth in the mid- to late-twentieth century. From 1950 to 1980, São Paulo saw its population quadruple: from two million to more than eight million people. Lima saw similar growth rates, Bogotá grew by a factor of seven, Rio de Janeiro grew more slowly, while the population of Buenos Aires remained broadly static. Today the combined metropolitan population of these five cities is just over 60 million, a fifth of South America’s total urban population. Since the 1980s, growth has slowed in São Paulo, though with close to 11 million in the city and over 19 million in the Metropolitan Region, it remains the largest in South America. Rio de Janeiro’s growth rate has also slowed, and Bogotá’s and Lima’s stabilised earlier.

          

While each of the cities has a history stretching back to colonial times or earlier, their growth came after the withdrawal of Spain and Portugal’s colonial powers from the continent. Driven first by agriculture and trade, and then by rapid industrialisation, these cities now face a third revolution within a century as they adapt to become centres of the new service economy. In many cases, with slowing growth, their crucial task is to consolidate and build on their growth as the global economy enters a period of unprecedented change.

           

Given that 37 per cent of the population in Brazil live in favelas at the beginning of the twenty-first century, compared to 33 per cent in Argentina, 22 per cent in Colombia and an astounding 68 per cent in Peru, against an average of almost 36 per cent across South America, the challenge for decent housing, provision of urban services and economic opportunities requires
urgent action.

Inequality, its implications and potential policy responses are major themes for the Urban Age. Against this backdrop, a comparative spatial analysis of inequality using educational attainment as a proxy for social status and wealth is presented on the following pages. Education levels are good indicators of social potential since they indicate varying levels of qualification and job opportunities. Maps indicating where pockets of highly or poorly educated people live in each city correspond to data which varies from city to city. In the case of Brazil, the education levels correspond to the head of household, whereas in Buenos Aires, Bogotá and Lima, the mappings correspond to the education levels of the total population. Nonetheless, in each of the cities, a pattern of segregation between the centre and the periphery results from a range of factors including unequal distribution of public infrastructure and the expansion of informal settlements. This spatial distribution creates both exclusive areas with a high quality of life as well as stigmatised areas intensified by inadequate services, accessibility and economic opportunities.

METROPOLITAN SCALE IN SÃO PAULO

                                           

  

These six charts are illustrative indications of how government structures are organised in São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, New York, Mumbai and London. They are designed to give a crude impression of how the basic patterns of responsibilities are organised within each of these cities, identifying some of the key functions carried out at central, state and local government level. While they offer a useful comparative overview they are not intended to give an accurate account of the detailed systems of accountability, which can only be explained comprehensively on a case-by-case basis.

                     

                     

Cities are dynamic, while administrative geography is static. As cities have grown, many municipal boundaries look increasingly outdated and unrepresentative of the functional extent of the city.

The Urban Age has a primary focus on the municipal level of organisation, reporting data at this level and targeting municipal government in drawing out implications for public policy. Nonetheless, it is important to see municipalities within their wider metropolitan and regional context. For example, while the São Paulo municipality (covering around 1,500 km2) comprises more than ten million people, the wider São Paulo Metropolitan Region (covering around 8,000 km2) has a population of over 19 million, and includes many of the peripheral settlements (including decentralised industrial areas and favelas) that form part of São Paulo’s functional metabolism. At the other extreme, Shanghai covers more than 6,000 km2 and includes extensive areas of agricultural land as well as built-up space.

Other Urban Age cities show a varying degree of matching. While London’s boundaries broadly match the ‘Green Belt’ that constrains its growth, the city forms part of the densely-populated south-eastern region, with cities around its periphery forming part of its functional economic geography. New York includes rural areas in Staten Island, but across the Hudson River, Newark and Atlantic City are
not only separate municipalities, but part of a separate state (New Jersey). In other cases, like Berlin and Johannesburg, there is a closer correlation between built-up area and municipal boundaries.

These differing administrative arrangements have implications for both analysis and governance. Firstly, they require a degree of caution in interpreting raw data on a city-wide basis; apparent dissimilarities in economic and social structure, or physical form, can be exaggerated or even brought into being by differing geographies. For this reason, some elements of the Urban Age research are
presented for a specified area: our density diagrams on pages 32-33 are presented in relation to 100 x 100 km2 tiles, and the diagrams on this page represent 315 x 315 km2.

Mismatched boundaries can create the potential for conflict between neighbouring administrations. For
example, while São Paulo’s municipal boundary extends southwards to take in two major water sources (the Guarapiranga and Billings reservoirs), upstream pollution of the Tiete and Pinheiros rivers remains a challenge for cooperation between São Paulo and neighbouring municipality Guarahulhos.

Conflicts can arise over social and economic issues too. In cities like Bogotá, the city’s boundaries are seen as undermining social cohesion and the city’s tax base, as richer people migrate to suburbs located in different municipalities (attracted by lower tax rates and, in some cases, by planning regulations that permit more sprawling development patterns).

A related problem is the way in which the political representation of urban areas lags behind their relative growth, often compounding an anti-urban bias in national political discourse. For example, while São Paulo State houses more than 20 per cent of Brazil’s population, its representation in Brazil’s National Assembly is capped at 13.5 per cent, with only four per cent of Senate seats, which are shared equally among Brazil’s states. This means that São Paulo State has less than two representatives per million people in the National Assembly, compared to an average of five across Brazil.

                          

                                            

                                            

 

These previously unpublished maps identify the built-up area (shown in grey) of twelve world cities, drawn to the same scale. They have been drafted using the latest ‘heat-sensitive’ GIS technology based on recent satellite views rather than on census or survey data. As a result they give both an accurate and contemporary account of the real shape of the human footprint in these metropolitan regions today, offering a new perspective of settlement patterns across a range of global cities.

Two phenomena immediately stand out. The first is the clear misalignment in some cities between the administrative boundaries and where people live and work. São Paulo spills out of its municipal boundaries with a level of uncontrolled peripheral development that is similar to Mexico City (which overshoots the boundary of Mexico’s Distrito Federale governed by the city’s Mayor) and the lower density urban development on the fringes of New York City (outside the five boroughs controlled by New York’s Mayor).

Instead, London demonstrates the effectiveness of its ‘Green Belt’ – revealed by the white circle around its periphery – that has acted as an effective urban containment boundary for the last 50 years, and is now controlled by the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority. Shanghai’s vast administrative boundary encompasses nearly all the continuous built-up area and the large number of farms and agricultural land, as well as the Chong Ming Island in the Yellow River Delta. Reforms in boundary configuration have determined that the bulk of Bogotá’s population falls under the administrative authority of the city Mayor, while the larger component of Buenos Aires falls within the Buenos Aires State Government.

The second significant finding is the extreme variation in ‘land-take’ of cities in response to their geographic locations and differing population densities (further data on density follows on the next pages). Mumbai, with a population size comparable to São Paulo and Shanghai – is densely packed in a relatively small footprint within its natural contours between the Arabian Sea and the Thane Creek. São Paulo has been able to expand horizontally along its high plateau, encroaching on natural features and water reservoirs to the South. In a similar fashion Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and Lima are constrained by the incidence of natural features including high mountains on one side and the ocean coastline on the other, which have shaped their geometries with ‘fingers’ of (often informal) settlements along the deep valleys connecting to the more structured waterfront areas. Shanghai reveals a pattern of organic ‘satellite towns’ along radial routes feeding to the heart of this Asian megacity, with the bulk of development in central areas close to the Huang-Po River. Johannesburg is a unique phenomenon across the sample of Urban Age cities, with its relatively empty inner-city core, while a large proportion of its population is located in the wider Gauteng Province, which is set to become one of the largest metropolitan areas in Africa.

                        


                                         


                                         

Urban density (illustrated here in terms of the number of people living in each km2 of a 100 x 100 km2 urban area) is driven by topographical constraints, by the provision of public transport and other infrastructure, but also by inherited traditions of urban planning and development. While high density can be a symptom of overcrowding, it can also enable a better quality of life and limit environmental impact by enabling walking and cycling, enhancing urban vitality and making the provision of public transport and other amenities more viable.

Urban Age cities include a wide range of different density patterns, from the very high densities exhibited in the centres of Mumbai and Shanghai, to the much lower density development patterns of Berlin and London. A third category, exemplified among the Urban Age cities by Johannesburg but also visible in many North American cities, shows limited areas of high density set around a downtown that no longer has a residential population, in the midst of a very low-density sprawl.

In falling between the extremes, most of the Urban Age South American cities exhibit similar patterns to New York. Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Rio de Janeiro and Lima show how the constraints of mountains and water drive densities that rise to a ‘spike’ like Manhattan’s.

São Paulo, on the other hand, is multi-centred (though with a high-density centre) and similar in its overall density pattern to Mexico City. This is striking, given that the two cities are very different in terms of their urban form: São Paulo’s skyline is dominated by high-rise apartment blocks, while Mexico City is consistently low-rise (see next section for analysis of these differing forms). Urban form and density are different concepts, however, and the similarity of these two cities’ density profiles shows how high-rise building does not necessarily create higher density by comparison with more tightly planned low-rise development, especially when individual towers are surrounded by large areas of motorways or unused space.

                        


                                         


                                         

The layout of streets, buildings and spaces forms the spatial DNA of urban growth, the patterns through which city life can develop and cities can grow. These spatial arrangements are critical to the liveability of cities, to the quality of life that they can offer their residents, to the density that they can
accommodate, and to their flexibility in adapting to change and growth.

The images presented here help to visualise the micro-structure of urban neighbourhoods, how buildings (in black) and open spaces (in white) come together to create an integrated urban whole. The maps presented each cover one km2, usually near the centre of the city under analysis.

The South American cities exhibit a variety of spatial structures, reflecting their different historical inheritance and development patterns. The low-rise Palermo district of Buenos Aires exhibits a highly regular urban grid around a clearly defined centre, analogous to centrally planned European (and in particular Spanish) cities, and Lima’s Miraflores district exhibits a similar form, while Bogotá’s rectangular blocks with central courtyards, around Parque de Virrey, are more like New York’s in their proportions.

São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, on the other hand, have a less regular urban form, reflecting their topographical characteristics and a colonial heritage that was Portuguese rather than Spanish. In Rio de Janeiro, the high-value apartment blocks on the headland between Ipanema and Copacabana beaches contrast starkly with the favelas that crawl up the slopes of Morro do Cantagalo. In São Paulo’s wealthy Jardins District, south-west of Avenida Paulista (seen surrounded by larger buildings in the top-right corner of the diagram), high-rise tower blocks are set apart from the urban grid, making streets almost impossible to discern from other areas of open, usually gated, space.

The other Urban Age cities exhibit a similar diversity of urban layout. The central area of Buleshwar Market in Mumbai is formed by dense urban blocks, arranged efficiently along main streets and side alleyways. New York’s East Village shows how a dense continuous street grid has adapted to different economic cycles, as do Mexico City’s north-eastern neighbourhoods. In the Hongkou district of Shanghai and in Johannesburg, neighbourhoods are more dispersed, lacking the continuity found in the crescents of London’s Notting Hill or in the perimeter blocks of central Berlin.

                         


                                           


                                           

The transport systems of the ten Urban Age cities reflect the specific geographical, historical and political conditions that have shaped their development. Infrastructure development for mass transit, whether metro, trains or buses as well as for private vehicles has had an enormous impact on the patterns of urban growth with long-lasting effects on land use, densities and the residential distribution of different social groups. Urban rail outranks all other forms of travel in terms of its capacity to move vast numbers of passengers throughout a metropolitan region, and its footprint requires relatively small amounts of urban land.

      

New York, London and Berlin all have an extensive system of urban rail. These cities were able to invest in mass transit earlier on, developing their networks over a century. Berlin’s U- and S-Bahn system extends over 475 km. London’s Underground system measures 408 km in length, and New York’s Subway a total of 390 km. An extensive network of regional rail links these cities and their job markets to their metropolitan regions. Decision-making processes, governance arrangements and administrative boundaries have restricted the development of New York’s Subway to the west, preventing the network to reach areas adjacent to the city’s core.

The extensive London Underground spreads across large areas to the north of the River Thames, due to the limitations of early-twentieth-century technology to surpass the geological constraints present south of the River Thames.

Cities in less economically developed regions have suffered from under-investment, where transport infrastructure has not been able to keep pace with rapid urbanisation. Mexico City was the first twentieth-century megacity to have started building its underground in the late 1960s. Today it operates an efficient yet insufficient 200 km-long network, and a large number of commuters use cars or microbuses to get to work. Some cities are making important infrastructure investment now. Shanghai’s first underground metro line opened only a decade ago. The total length of the current system is 148 km. Another 10 lines are under construction, and the system will expand significantly within a decade. In India, Kolkata opened the first part of its 16.5 km underground line in the early 1980s. While Delhi introduced its system only a few years ago, it currently operates three lines on a 56 km network. Mumbai and Bangalore do not currently have a metro system. However, with 300 km, Mumbai’s suburban rail system is the most extensive on the subcontinent. Transporting more than 6 million passengers each day, it is also one of the busiest rail systems worldwide.

                         


                                           


                                           

How people travel within cities – the ‘modal split’ – reflects public transport infrastructure, but also economic development, climate and urban form: walking may dominate as a form of transport not only in cities designed to be pedestrianfriendly, but also in cities where many residents do not have access to private motorised transport or do not have the means to pay for public transport. Walking therefore accounts for a massive 56 per cent of journeys in Mumbai and around 30 per cent of journeys in Johannesburg and Shanghai, but also accounts for a relatively high modal share in London and Berlin. Cycling, on the other hand, is limited in cities like Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro, where hilly terrain, a tropical climate or poor road safety make the experience unpleasant.

                   

Car ownership has increased rapidly in many South American cities, particularly in the São Paulo Metropolitan Region (which added more than one million cars to its streets in the last five years), but remains highest among all Urban Age cities in Buenos Aires, reflecting the city’s status (until recently) as the richest city in South America. Buenos Aires also has a very high density of car ownership, though this is not fully reflected in modal split: car ownership does not necessarily imply car use.

Around 40 per cent of residents in New York’s midtown Manhattan walk to work and over 90 per cent of affluent business workers use public transport to go to London’s financial hub. Shanghai has experienced rapid growth in public transport use, while cycling remains prevalent. While Berlin has high rates of cycling, its relatively uncongested roads also allow high levels of car use (despite the presence of a high-quality public transport system). In some other cities, even where there is a good metro system (like Mexico City’s), informal transport by mini-bus often dominates, reflecting a mismatch between commuting patterns and infrastructure as well as the relatively high cost of public transport.

                          


                                           


                                           


 

Urbanisation was originally a product of the industrial revolution. Cities are now at the forefront of a new transformation, the shift to a more knowledge-based service economy, though different Urban Age cities are at different stages of this transition. The employment figures presented here show that London and New York are the cities that have moved furthest in this economic transformation, though neither city has an economy exclusively based on financial and business services; retail, leisure, personal and social services continue to be major sources of employment in both cities.

Most other Urban Age cities retain 10 to 20 per cent of their secondary sector employment – dominated by manufacturing, industry, and construction. In some cases, a small agricultural sector also remains. Within the South American cities, Lima and Bogotá remain the most industrialised, while São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have significant financial services and real-estate sectors. Shanghai retains an extensive manufacturing base, but the relatively high proportion of agricultural employment
indicates that this can partly be attributed to the wide territorial definition of the city, which includes
rural and outlying areas.

       

Buenos Aires, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have the highest GDP per capita among the Urban Age cities after London, Mexico City, New York and Berlin, although of the other South American cities, Bogotá and Lima contribute more to their national economy, respectively 25 per cent and 50 per cent of their country’s wealth.

The shift towards a service-based economy has farreaching implications for urban government. New office development has created new urban districts (often away from the traditional city centre) in London (Canary Wharf), Buenos Aires (Puerto Madero), Mexico City (Santa Fe) and Johannesburg. In some cases, these new developments have been criticised for their lack of public infrastructure, for
engendering social segregation and for draining life from the traditional central business district.

In addition, highly-paid service sector jobs are also knowledge-intensive, placing a premium on high quality education. Without more accessible education, cities may increasingly operate two parallel economies: one populated by a highly mobile, highly educated elite, the other dominated by people whose skills do not allow them to share in the prosperity that the knowledge economy can bring.

                          


                                           


                                           


 

Although multi-dimensional, subjective and often difficult to measure, quality of life is a central aspect of a city’s attractiveness. It indicates how well the city serves its residents. Life expectancy constitutes a useful initial indicator for this aspect of urban performance. The ‘age pyramids’ illustrated here further reveal a considerable variety among the Urban Age cities. In Mumbai, Kolkata, and Bangalore, the largest age group are of those in their 20s, reflecting a natural increase element in rapid population growth in the cities in the 1970s, but also the migration of young men to cities. Kolkata has the most mature age pyramid. It is the only Indian city with at least 7 per cent of the population in their 40s, and shows particularly low proportions of under 10s, partly because of a relatively small group in their 20s who are part of the potential parent group, but also perhaps because of a general reduction in fertility in the city. All the Indian cities have more male residents than female. The starkest differences are for the 20-29 age group, reflecting gender imbalance in migration, but in all the cities there are also more boys than girls aged 0-9, suggesting some parental influence over gender or a higher mortality rate for girls. Of the six other cities, the age distribution of Mexico City and Johannesburg comes closest to those of the Indian cities. For this group, average age ranges between 25 for Delhi and 32 for Kolkata. New York, London, Shanghai and Berlin generally have older populations ranging between 36 for New York and 42 for Berlin.

Cities that experienced the fastest growth and reached significant size 50 or more years ago are likely to have been through a period of relative or even absolute economic decline, which may have impacted on life chances. Whatever the economic activity that lead to this growth and the rationale for the city’s role in it, it is likely to have become obsolete over time. The city’s population and skills base may be linked to declining and poorly rewarded employment sectors, associated with lower life expectancy, such as heavy industry or manufacturing in richer countries. In addition, post-industrial decline may have led to out-migration, selectivity removing the economically able and healthy.

This ‘healthy migrant’ thesis explains why in some ‘old’, post-industrial cities life expectancy may be worse than for the nation as a whole. The healthy migrant thesis can also contribute to explaining why cities such as London, which faced population falls but then experienced a recent turnaround, partly through international migration, overall health conditions and life expectancy are better than national averages or what would be expected from residents’ incomes.