Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101

Transcription

1 Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101 DRAFT ONLY. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, CIRCULATION OR QUOTATION

2 Division of Data, Research and Policy United Nations Children s Fund (UNICEF) October Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101

3 Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101 October

4 Table of contents 1. ANATOMY OF A CITY page 6 2. TRENDS IN URBANIZATION page URBANIZATION AND CHILDREN page UNICEF AND URBAN WORK page 22 4 Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101

5 Summary Urban 101 attempts to understand the urban realities as of today as it pertains to children including the nature and extent of urbanization, challenges and vulnerabilities faced by urban children, and UNICEF s potential response to them. Together with an Urban Landscape Analysis and a Mapping Report on Urban Programming, the Urban 101 has been used as key background material for the UNICEF global consultation on Urban and Climate that took place October 2016 in Mumbai, India. During this consultation the main tenets of the UNICEF s Global Urban Strategic Note have been defined. It is not meant for publication, and has not been copy edited. It will be refined in the coming months based on feedback from the Field Reference Group and the HQ interdivisional team, and shared more broadly with field offices and National Committees through the Urban KE site. 5

6 1. ANATOMY OF A CITY What constitutes a city or urban area? There is no uniform definition of what constitutes a city, given the diversity of urban realities around the world. Every country defines cities or urban areas according to its own criterion 1. Mostly, cities are defined along population parameters. But even these population-based definitions vary markedly. In Botswana, for example, a city is defined as an agglomeration of or more inhabitants where 75 per cent of the economic activity is non-agricultural. Contrast this to Mongolia, where a city is defined as the Capital and district centers. Another way to define an urban area is to focus on the hierarchy of settlements, a method still used as an instrument for the organization and operation of government, defense and commerce in many countries 2. This classification can be useful when working with local and national bodies. The five components are: 1. Significant population density 2. Presence of services and infrastructure such as public amenities, commerce and roads 3. Presence of an urban economy that is mostly not agricultural 4. Appearance of a build environment that preconditions future extensions, transformations or upgrading 5. Intensity of flows, people, goods, resources, and communication. From an urban planning perspective in its broadest sense, a city or urbanized area can be described using five components. These five components, and their various combinations, provide the scope to produce a unique description of any urbanized area. They also recognize patterns of dependencies between components, and provide a framework to develop urban policies. The five components are: 1 The current glossary of urban definitions by country is: 2 Source: Cities Alliance, Managing Systems of Secondary Cities (2014), from United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2012) 6 Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101

7 The Five Components of an urbanized area or city Significant population density Presence of services and infrastructure such as public amenities, commerce and roads Presence of an urban economy that is mostly not agricultural Appearance of a built environment that preconditions future extensions, transformations or upgrading Intensity of flows, people, goods, resources, and communication 7

8 What constitutes a city or urban area? Fig. 2: UN Classification of Urban Systems Natural population growth Demographic Natural population growth Village Rural-Urban migration Settlement New City Exisiting village Incorporation Administrative City proper Exisiting town Incorporation Exisiting city Source: Cities Alliance 8 Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101

9 Urban-Urban migration Town City Natural population growth Population growth Urban clustering Urban agglomeration Metropolitan area 9

10 Since much of UNICEF s work is focused on the poorest and most disadvantaged children and families, our understanding of urban areas will be primarily focused on those areas of the city where these groups live, and how the multiple deprivations that many of them face daily can be alleviated. Many of the poorest and most disadvantaged children live in informal settlements or peri-urban areas. What are informal settlements? According the definition by UN Habitat, informal settlements are urban areas with one or more of the following characteristics: poor structural quality of housing; overcrowding; inadequate access to water and/or sanitation and other vital infrastructure; and insecure residential status. Cities Alliance, a global partnership for urban poverty reduction, adds to this definition by stating that informal settlements tend not to have municipal services such as waste collection, schools and clinics within easy reach, or safe spaces for children to play, and for the community to meet and socialize 3. A range of interrelated factors has driven the proliferation of informal settlements in urban areas. These include population growth and migration; poverty; inadequate access to essential services; poor governance and policy frameworks (such as a lack of zoning plans, land registries, regulations); and limited access to financial markets, land and property. Essential services are often unavailable to many inhabitants of informal settlements, partly because these urban residents often lack legal tenure, and urban governments want to avoid creating a precedent for legitimising their residency. Often informal settlements lie in disaster-prone areas such as riverbeds, canal banks and surrounding factories. Slums are a type of informal settlements, but not all informal settlements are slums. Although there is no formal definition of slums recognized by the UN, they are commonly understood as the most deprived and excluded form of informal settlements and are characterized by poverty and large agglomerations of dilapidated housing often located in the most hazardous urban land. Another important type of informal settlement is the long-term camp for refugees and internally displaced people. These have their particular challenges with regard to access to services and livelihoods, and are currently beyond the scope of this exercise, though they do require due consideration. What are peri-urban areas? As explained above, urban areas are defined by national governments. However, often there are areas that come under the rural administration, just outside urban areas or along infrastructural corridors outside the cities that have all or some characteristics of urban conditions: dense populations, specific economic activities, and an intensive concentration of mobility 3 Source : UN-Habitat (2014) A Practical Guide to Designing, Planning, and Executing Citywide, Slum Upgrading Programmes 10 Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101

11 or other flows. These are known as peri-urban areas. Most often these are areas that are soon to be reclassified as urban, with the population living there utilizing services in the city. Are cities poor? Cities are known to be important generators of wealth and jobs: with just 54 per cent of the world s population, cities account for more than 80 per cent of global GDP. Between 2006 and 2012, the 750 largest cities in the world created 87.7 million private sector jobs, or 58 per cent of all new private sector jobs in their respect 129 countries. Notwithstanding the foregoing, unemployment can be particularly challenging in urban areas, as cities are often associated with a high concentration of unemployed people a phenomenon often referred to as the urban paradox. In this paradox, the issue of inequality is a central element. In the majority of developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin-America, inequalities in urban areas generally exceed the inequality in rural areas 4. Although there is a lack of consistent data on intra-urban disparities, it is largely agreed that there are large gaps in urban wealth distribution, excluding large groups within city borders, referred to as the urban poor, to enjoy fully the benefits a city is supposed to offer. Unless poverty rates decrease, population growth and continued urbanization implies that there will be more urban poor living in extreme poverty. How are urban areas/cities governed and managed? In many countries, elected local governments manage cities. The accountabilities and powers of city governments are determined by the decentralization policy of the country. Some of them have political, administrative and fiscal powers, while others merely carry out agency functions for the national or provincial government. A mayor, who is often elected and has considerable political influence, is often the leader and figurehead for the city. Cities are often administratively divided into zones and may be divided even further for administrative convenience. The city council typically consists of members elected directly by the populace, with each representative elected from a specific zone of the city. In many countries, there are institutional mechanisms for interface between elected city official and the community, but these are often not meaningfully operational. Town/city planning as a technical domain is often associated with spatial planning and infrastructure development. Planning related to delivery of such essential services as health care and education is generally beyond the scope of city planners. While in many countries the accountabilities for delivery of essential services are clearly in domain of the city government, in some there is ambiguity between the sectoral national ministries and the city governments. City governments are often dependent for finances and are accountable to the Ministry of Local Government/Urban, with the sectoral ministries providing 4 Improving urban health equity through action on the social and environmental determinants of health, GRNUHE,

12 technical support. This can result in considerable inefficiencies and inconsistencies in the delivery of essential services at the local level, particularly for the poorest. In large cities, many city councils organize metropolitan planning, together with neighbouring municipalities and eventually state or national support, to address common challenges in urban and peri-urban areas such as transportation, environmental protection, housing and urban planning in general. These metropolitan areas can have a functional collaboration structure, or even an administrative and political structure. What are the key elements of urban management? Formal urbanized areas are the result of urban development that contains the following elements: urban policy, investment in essential services and urban infrastructure, governance principles, participatory social control mechanisms and collection and use of data. Informal settlements and slums have some to none of these characteristics. Urban policy At the national, provincial, regional level, and often at the local level, there exists a set of urban policies that are coordinated and aim to delegate and regulate the daily management and use of space and provision of services. A sound overarching urban policy often cover the following aspects: Legislative frameworks, defining the ownership, the use, the condition of transformation of land. Land registry, to allow recognizing land ownership but also to plan, divide and re-organize land for specific functions and redistribute ownership and profits. Financing methods for essential services and infrastructure associated with urbanization. Inter-linkages with other relevant policies, such as mobility, housing, environment. Technical plans, such as strategic town plans that consolidate the public engagements and obligations, zoning plans that define the use of space and protect space for public interest (such as infrastructure, parks, schools, valuable ecological areas, risk areas), and more detailed plans such as neighbourhood plans, streetscape design plans, and master plans for building areas. Investment in urban services and infrastructure Typically these social investments are organised by sectors and include physical investments (e.g. construction of infrastructure, housing, green areas, hospitals and schools, and non-physical investments (e.g. management, subsidies, communication, provision of education and health care). Governance principles Governance is essential to define who is responsible and accountable for the well being of the city. Good urban governance requires a crosscutting, multi-sectoral approach and coherence between policymaking, planning, participation and other urban policies including finance, housing, transport, 12 Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101

13 energy, education and other social policies. For cities, national decentralisation of political and fiscal power is often key to be able to deliver services. Participatory social mechanisms are important as they work to hold the public authorities and private stakeholders accountable for their actions. Participatory planning through neighbourhood planning, co-production initiatives and communication empowers new citizens in a faster urbanising world to become active citizens, build communities, and co-produce solutions and cocreate its concrete implementation. This shift, from government to governance, requires strong and permanent stakeholders and relies on mutual trust and shared expertise. City governments are increasingly positioning themselves as a democratic platform to organise governance with all stakeholders, rather than a governing institution per se. Collection and use of data (on population, neighbourhoods, services, infrastructure, economies and mobility) in decisionmaking and accountability mechanisms is also an important component of urban governance. Should cities be planned? As mentioned earlier, there are five components to describe the complex functionality of a city. Urban planning uses these elements to develop cities that meet the needs of its citizens, and implement the key elements of sound urban management. Planning is imperative for city governments to meet the challenges they face. Key components including taking account of the size and density of its population; the requisite of providing essential public services and infrastructure; support for the urban economy; making the built environment resilient, safe and inclusive; and managing the flows of people and resources through the city. How do cities undertake their planning? Cities engage in a range of planning methodologies. On one side of the spectrum, there is the top-down master-planning that is developed and directed by a limited number of people, generally without taking full account of the natural context of the city s location or the social dynamics of its inhabitants. On the other side, there is the bottom-up community planning approach, which directly engages with the affected population in the planning and implementation of projects and programmes from the outset. In reality, both types of planning are needed. To leverage UNICEF parlance, planning a city is a matter of working on the three parts of the MoRES framework: the supply side (infrastructure, services, resources), the demand side (people, communities, social groups) and the enabling environment (legislation, regulation, policy, financing, governance). Deciding if a slum in a high-risk flooding area should be gradually destroyed and displaced to a safer area may require a considerable degree of both master planning and community participation for the entire city and defining where and how the city should grow. Upgrading a slum that is located on a safe 13

14 place and has possibilities to be better connected with the rest of the city and be equipped with services and infrastructure will require considerable participatory community planning as well as master planning. In both cases, it is becoming clear that all parties to the change have to work together to ensure that it is safe, inclusive, equitable and sustainable. What are the trends in urban planning and city development? As scale and pace of urbanization increases globally, many new concepts and strategies are emerging to make cities more liveable, inclusive, sustainable, participatory and resilient. Especially in Europe, North America and lately in the Middle East and China, existing or new cities are marked as green cities or eco-cities, as they aim to reduce their ecological footprint, with less use of resources in buildings and transportation and compact urbanization that fully protects valuable eco-systems. Habitat III summit in October 2016, and initiatives such as 100 Resilient Cities are important frameworks that address urban sustainability in a multi-dimensional manner. Recently, there has been much attention paid to the concept of smart cities. Broadly speaking, smart cities are those cities that have smart (intelligent) physical, social, institutional and economic infrastructure while ensuring centrality of citizens in a sustainable environment. In many cases the role and use of ICT is highlighted as a driver of economic and social activity. Although the ICT concepts such as big data and open data are definitely key to address urban challenges and are an opportunity to enable citizens to better communicate and participate in daily urban life, the smart city concept tends to be hi-jacked by providers of technical and material support for ICT. A city can only be smart if other essential parts are highlighted and driven from a general, more public perspective, and its inhabitants are empowered to participate and hold public officials and others accountable for their actions. However, too often the word `eco-city` is used as a way to brand new developments from a commercial perspective, both by private developers as public authorities. `Eco` is mostly limited to the introduction of some technically advanced features. There are very few examples of cities that integrate the full circle of sustainable design, which includes not only with ecological concerns, but also economic and social sustainability. In this regard, the comprehensive set of Sustainable Development Goals, the New Urban Agenda that will be agreed to at the Resilient cities have become an important issue, owing in large part to increased awareness and acknowledgement of the negative impact of climate change and natural disasters on cities. Resiliency demands both mitigation strategies, to prevent and to reduce climate change in the middle and long term, and adaptation strategies, to reduce risks on the short term. A resilient city has the capacity to anticipate, adapt and grow, taking into account multiple stress factors and shocks. 5 5 The Rockefeller Foundation has developed The City Resilience Framework (CRF) that provides a lens to understand the complexity of cities and the drivers that contribute to their resilience, and a common language that enables cities to share knowledge and experiences. 14 Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101

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16 2. TRENDS IN URBANIZATION What are the key trends in urbanization? The drivers behind increased urbanization include rapid population growth, particularly in Africa and Asia in recent decades, rural-urban migration, and migration due to conflicts, disasters and economic opportunity. Around half of these migrants are estimated to end up in cities. Contrary to some popular perceptions, most urbanites (88 per cent) do not live in megacities. Currently, there are 28 megacities (cities with 10 million in habitants or more) worldwide. These are home to 453 million people or about 12 per cent of the world s urban dwellers. By 2030, some large cities will turn into megacities, swelling their number to 41. Many of the fastestgrowing cities in the world are, and will be, relatively small urban settlements with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants, as the figure below shows. 6 The way in which cities are governed and managed determines the social and democratic space that is given to children`s voices, to participate in the public debate and to be seen as a major stakeholder in daily city life. Currently, and in the coming decades, the biggest increase in urban populations will take place in Asia and Africa, driven by population growth and massive urban-rural migration. Future increases in the world s urban population are expected to be highly concentrated in just a few countries. Of the projected 2.5 billion increase in the world s urban population between now and 2050, just three countries - India (404 million), China (292 million) and Nigeria (212 million) -- will together account for 37 per cent of this growth. Seven other countries -- the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, the United Republic of Tanzania, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan, and the United States of America -- are projected to contribute more than 50 million each to the urban population and will constitute together another 20 per cent of its total increase. The number of people living in informal settlements continues to grow globally. Currently, there are around 1 billion slum dwellers worldwide, compared to three quarters of a billion in At the current rate of advance, the number of slum dwellers is expected to increase threefold by In the past 40 years, Latin America and some parts of Asia have experienced very high rates of urbanization, leaving them with very large urban populations; in Latin America, around 80 per cent of the region s population lives in cities. This wave of urbanization also saw the advent of many megacities. 6 Source: Cities Alliance (2014), Managing Systems of Secondary Cities, from UN Urban Prospectus (2012) 7 Habitat III (2016), Declaration of the Thematic Meeting on Informal Settlements 16 Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101

17 Increase in the Number of Cities by Size by Region Fig. 3: Increase in the Number of Cities by Size by Region Source: Cities Alliance 17

18 3. URBANIZATION AND CHILDREN How many children live in urban areas, and where do they live? The urban poor population is overwhelmingly young. More than 1 billion children are thought to live in towns and cities worldwide, although all figures are approximate. It is estimated that more than half a billion children will live in informal settlements by 2030, with no secure tenure and no official documentation, adding to their invisibility. More than one third of children in urban areas go unregistered at birth, this number rises to half in urban sub-saharan Africa and South Asia. What are the challenges faced by poor children in urban areas? Urban settings pose new and different risks to the poorest children and families. Below are some of these challenges. Unequal access to and ineffective coverage of essential services: This erodes the so-called urban advantage and affects millions of children and their families living in urban slums. Both basic infrastructure and public services have failed to keep pace with rapid population growth. Children are affected by inadequate access to services in terms of healthcare, education, child protection, food and water supply, sanitation, and waste management. Children living in urban slums may live close to the basic services they need to survive and thrive, such as schools and clinics, yet be excluded from them. The exclusion can be financial, but also spatial, by road infrastructure or other urban fractures. And unequal access also increases the risk posed by climate change and disasters. Quality concerns: Where basic services exist, the quality is substandard and the cost can be prohibitive. For example, private healthcare services and private education services are prominent in urban areas, with concomitant challenges in terms of the affordability, quality, and accountability of services. Public health risks: Housing defects increase public health risks, such as pneumonia and air pollution by stove cooking, but also accidents such as electrocution and fires. As there is often a lack of essential health services delivered to slums, informal settlements and peri-urban areas, children experience deprivations in health care, water and sanitation and other essential health-related services. Environmental health risks: Higher concentrations of people, factories, vehicles, and their wastes mean greater health risks in urban areas. Urban children face a different range of environmental health risks, for example, levels of exposure to industrial chemicals and wastes, dust, dangerous machinery, excessive heat. Specific groups, such as waste-pickers, face particularly high risks. 18 Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101

19 Safety risks: Road traffic crashes are the number one cause of death for adolescents worldwide. 8 Children might live near services but might have to cross dangerous roads to utilize them. Children in slums often live far away from any service and are forced to cross barriers that are not meant to be traversed, such as highways or rail tracks. Undernutrition: In some cases, children living in urban poverty are at least as likely as those in rural areas to die before the age of five or to be undernourished. The nutrition gap between rural and urban children has narrowed, but largely because hunger and undernutrition have worsened in urban areas. Poor urban children are also more likely to suffer from obesity, another form of malnutrition. Lack of secure tenure: The poorest urban children and their families lack security of tenure. With no protection against forcible eviction from their home, they can lose the little they have without warning or redress. The constant threat of eviction, often combined with harassment by landlords or local authorities, gives families little incentive to make permanent improvements to their homes or neighborhoods. Lack of community-oriented local government: Although there is a proximity and economies of scale in the provision of basic infrastructure and services, and higher capacity to pay by households and enterprises, there is often a lack of community oriented local government, standing with the community and developing a society based on a network of groups and families. Less social structure: Although in cities there tends to be a greater capacity for management, for example for health problems and education, there is much less social structure. This can make these communities more fragile, and complicated efforts to reach them with essential services and protection. Greater reliance on cash income: In cities, there is a greater reliance on cash income for food, fuel, water, housing, transport and waste disposal and less reliance on access to natural resources for subsistence or livelihood. Similarly there is a greater reliance on illegal solutions; a higher proportion of households live on illegally occupied land, or on illegal subdivisions, tapping piped water and electricity networks illegally. Consequently, they run a greater risk of eviction. 8 WHO (2008), World Report on Child Injury Prevention 19

20 Protection risks: By and large with both parents working and without the traditional protective cover of rural habitations, children living in poor urban areas are often victims of violence, exploitation and abuse. Many children end up in the informal labour force. Others fall prey to organized crime, begging and drugs. How can governments meet these challenges for children? The way in which cities are governed and citizens participation fosters the social and democratic space that allows children to have a voice in the public debate and to be seen as a major stakeholder in daily city life. Climate change: In addition, children in urban areas are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, environmental hazards and natural disasters. Natural hazards, such as cyclones and mudslides, swiftly become unnatural disasters in urban areas their impact intensified by overcrowding, flimsy homes and long-term failures in the provision of health, water and sanitation services. Three quarters of all large cities are located on coasts, putting most cities at risk of flooding from rising sea levels and powerful storms. The urban poor have a higher exposure to flood risk than the average urban population. The way in which cities are planned, built and governed determines how and where children can access basic services and whether the most vulnerable children are afforded with opportunities to survive and thrive. The growth and potential of cities provides a new and unprecedented opportunity to invest in infrastructure, bypassing old energy, housing and transport technologies, and in social development, averting the social inequities that mark many of the world s cities today. Shortage of public space: This is a common challenge in many urban areas depriving children of play areas and communities of places to congregate and socialize. The rapid rate of urbanization will lead to a threefold increase in urban infrastructure development between now and Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101

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22 4. UNICEF AND URBAN WORK What is UNICEF s past experience in urban work? In the 1980s and early 1990s, UNICEF was a leader in developing innovative solutions to urban poverty and programming for the most disadvantaged children in cities. This work came to a halt in the late 1990s amid fiscal tightening, and the organization s plan to mainstream urban issues in its country programmes. A further reason was that many of the urban programming initiatives were project-oriented in nature, hence very expensive, not scalable and often did not address root causes of urban poverty from a policy standpoint. Since the closure of the global urban unit in the 1990s, urban planning and programming has not been effectively mainstreamed throughout core organizational work, although urban initiatives have continued (See the Mapping on Urban Programming for further details). The highest profile programmes since then have been the Child Friendly Cities initiatives (and its variants), which despite minimal support and guidance from UNICEF, continue to attract attention and commitment, albeit mostly in National Committee countries. In some developing countries, UNICEF continued to support programmes in urban as part of the overall support to the line ministries or as stand-alone projects. These range from being part of a strategic, systematic urban strategy to being (in most cases) more opportunistic and ad hoc initiatives. For countries that are primarily urban (for example, Brazil or Belarus) urban regeneration programmes are often part of the backbone of the national development agenda. UNICEF has undertaken a programming mapping report on urban initiatives in select countries as part of the back ground documents for the Global Urban Strategic Note. Why is an Urban Strategic Note needed? The mapping undertaken in support of the development of the organization s global urban note highlights the diverse vein of urban-focused work in country offices. However, many of these initiatives do not have a strategic aim and are essentially projects focused on service delivery to a relatively small group of urban children. With almost three quarters of children set to live in cities by mid-century, revitalizing our urban work will be pivotal to meeting Agenda To make UNICEF urban work more effective, efficient, sustainable and scalable, and simply relevant to all children, we must transition from an urban project mode to one focused on scalable urban programmes, policies and planning. Following UNICEF s 2012 State of the World s Children on Children in an Urban World, UNICEF identified five key priorities for urban work. These might usefully be considered as key discussion points for the new approach to be adopted in the Global Urban Strategic Note. It should be noted that these points do not constitute the tenets of the new framework, which is still at the drafting stage. 22 Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101

23 Elements of Urban Framework Fig. 4: UNICEF`s five key priorities for urban work 1. Expanded and more sophisticated data and monitoring tools 2. Adaptation of UNICEF programmes to urban contexts Priorities for UNICEF Urban Work 5. Urban preparedness and humanitarian response 3. New areas affecting children in cities 4. Urban Partnerships and Advocacy 23

24 1. Expanded and more sophisticated data and monitoring tools. Data on the poorest urban children is scarce and unreliable. Current aggregate data collection and analysis fails to capture widening intra-urban disparities. Hundreds of millions of children are not being captured by traditional national data collection methods and household surveys such as UNICEF-sponsored MICS and US government-sponsored DHS. Given UNICEF s leadership as the data leader on children, the organization s urban work must prioritize the development and dissemination of more sophisticated data gathering, analysis and monitoring tools to accurately inform urban polices and interventions. 2. Adaptation of UNICEF programmes to urban contexts. While UNICEF s focus on child survival and development via sectoral interventions and policy shifts remains the same in all geographic areas globally, the specific risks and strategies will differ significantly in a rural versus an urban environment. UNICEF s approach to service delivery in health, water, sanitation and education in particular will need to be adapted. Existing programmes and initiatives must be informed by urban-specific indicators that address the root causes of child vulnerabilities in cities: these include food insecurity, violence, vulnerability to climate change and disasters, and inadequate government investment in core services for the urban poor. 3. New areas affecting children in cities. Urban areas present new and unique risks to children that are not faced by children en masse in rural areas. These unique urban risks will only increase alongside urban growth rates. Air pollution, child obesity, food price spikes, traffic accidents, violence and insecurity on public transport, electricity generation, housing infrastructure, barriers to access services key to survival and development and rapid epidemic spread are of key concern to UNICEF. While UNICEF does not have the capacity to develop entirely new areas of work at this time, it will be important to develop global advocacy positions on some of these issues that most dramatically impact child survival and development and work with the Country Offices that are most affected. Urban planning guidance will also help to support Country Offices that are advocating for improved planning structures to reduce these new risks. 24 Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101

25 4. Urban Partnerships and Advocacy. In many countries, city governments are becoming as if not more prominent than their national leaders. We will see more important networks such as the C40, the climate change network of mayors of the most economically advanced cities globally. UNICEF needs to work with these networks and city governments to advance its objectives of planning sustainable urban environments to reduce growing urban disparities. 5. Urban risk reduction, preparedness and humanitarian response. Urban disasters and conflicts are on the upswing and that trend will only increase as urbanization rates rise in countries unprepared for such growth. Already, among the 450 urban areas with a population of at least one million, 60% are exposed to the risk of a natural disaster. Floods, droughts, cyclones or earthquakes affect 890 million citydwellers globally 9. Given the high levels of risk in urban areas UNICEF needs to scale up its capacity not only in measures to reduce risk and strengthen resilience, such as risk analysis, but also in establishing partnerships and logistic capacity for effective humanitarian response. Risk reduction measures and emergency plans must be tailored to urban contexts to take into account population density, basic service delivery challenges and appropriate WASH solutions especially in slums and informal settlements. 9 World urbanization prospects the 2011 revision. (CD-ROM ed.). (2012). New York: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. 25

26 Division of Data, Research and Policy United Nations Children s Fund (UNICEF) October Global Urban Strategic Note Urban 101