URBAN SPRAWL IS NOW A PROBLEM IN WORLD'S DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Urban sprawl, a trend long associated with North American cities, is fast engulfing many developing countries where real estate developers are pushing a "world class" lifestyle.

The Mexican city of Guadalajara is cited as an example in a new report by UN-Habitat. Between 1970 and 2000, the surface area of the city grew 1.5 times faster than the population. The same is true for cities in China, as well as Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar; Johannesburg, South Africa's largest commercial hub, and the capitals of Egypt and Mexico -- Cairo and Mexico City, respectively.


In many developing countries, urban sprawl comprises two main, contrasting types of development in the same city, says the report entitled, State of World Cities 2010/2011: Bridging the Urban Divide.


One type is characterized by large, peri-urban areas with informal and illegal patterns of land use and is combined with a lack of infrastructure, public facilities and basic services; this is often accompanied by little or no public transportation and by inadequate access roads.


The other is a form of suburban sprawl in which residential zones for high and middle income groups and highly valued commercial and retail complexes are well connected by individual rather than public transportation.


Urban sprawl adds to the urban divide, pushing social segregation along economic lines that result in spatial differences in wealth and quality of life across various parts of cities and metropolitan areas, run down inner cities and more suburbs.


Suburbanization in developing countries happens mainly because people -- rich and poor -- flee poor governance, lack of planning and poor access to amenities. "In a nutshell: sprawl is a symptom of a divided city," the report stresses.


Urban sprawl involving the poor occurs because authorities pay little attention to slums, land, services and transportation. Authorities lack the ability to predict urban growth and, as a result fail to provide land for the urbanizing poor.


In addition, the urban poor are denied land rihts which is one of the main facgtors driving people to the periphery of towns associated with urban spread in developing countries.


Other features typically associated with sprawl include overdependence on personal motorized transportation coupled with a lack of alternatives, limited housing options and urban spaces that discourage pedestrian traffic.


Most South African cities, for example, expand primarily through development of new housing areas located beyond the existing urban periphery, and are therefore relatively unplanned. As a result, the urba periphery consists of pockets of housing developments isolated and separated from each other by trunk roads or open space.


Urban sprawl has a negative impact on infrastructure and the sustainability of cities. In most cases, sprawl translates into an increase in the cost of transportation, public infrastructure and of residential and commercial development.


Moreover, sprawling metropolitan areas require more energy, metal, concrete and asphalt than do compact cities because homes, offices and utilities are set farther apart.


In many places, urban sprawl encourages new developments that cause significant loss of prime farmland. When cities are improperly planned, urban sprawl adds to environmental degradation. Such is the case around several cities in Latin America where sizeable damage has been caused by environmentally sensitive areas including: Panama City, Panama, and its surrounding Canal Zone; Caracas, Venezuela and its adjacent coastline; San Jose, Costa Rica and its mountainous area, and Sao Paolo, Brazil and its water basin.