Asian cities need help to avoid urbanisation problems

Channel NewsAsia 25 Jun 08;

SINGAPORE : Asian cities need help to cope with an unprecedented period of urbanisation, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Wednesday, stressing that their future prosperity is at stake.

Providing adequate water supplies and infrastructure are among the key issues facing urban planners and policymakers, ADB president Haruhiko Kuroda said, noting few Asian cities have successfully dealt with rapid expansion.

"Asia's rapid urbanisation is unprecedented," Kuroda said in a speech to the World Cities Summit in Singapore, noting an estimated 1.1 billion Asians are expected to migrate to cities in search of better lives over the next 20 years.

"Improving the livelihood and quality of life for so many city dwellers is an urban management task of a magnitude never before attempted by humanity.

"Clearly, Asian cities need assistance in coping with the physical impact of past and current urban growth."

The Tokyo-Yokohoma area and Shanghai are rare urban success stories in Asia, Kuroda said.

"Some Asian mega-cities have been enormously successful... unfortunately such successes are not the norm but the exception," he said.

In most parts of Asia, investments in infrastructure have failed to keep up with economic growth, and where there are new investments, the benefits have not been distributed equally, he said.

Aside from the need to invest in infrastructure, the region needs technical assistance critical to sustain growth, he said.

To this end, the ADB has launched a water financing initiative that aims to provide 200 million Asians with access to safe drinking water, said Kuroda.

"Water is central to the larger development agenda... water quality management is an area which has been sadly neglected in much of the region," said Kuroda.

Thousands of delegates from around the world are in Singapore for a series of inter-related conferences and events related to sustainable development. - AFP/jk