Objective

The overall goal of the programme is to enhance the knowledge and skills of decision-makers to develop national and international policies that emphasise the environmentally sustainable and socially equitable use of scarce resources.

The specific objective of this workshop through dialogue and discussion is for the participants to consider the key challenges facing megacities and analyse the practices and institutional mechanism that different cities are using to meet those challenges. Bangkok will serve as the case study area to focus this exchange of experiences.

Background

The United Nations created the term megacities in the 1970s to designate all urban agglomerations with a population of eight million or more. In the 1990s, this threshold was raised to 10 million.

United Nations estimates that by 2015 the world’s population is expected to reach about 7.5 billion people or about 1.5 billion more than at present. The population of Asia’s cities is expected to increase from about 1.4 billion in 2000 to over 2.7 billion in 2030. Two thirds of the megacities are now in developing countries, most of them in East and South Asia (see annex map 1).

By 2015 there will be 13 megacities in Asia with a population of 10 million or more people (see annex table 1). Moreover, about 30 cities in Asia will also be expected to pass the 5 million mark in the next 25 years, bringing to over 50 the total number with populations between 5–10 million. The overall urbanisation rate in Asia, in contrast to the slowdown of the developed world, is rising at the alarming rate of 4 times that of the global rate.

However, these megacities are also confronted with many critical challenges such as waste management, pollution, transportation, congestion areas, energy consumption and in-migration of rural people.

Key Issues

There are two areas under which the key issues for this workshop will be discussed:

Challenges within the megacities

Urban-rural relations

The increase in population of megacities comes both from internal growth as a result of national population increases, improvements in health care and sanitation, as well as from migration from rural areas, smaller towns and other cities or nations. People's perception of economic opportunities, particularly employment, is the major "pull factor" to cities. There are also a number of “push factors” related to rural to urban migrations, ranging from poverty to environmental problems to natural disasters.

Some Asian governments, in the past, have denounced rural-urban migration and urbanisation as the main obstacles to national development, poverty, unemployment, crime, social disorder, slums and squatter settlement and degradation of the urban environment. However with today’s free-market paradigm many see urbanisation as a positive process where by the means of production, (labour, capital and goods) are encouraged to move freely to places where they can be most productive.

Case study area: Bangkok Metropolitan Administration Area

Bangkok Metropolitan can be a case study of the above-mentioned challenges and opportunities for megacities management. Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, is situated on the low flat plain of the Chao Phraya River. It comprises 50 districts, which covers an area of 1,569 square kilometres and the total population of Bangkok is 7 million by registered record but about 10 million by unofficial counts.

Bangkok has undergone rapid urbanisation and industrialisation since 1960. It is a single centre of administration, business and all kinds of development. About 52 per cent of all the nation’s industries are located in Bangkok and vicinity. However, this rapid development of Bangkok has led to urban problems and has created serious environmental degradation such as air pollution, water pollution, solid and hazardous waste problems, land subsidence, noise pollution and loss of prime agricultural land.

Bangkok has 4.5 million registered vehicles, consumes over 12,000 million litters of fuel - 35% of the total consumption of Thailand - and 3.8 million cubic meters/day of water supply. High demand and over use of groundwater causes land subsidence rate up to 10 cm/year in some critical areas. Each day, Bangkok produces more than 9,173 tons of solid waste and 470,000 cubic meters of wastewater.

To minimise these environmental problems, government has made strict rules and regulations regarding the industrial establishment and imposed restrictions to set up new industries in the capital city. For that reason, industrialists have moved from capital city to peri-urban areas, such as Samut Prakan province, Samut Sakhon province, Pathum Thani province, Nakhon Pathom province, Nonthaburi province etc. As a result, the rural land continues to decrease in peripheral provinces of Bangkok Metropolitan Area for urban development.

The existing patterns of urban developments have followed a radial pattern based on three major transportation corridors leading out of the Bangkok city to the southwest, southeast and north. In addition, developers have started to move in the neighbouring provinces for the cheap land for making housing complexes, industrial premises and golf courses. These developments are happening without proper planning and government interventions, which degrade prime rural cultivated land in a haphazard manner in the peri-urban areas of the Bangkok Metropolitan area. As a result, that creates the leapfrogging types of development in the fringe areas, leaving large tracts of unused land in between and encroachment on agricultural land as well.

 The cities of Asia are growing rapidly due to the rural-urban migration and high urban population growth rates. Most of the cities are growing with increasing population, the sprawling cities require large portion of rural land for urban land use. Most of the settlements in peripheries of the cities include both urban and rural elements, relying on a combination of agricultural and non-agricultural income sources. Often there is no sharp distinction between the rural and urban activities (see fig 1); for example small commercial activities such as a table set up in the front yard selling fresh produce occurring next to agricultural activities, and raising of a livestock in the same front yard. This pattern of development is typical of what McGee (1991) termed ‘desakota’; a term derived from two Indonesian words for Des (village) and Kota (town/city). It is pattern of development, which includes an intensive mix of agricultural activities and non-agricultural activities, occurs side by side. However when one reaches the crossroads one feels an obvious change from the rural part of the village and the visual effects of urbanization become apparent. This complex field of rural and urban interaction may reach 100 km or more from major urban nodes.

Brief Information on Samut Prakan (Suggested site visit area)