A Failure Everywhere

Most Americans think they know what is meant by "the urban crisis." To many, it means Watts in Los Angeles, the Hough section of Cleveland, Harlem in New York--in short, race riots, poverty, slums. To others, the urban crisis is manifest daily in clogged freeways, rising land costs and inadequate parks, plus a persistent dissatisfaction with urban life. But how many Americans think of the appalling squalor of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the bidonvilles of Algiers, the vecindades of Mexico City, or the nocturnal streets, littered with sleeping bodies, of Calcutta? There, the urban crisis is compounded by the lack of shelter, food, jobs and, above all, hope.

Last week Secretary General U Thant reported to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations that the city--everywhere in the world--is a failure. For example, the U.N. proposed that the developing nations build at least ten units of housing per 1,000 people annually. In many countries only two units per 1,000 people have actually been constructed.

The challenge in the two decades ahead, the report went on, is to "double the houses, power systems, sanitation, schools, transport, in fact the whole complex pattern of urban living created over several centuries." Can this goal be accomplished? The record in both rich and poor nations is discouraging, though there are a few bright examples. Through high-level planning, Russia, Britain, Venezuela and India have encouraged the rise of small cities to decentralize population. France and Bulgaria fostered new, strategically located regional centers. Switzerland and The Netherlands have attempted with some success to balance growth between cities and rural towns.

The Decade Ahead. Still, population is relentlessly exploding in what the report terms "unexploding economies." In the next decade, 18 Latin American cities will probably contain 1,000,000 or more inhabitants each, whether the nations are prepared for the flood of humanity or not. Bombay and Calcutta might swell to 20 million or even 30 million residents by the end of the century.

To cope with the pressure of new people, U Thant said, advance planning for cities is imperative. At least 5% of national income should be allocated to housing and urban development. Local construction industries should quickly be strengthened, savings institutions established, and research centers created to study specific urban problems. Beyond the particular effort of every nation, there must be international cooperation. The richer nations should aid developing nations with at least $1 billion in seed money annually. Nations should also get together to set up training centers for personnel and to pool social and technical information.

The report provides a unique global view of a depressing, but neglected and far-reaching subject. We are all in the same boat, it says in effect, and the boat is foundering. It also stitches together various urban experiments from nations of differing political persuasions to form a patchwork solution. Most important, U Thant's report offers, along with extremely pessimistic statistics about the present, an infectious optimism about the future--if nations can learn to cooperate.

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