‘Handle mega city projects with care’ - UN human development expert cautions on urbanisation

A senior economist this week urged caution when building megacities saying it causes concentration of services and economic activity in the city to the disadvantage of rural communities.

“From a number of mega cities that I have seen around the world, I want to highlight a few issues,” said Selim Jahan, Director of the UNDP’s Human Development Report Office in New York. “When you have a mega city, in many cases it has been found that most services and economic activities are concentrated there. As a result, decentralised services or decentralised activities that should be the case in the country are not there.”

“If services and economic activities are centralised, everybody will have to come to the cities to access them,” he said, in an interview with the Sunday Times. “At the same time, it may so happen that you are depriving the economic potential of places outside of these mega cities. That is unbalanced development.”

Dr. Jahan also said there was a tendency for large slums or shanty towns to develop in mega cities. “I have seen it in other cities,” he remarked. These are issues Sri Lankans will have to discuss, he said.

“I can just bring what I have seen in other places,” he continued. “Some of my colleagues and I always have a discussion. They say that urbanisation is absolutely necessary for economic development. I simply differ. Urbanisation is not absolutely necessary. Even in Sri Lanka, if you look at contribution of agriculture to Gross Domestic Product, that has gone down quite rapidly. But if you look at where people are mostly employed, that is still in agriculture. Thirty per cent of your labour force is in agriculture.”

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