global cities

Tessuto imprenditoriale vivace, vasta rete di protezione sociale e forte attrattività verso l’esterno. La metropoli lombarda vive un boom socioeconomico all’insegna della crescita armonica. È quanto emerge dall’Indice Domus ISPI “Urban energy - five dimensions to grasp the future of cities” uno studio sull’energia urbana realizzato in esclusiva per Domus da ISPI, i cui risultati sono stati presentati il 10 ottobre a "domusforum 2019 – the future of cities", nelle sale del Teatro Parenti di Milano.

Sono in molti ad attribuire a Margaret Thatcher, a lungo Primo Ministro britannico, un aforisma che probabilmente non pronunciò mai: “Se hai più di ventisei anni e prendi ancora l’autobus, considerati un fallito!”.

At the intersection of Africa’s urbanisation, employment, economic growth, cultural and environmental imperatives sit the question of infrastructure. Traditionally, development policy would simply advocate for the roll-out of modern network infrastructure, through, first, a focus on governance reform so that the country in question could be sufficiently credit-worthy to access the requisite development finance to implement infrastructure projects. This approach has demonstrably not worked in most of Africa for two main reasons.

The growing recognition of the importance of cities for development does not alter the fact that cities and countries are co-dependant, or that cities are better off when supported by their national governments. An appropriate balance of power and responsibilities between tiers of government is at the heart of sustainable cities and in sub-Saharan Africa striking this balance requires policy innovation, if not experimentation. 

The inadequacy of Africa’s urban housing markets is evident across the continent, expressed in the cost and scale of housing being delivered, and visible in the very poor housing circumstances of the majority. That over 60% of urban dwellers live in slum conditions is in part a consequence of income, but more significantly one of an inefficient housing ecosystem in which neither price nor scale is achieved.

Since 2015, European leaders have worked alone and in concert to retard and reverse migration to Europe. They have channeled billions of Euros to Turkey to fend off migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Billions more aim to address what they see as the ‘root causes’ of migration from sub-Saharan Africa: chronic underdevelopment, poverty and poor governance.