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| Cape Town has been singled out as the model city that manages rapid urbanisation |
The city of Cape Town has been singled out as a model city that manages rapid urbanization and its implications with impressive results. A conference is currently underway at the United Nations headquarters in New York looking at challenges of people moving out of the rural areas to the cities.
Mayor of Cape Town Helen Zille has attended the conference where a call has been issued to national governments to support successful cities which are battling with urbanisation. The UN says people are migrating from rural areas in droves to live in the cities for economic survival.
The UN Commission on Population Development is meeting to examine the socio-economic implications of such influx, focusing on sustainability and provision of services to informal settlements. They invited the Mayor of Cape Town in South Africa, Helen Zille to use her city as a case study to help the commission understand the circumstances under which urbanisation can enable people to improve their lives, and the role of the city in creating such circumstances.
In the 2006 municipal elections, the Democratic Alliance, the official opposition in SA, became the single largest party in Cape Town with 42% of the vote, and Zille the city's mayor. Zille is currently long listed for the 2008 World Mayor award.
Zille highlighted the challenges of governing a city that is urbanising at an alarming rate and the apparent tensions between the city and the provincial government with her city, Cape Town, singled out as an example of a city that has a booming economy and yet has both extreme wealth and poverty side by side.
The UN says over the coming decades, world population growth will largely be determined by growth in the urban areas of developing countries, due to urbanisation. - SABC
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