Urban Transport in the OIC Megacities
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6. Conclusions and Recommendations
6.1. Introduction
Based on the literature review, the 3 case studies and the SWOT analysis of the 5 megacities, this
chapter starts with a summary of the key findings of the report. In addition, this chapter provides
recommendations and identifies prioritised possible policy options to implement these
recommendations using the framework developed in the literature review chapter. The
recommendations build upon the analysis of the previous chapters and aim to provide a concrete basis
for understanding the urban transport challenges for the OIC megacities. Although it is not suggested
that problems or solutions are the same across all megacities, the recommendations section is an
effort to consolidate the results of the analysis and provide some specific suggestions about the future
steps to be taken, based on our research, observations, and best practice examples from the developed
and developing world. When it is considered appropriate, special recommendations will be given for
the Middle East, Africa and Asia groups, based on our experience, the site visits, and the literature
review.
6.2. The Case of Islamic Megacities
The rapid population growth and urbanization of megacities is one of the most urgent current global
issues. The Islamic megacities have an important role to play in global sustainability as 7 of the world’s
28 megacities belong to the Islamic World. The fact that they also belong to developing countries,
means that they have the potential to develop further and many opportunities to do so sustainably.
The size of these cities means that problems as well as improvements have a large scale effect, and it
constitutes a challenge and an opportunity at the same time. Transport related issues are particularly
interesting as they affect all social, economic and environmental functions of the city and therefore
require coordinated action from both public and private stakeholders. This report has provided a
thorough analysis of transport and transport related problems of the Islamic megacities, drawing from
our experience, research and best practice examples from across the world.
All the megacities of the Islamic world belong to a developing country which means that they share
some common characteristics in terms of institutional structures, motorization trends, financing
problems and infrastructure availability and quality. In this report, best practice and lessons were
collected from both developed and developing world megacities and cities but inevitably the majority
of examples come from the developed world. This is due to the fact that developed world, particularly
European, cities have already gone through rapid urbanization andmotorization and have now turned
to more sustainable modes than private cars, faced with the impacts of congestion. On the other hand,
developed world megacities have only relatively recently started to rapidly grow economically and
increase their motorization levels. African megacities are still lagging behind the other megacities of
the Islamic world in terms of economic growth as well as infrastructure and motorization, while Asian
megacities are growing rapidly in population and number of private cars. In both cases, the share of
non-motorized transport remains very high as motorized modes are mainly used by the wealthiest
members of the society. Perhaps the most important difference between Arab cities and megacities
compared to the rest of OIC world is the fact that non-motorized transport has been widely ignored
and has significantly lower modal share levels due to the wide availability of oil and its low prices. In
Arab cities and megacities, infrastructure and planning for NMT is limited and has only recently
started to gather support as a factor contributing to urban sustainability.
It is suggested that planning for the transport problems in the Islamic megacities requires coordinated
actions at a local and national level and, targeted, well planned international support to accelerate
development. There is a very important opportunity not to follow the development patterns of
developed or even developing world megacities, and become best practice examples themselves. It
should be noted that despite the fact that the recommendations given beloware structured in separate
sections, coordinated, integrated and multi-sector planning are considered the most important
element in successful planning. At the same time, key actions aiming at meeting demand, improving