Urban Transport in the OIC Megacities
17
the concentration of capital in megacities has attracted foreign and local investments that produced
more jobs that continue to attract more workers from rural areas. Besides primacy, many developing
cities have a monocentric urban form. In many African and South American cities for example, a third
or more of formal jobs are concentrated in the urban core, considerably above what is found in most
American and European metropolitan areas. Large concentrations of population, employment,
economic activity and services inevitably lead to high traffic densities and comparatively longer trips
by public transport (Cervero, 2013).
High primacy and monocentricity mean economies that accrue from concentration and agglomeration
can quickly become diseconomies. While urban agglomerations yield economic benefits by allowing
job specialisation, efficient market transactions and knowledge spillovers, if concentrated growth is
not well planned then over the time these benefits erode. Agglomeration diseconomies can be
expressed in the form of lost labour productivity from traffic congestion, worsening air pollution that
threatens public health, and an overall decline in the quality of urban life. For example,
overconcentration of activities has been blamed for Beijing’s deteriorating traffic conditions and
environmental pollution. The lack of distinct suburban clusters of mixed land uses has undermined
the ability to introduce cost effective, high capacity transit services, leading to high car use and vehicle
kilometres travelled per capita (Cervero, 2013).
Cities in developing countries are generallymore than twice as dense as those in Europe and five times
as dense as in bigger countries like the United States and Australia. Within developing countries urban
densities vary considerably. Densities in Asia and African cities are considerable higher than in Latin
America. Dhaka is by far the world’s most densely populated city with nearly 35,000 inhabitants per
km2. However, despite the fact that developing countries are comparatively denser than the developed
ones, their density gradients have been flattening at a faster rate. The historically dense developing
world big cities are now mimicking the sprawling patterns of their developed countries as the levels
of motorization increase, following the increase in income levels, and eliminate the need to live in tight
quarters in order to be close to everyday activities. The link between rising wealth and decentralized
growth is more pronounced in Asian megacities, which are more rapidly motorizing and spreading
outward (Cervero, 2013).
Except for population growth, class segregation and poverty can also stretch the boundaries of a city.
In Greater Cairo and Mexico City, sprawl is fuelled mostly by informal housing and slums2 while in the
outskirts of Mumbai and Delhi new towns and employment sub centres are occupying once rural land.
Favelas (slums) mark the peripheries of most Latin American cities as places of last resort. However,
inmany cases, housing policies have exacerbated the isolation of the poorest groups fromemployment
and the lack of coordination between land use and transport planning. For example, low cost and
isolated housing projects in the outskirts of Mexico City were built and either left unoccupied or
abandoned between 2006 and 2009 because of their poor access to jobs, schools and social activities.
In addition, the World Bank estimates that limitations on building densities in Bangalore have led to
urban sprawl which causes welfare losses of 2 - 3% of household income. Finally, it is considered that
the sprawl of Chinese megacities is partly induced by local government policies that allow
municipalities to buy land at low prices, add infrastructure and services and then lease it to developers
at much lower prices (Rode et al, 2014; Cervero, 2013).
2 According to the definition of UN-HABITAT, a slum household is “a group of individuals living under the same roof
in an urban area who lack one or more of the following:
1. Durable housing of a permanent nature that protects against extreme climate conditions,
2. Sufficient living space which means not more than three people sharing the same room,
3. Easy access to safe water in sufficient amounts at an affordable price,
4. Access to adequate sanitation in the form of a private or public toilet shared by a reasonable number of
people, and
5. Security of tenure that prevents forced evictions” (UN-HABITAT, 2006, pg. 1).