 Growing cities In terms of simple numbers, the need for sanitation is greatest in rural areas. United Nations statistics show that only 18 per cent of rural residents in developing countries have access, compared with 63 per cent in urban communities. However, the urban figures in some cases do not include squatter communities, home to 30 to 60 per cent of a city’s population in many developing countries. Whatever the numbers, though, lack of sanitation is far more worrisome in urban areas than in rural regions, mainly because of population density. Simply put, the more people in a given space, the greater the potential for contact with human waste. And the world is on a relentless path towards increasing urbanization.
Almost half the people on earth will live in urban areas by the year 2000,
growing to 61 per cent by 2025. The population of my country, Pakistan,
is about 70 per cent rural now, but within 30 years that will shrink to
less than 45 per cent.
Public authorities are not helping to find homes for urban migrants, so they take matters into their own hands: After the rich build their homes and offices and shops, the enterprising poor improvise their own communities on what is left over—the most undesirable and marginal land, adjacent to garbage dumps, on hillsides, in gullies and ravines, on soil that is either too rocky or too sandy or lies in a flood plain. These crowded ‘informal’ settlements remain largely unserved by public
utilities, mostly because of governments’ unwillingness to acknowledge
that they even exist. It is no surprise, then, that these communities are
places of poor hygiene and rampant disease. In some cases, the urban poor
suffer infant death rates 1.5 to 3 times higher than people who are better
off, partly due to lack of safe water and sanitation.
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