The Inclusive City: Infrastructure and Public Services for the Urban Poor in Asia (review)

The co-editors' concern for the plight of Asia's urban poor is not misplaced. The Asian Development Bank recently reported that 1.9 billion Asians live on less than two dollars per day and that more than 1 billion Asians live in some degree of absolute or relative poverty. Asia's poor account for three-fourths of the world's poor, and the co-editors estimate that nearly 800 million of Asia's poor live in cities and account for 34 per cent of those who live in Asia's urban areas. The challenge of serving the urban poor will grow because, according to the co-editors, by 2015 there will be 24 mega cities in the world and half of them will be in Asia.

This essence of this superb and timely work is summarized in the preface's opening paragraph: "Residents of cities in developing countries often lack adequate urban infrastructure, including water and sanitation, transport, solid waste collection and disposal, housing, and other basic services. In Asian cities, great efforts are being taken to make urban services available, but access to these services is often not open to everyone … Rapidly growing slum areas and squatter communities lack even rudimentary facilities. Faced with the polarization of rich and poor people, urban authorities are faced with the challenge of how to make cities more inclusive by making infrastructure and services available to all." (p. xvii)

The volume represents a collaborative effort: it was prepared under the auspices of the editorial offices of the Woodrow Wilson Center Press at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Its contents were presented at a Woodrow Wilson sponsored Forum on Urban Infrastructure and Public Service Delivery held in New Delhi, India during 24–25 June 2004.

The book's twelve chapters, written by twenty-one contributors, make an essential point: "Cities spur economic growth and act as the agents of cultural and political transformation. In an age of rapid globalization, urbanization erodes primordial identities and loyalties. At the same time, … (urbanization) creates new groupings that promote exclusivity." (p. 1)

The book explains that the poor are excluded and that the poverty that characterizes their lives can be defined in various ways, including, (a) insufficient income needed to meet basic needs for food, shelter, housing, educational and medical services, and (b) limited access to basic services such as potable water supply, public trans-portation, publicly supplied electricity and drainage and sewer facilities.

With its definition of poverty in mind, the book goes on to do an excellent job of covering the skewed nature of public service deliveries throughout urban settings within Asian cities. However, one absolutely essential service that deserves more coverage is fire prevention and suppression. Fires in crowded urban slum areas (where the poor live in flammable shacks in close proximity to each other in which they cook and heat in dangerous ways) spread rapidly and dangerously. Without adequate fire suppression and prevention services, the poor stand to lose "everything".

The volume's contributors also point out that poverty is both relative and absolute and varying degrees of poverty require different mixes of poverty eradication and alleviation initiatives. Within Asian cities, the basic needs approach to poverty alleviation is often used and this means relying on "state assistance (supplemental income) given by government to the elderly, unemployed and disabled individuals" (p. 13). Poverty eradication can be promoted (at least minimally) via public policies and programmes that improve the ability of low income "hawkers" and "cart peddlers" to gain access to marketing facilities that generate additional income thereby permitting them to meet their basic needs on more sustainable bases.

Readers who are concerned with the plight of the disempowered and marginalized people living in cities throughout Asia will agree with the co-editors' call for an inclusive approach...