Rapid urbanisation, the lack of services and dumping on the poor

The onset of industrialisation marked the beginning of large-scale urbanisation, as greater concentra-tions of labour around the mines and mills were necessary.¹⁴¹ Today, most urban population growth takes place in the developing world. This area has experienced rapid urbanisation, starting with Latin America in the early 1960s – today it is the most urbanised region in the world with 80% of the total population living in urban areas (Europe: 73%).¹⁴² Half of the world‘s population already lives in urban areas and by the middle of this century, most regions of the developing world will be predomi-nantly urban.¹⁴³ The numbers are impressive: in the last decade alone the urban population in the de-veloping world grew by an average 1.2 million people per week.¹⁴⁴ By 2050, 5.3 billion people in the developing world will live in urban areas, with Asia alone accounting for 3.3 billion people (63% of the world‘s urban population). Africa, still the least urbanised region, will by then host a total urban population of 1.2 billion, almost a quarter of the world‘s urban population.¹⁴⁵

This rapid growth of cities in the developing countries is largely due to ongoing rural-urban migration (with the exception of Latin America). Cities in the developing world are therefore marked by distinct characteristics that make them different from cities in industrialised countries, especially when it comes to socioeconomic and physical conditions. The ongoing urbanisation for the most part takes place as the growth of existing or the creation of new slum areas and informal settlements. The growth of these settlements is mostly organic and lacks planning, resulting in narrow twisting streets, as well as in the occupation of environmentally sensitive and disaster-prone areas, such as wetlands,

141 Desta Mebratu, ‗Sustainability and sustainable development: Historical and conceptual review‘, Environmental Impact Assessment Review, Vol. 18, Issue 6, 1998, pp. 493–520, p. 495

142 UN-HABITAT, State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013, p. 28

143 UN-HABITAT, State of the World’s Cities 2008/2009: Harmonious Cities (London: Earthscan, 2008), p. x

144 UN-HABITAT, State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013, p. 28

145 UN-HABITAT, State of the World’s Cities 2008/2009, p. xi        

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river beds, creeks, floodplains, and steep slopes.¹⁴⁶ The same is true for Cape Town, where a large proportion of the townships is situated in (former) wetlands and floodplains.

The rapid demographic and spatial expansion of Third World cities means they quickly reach their capacity limits and then often cannot keep up with providing the necessary infrastructure and basic urban services such as housing, water and sanitation because of a lack of resources,¹⁴⁷ although some-times these cities choose not keep up to discourage migration to the city (see below). One of the con-sequences is that the total waste generated in the city is only partly collected, which leads to its im-proper disposal on the streets, in rivers and lakes, on vacant lots and in municipal open dumps. In 2005 Medina estimated that Third World cities only collect between 50 and 80% of the refuse gener-ated, although they spend 30 to 50% of their operational budgets on waste management.¹⁴⁸ According to the most recent UN-HABITAT report on the state of the world‘s cities, more than 720 billion tons of wastes are produced by the cities of the world every year. Even in large – and thus it would seem more affluent – cities in developing regions, only 25 to 55% of waste is collected – a rate much lower than that estimated by Medina.¹⁴⁹

In some parts of these cities, in particular in low-income neighbourhoods, slums, and informal settle-ments, the municipal collection of waste is often nonexistent. Residents of these areas may resort to dumping their garbage in the nearest vacant lot, river, or they may simply burn it in their backyards.

The inadequate disposal of solid waste is a potential source of land, water and air pollution, and thus poses a risk to human health and the environment. Since these cities are preoccupied with extending waste collection and with improving final disposal, they generally lack recycling programmes.¹⁵⁰ One of the questions that arises from this situation is if the lack of services can be attributed to systematic failure (esp. of government policies).

In general, it is a common pattern in most countries (not only in the developing world) that dirty in-dustries are located near areas where the poor live. In apartheid South Africa this was practiced along racial lines, with the poor, non-white communities placed next to polluting mines, industries and waste dumps. The apartheid system thus not only produced a racialised labour hierarchy, but also the spatial segregation of these racialised population groups in apartheid cities. This was a way of up-holding social hierarchies through the control of the social mobility of black and coloured

146 Medina, ‗Waste picker cooperatives in developing countries‘, p. 1

147 UN-HABITAT, State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013, p. 78

148 Medina, ‗Waste picker cooperatives in developing countries‘, p. 2

149 UN-HABITAT, State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013, p. 78

150 Ibid.

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tions. This system of segregation and hierarchisation was reinforced by the unequal provision of basic infrastructure and services, resulting in stark disparities in the living conditions of the different (ur-ban) population groups.

It was of course the white suburbs that received the best infrastructure and services (e.g. water, elec-tricity). Formal townships only received partial and perfunctory services; those were however not expanded even as the population increased because of the policy of removals from ‗white areas‘. The forced removals also led to the creation of large and completely unserviced settlements in rural areas or on the distant peripheries of the cities.¹⁵¹ In general, the black townships were deprived of even the most basic services. This is especially true for the provision of waste services. Black townships either had no waste services or only periodic pick ups from communal skips; residents had to collect and deposit their own garbage. This was in stark contrast to white areas that enjoyed regular residential collection of waste. The cynicism of the apartheid system becomes evident here, as the good quality of services and infrastructure in the white areas could only be sustained because it was in fact subsi-dised by the absence of services or by lower standard of services in the townships. To make matters even worse, the ‗white‘ waste was dumped in black areas.¹⁵²

Although the service gap has closed, inequality of service provision persists until today. For instance many residents in townships like Khayelitsha still lack decent sanitation. The recent efforts by the CCT to solve the problem with the continued provision of portable toilets (the ―bucket-system‖) have been met with heavy protests by the residents, who demand adequate housing with decent sanitation (i.e. flush toilets).¹⁵³ This also points to another problem in South Africa, and especially in the big cities: the massive backlog of formal or adequate housing, which leads to informal living arrange-ments. Thus, the ―toilet wars‖ go beyond mere service delivery, and illustrate that people in town-ships feel like second-class citizens. In the words of Steven Robins: ―The porcelain flush toilet has come to be seen as a sign of modern citizenship in a democracy.‖¹⁵⁴

The poor not only have to endure unequal service provision, but continue to bear the adverse effects caused by the consumer society. They still have to live alongside the dumps fed by the wastes of the rich and of industry. Furthermore – in line with the neoliberal logic explained above – shack settle-ments have sprung up around many dumpsites, because this land has next to no value on the market

151 Hallowes and Munnik, Wasting the Nation, p. 15

152 Faranak Miraftab, ‗Neoliberalism and Casualization of Public Sector Services: The Case

of Waste Collection Services in Cape Town, South Africa‘, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol.

28, Issue 4, December 2004, pp. 874–892, here: p. 875f.

153 Steven Robins, ‗Politicisation of human waste‘, Cape Times (27.09.2013).

154 Ibid.

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(like other environmentally hazardous locations). Apart from offering the poor a place to live, these spaces offer them a bare livelihood as they can pick through the waste. This pattern of injustice is not unique to societies like South Africa that had a history of racist exclusion, but ―is part of the global ordering of power relations necessary for the conduct of business.‖¹⁵⁵ It is part of the ‗world city syn-drome‘, where cities nationally and globally compete for investment. In line with this, metropolitan municipalities in South Africa are now all focused on creating competitive ‗world class cities‘¹⁵⁶