Cities overwhelmed by unplanned migration – urban experts

Many cities are being overwhelmed by growing numbers of people migrating to them, and will become highly vulnerable to floods, storms and other disasters unless authorities receive more support, urban experts said.
The proportion of the global population living in urban areas has risen from half in 2000 to 55 percent now, and is predicted to reach 70% by 2050, according to the UN agency for human settlements.
“If we don’t start supporting local and national authorities in (the) task of hosting more and more people in their cities, we are going to have cities that are highly vulnerable,” said Esteban Leon, chief technical advisor at UN-Habitat.
“In most cities ... authorities are overwhelmed by this migration and they don’t have the time nor the resources to react,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona.
Rapid and unplanned population growth puts pressure on transport, infrastructure and sanitation systems in cities around the world, experts say.

Future urban population growth would not be restricted to megacities of 10 million people or more, said Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Brazil-based think tank...