Planners must shift their attention to the informal economy that is the invisible engine of true urban greatness.
Atop the gleaming Four Seasons Hotel in Worli, Mumbai, wealthy locals and affluent tourists sit on plush couches and sip $18 cocktails. From this glamorous rooftop bar, five-star hotels, gleaming condominium towers, and other elements of the modern Mumbai skyline are visible, and that view is a testament to the city’s growing wealth. But a closer look reveals the many slums that dot the Mumbai landscape—slums that are stacked alongside highways, nestled under bridges, and even strewn across sidewalks.
Despite inhabiting the same expanse of 200 square miles, the poor and the wealthy in Mumbai face each other across a deepening physical and social chasm. This separation is a reflection of the increasingly prevalent vision among city governments in the developing world to become “world-class.” From Accra to Jakarta, cities across the globe seek to model themselves after their perception of what a world-class city should look like. It’s a model—exemplified by cities such as Singapore and Dubai—in which the defining characteristics are a modern skyline, a high level of efficiency, and an absence of visible signs of poverty.
Municipal leaders pursue this “world-class” vision to attract investment, to cultivate their cities’ integration into the global economy, and to improve the quality of living standards. Too often, however, those benefits accrue only to the wealthiest and most powerful residents of a city.
The New World-Class City
We want to redefine the “world-class city” as an inclusive city. We believe that all people have a fundamental right to live with basic dignity, in decent conditions, and with prospects for economic mobility and social inclusion. Our urban vision, therefore, fosters growth in a holistic manner by harnessing the strength, creativity, and innovative capacity of all urban citizens. It includes these elements:
- Safe and secure living conditions. An inclusive city ensures that all citizens have access to safe and adequate housing. In some cities, reaching this goal means building more affordable housing, while in others it means working with communities to upgrade existing slums. An inclusive city also expands access to basic services to improve the economic capacity and health outcomes of all urban residents.
- Greater connectivity and integration within cities. An inclusive city facilitates urban interaction while considering the needs of its more vulnerable residents. It creates accessible transportation options that connect slums on the urban periphery with economic opportunities in urban centers, and it plans public spaces that support both informal economic activity and an increased sense of community.
- Improved legal protection and dignity for informal workers. An inclusive city offers not just a safe physical environment, but also a legal environment that protects all of its citizens. It extends legal safeguards to individuals engaged in informal economic activity without stipulating formalization, and it confers on informal workers a sense of dignity and security in their work and a wide range of opportunities for economic mobility.
Achieving this vision globally is a continuous process that can draw inspiration from bright spots that are already emerging in some cities. The thousands of people who gather in Medellín this week, for example, will see a vast outdoor escalator—the first of its kind—that connects slums to the commercial center of the city and to community resources. The city of Pune, India, meanwhile, has switched from using private contractors with trucks for the majority of its waste management to using informal unions of self-employed waste-pickers who hand-sort the city’s garbage. That arrangement raises the waste-picker’s income, saves the city money, and reduces the amount of landfill trash.