Urban society
City Mayors reports on developments in urban society and behaviour and reviews relevant research

Urban population is growing
by one million people a week
The world’s urban population will grow from 2.86 billion in 2000 to 4.98 billion by 2030, of which high-income countries will account for only 28 million out of the expected increase of 2.12 billion. The world’s annual urban growth rate is projected at 1.8 per cent in contrast to the rural growth rate of 0.1 per cent and about 60 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities. More

American abortion debate characterizes the
relationship between city, state and the Union
1 November 2011: Few issues in the United States are more polarizing than abortion - President Obama once called the opposing camps on abortion “irreconcilable” - yet it is difficult to find a mayor of a large American city that is entirely against abortion. Democrats, Republicans, and Independents usually disagree about taxation, policing, housing, social welfare, and other policies. But the right of a woman to choose her own method of reproductive health is something upon which, say, Republican Mayor Jerry Sanders of San Diego, Democratic Mayor Vincent Gray of Washington, DC, and Independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City all agree. More

The larger the city, the larger
the gap between rich and poor
29 May 2011: The largest cities in the United States are generally considered to be at the vanguard of social and economic progress. For example, Pricewaterhouse Coopers’ 2011 Cities of Opportunity report on the world’s top cities calls New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles “vibrant engines of the global economy.” However, city size in the US is also directly related to income inequality according to another recent study — the larger the city, the larger the income gap between rich and poor residents. More

Cities bear the brunt of
prison closures in the US
29 April 2011: According to the 2010 US Census, two million of the 2.3 million prisoners in America’s federal, state, and local jails come from urban cities and counties. Wayne County (Detroit), Michigan, for example, has less than 20 per cent of the state’s population, but accounts for 40 per cent of the inmates in the state’s prison system. Harris County (Houston), Texas has 25,000 residents in state prison; Dallas, 20,000. More

US clergy increasingly
active in local politics
1 February 2011: Clergy in the US, particularly Protestant clergy, have become more politically active in the last decade. A new study, however, finds that the public is becoming uneasy with the political activities of religious leaders, raising questions about the future of government contracts with faith-based groups. More

Localism key to successful
integration of immigrants
23 January 2011: Immigration policy may be nationally determined but the experience of settlement and integration is a uniquely local experience. So what is the role of localism in ensuring the benefits of migration are realised? This articles discusses initiatives in the US and France and asks what lessons can British cities learn. More

American mayors take
action to reduce poverty
7 January 2011: The week before Christmas 2010, the US Census Bureau released its latest poverty statistics. The numbers are sobering. Forty-four million people - one in seven Americans - lived below the official poverty level in 2009, the most since the Census Bureau began tracking poverty rates 51 years ago. In 2009, 40 million Americans received government assistance to purchase food each month, and 50 million went hungry at one time or another during the year. Fifty-one million Americans lacked health coverage in 2009. More

Hunger and homelessness remain
most pressing issues for US cities
1 January 2011: Hunger and homelessness are among the most pressing issues faced by US cities. During 2010 the number of people experiencing homelessness increased across major cities by an average of two per cent, while request for emergency food assistance rose by 24 per cent. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said: “Even working families are increasingly facing hunger and homelessness as a result of the crippled economy and rising unemployment.” More

Cities must embrace cultural
and ethnic diversity to flourish
30 December 2010: We live in a period of transition from mono-ethnic cities to multi-ethnic cities and ultimately inter-ethnic cities. With the shared conviction that migrants integration is key for better intercultural relations, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and the International Organization for Migration IOM have created together a program on Migration called IBIS - Integration: Building Inclusive Societies. More

Good policing is about social integration
and not about ‘zero tolerance’ measures
25 July 2010: In an interview with City Mayors, Latin American security expert and judicial Argentinean reformer, Carlos Arslanian, who is known for his progressive ideas for overcoming security threats in Latin American cities, described ‘zero tolerance’ and ‘tough on crime’ measures as total failures. “They’ve created a symbolic criminal law system, a criminal law system that fools citizens or utilizes the collective idea that with strong penalties we solve the problems,” he said. More

American cities face new
realities after lost decade
8 June 2010: American market research firms systematically classify the residents of a metropolitan area according to their purchasing power. Each consumer group receives a descriptive moniker according to its specific demographic, economic, and social characteristics: “Successful Suburbanites”, for example or “Urban Working Families” or “Low Income Southern Blacks”. The communities in which these groups live are likewise labeled: “Wealthy Seaboard Suburbs”, “Distressed Neighborhoods”, “Rustbelt Neighborhoods”, and so on. More

Economics and politics of
Arizona’s immigration law
15 May 2010: US mayors who have reacted to Arizona’s controversial new immigration law have done so primarily on economic grounds. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote in the New York Daily News that “laws that have the potential to hassle [immigrants] could prove devastating to our economy. Basic free market economics tells us we need more legal immigrants - immigrants who will start new businesses and help build the foundation for future economic growth.” More

The state of Muslims in
Western European cities
22 March 2010: There are estimated to be 15 to 20 million Muslims living in the European Union (EU); this population is expected to double by 2025. Muslims in Europe are a diverse population of citizens, as well as newly arrived migrants. Most live in capital cities and large industrial towns. Though the majority of Muslims are a long-standing and integral part of the fabric of their cities, many experience discrimination and social and economic disadvantages. Muslims in Europe today are also under heightened suspicion and scrutiny. More

The largest cities in the
world and their mayors
15 February 2010: The mayors of the world’s 25 largest cities are each responsible for more people than most national prime ministers. For example, London, ranked 23rd in the world, has more residents than nations like Paraguay, Denmark, New Zealand or Ireland, and if Karachi, globally the largest city, was a country it would rank above Greece, Portugal or Hungary. The combined population of the world’s eleven megacities - cities with more than 10 million inhabitants - equals that of Japan. More

Socio-economic changes may compel
US mayors to consider power sharing
29 January 2010: Several research centers in the United States marked the beginning of the new decade with the release of demographic and economic data. Each data set provides a specific perspective of socioeconomic change and is compelling in its own right. Viewed together, however, they indicate a convergence of powerful trends with potentially momentous consequences for US cities, mayors, and government structures. More

New legislation could make
US cities great for everyone
10 December 2009: A characteristic of American metropolitan areas is residential segregation by race and class. “If you give me a person’s address, I can almost always tell you his income, the quality of public schools his children attend, and the color of his skin,” says William A Johnson, former mayor of Rochester, New York. More

US cities take the lead
in advancing gay rights
7 October 2009: Despite preparing for a large budget deficit, Cleveland, Ohio, Mayor Frank Jackson recently approved US$700,000 to help his city’s bid to land the 2014 Gay Games. “It’s the right thing to do,” said a spokesperson for Mayor Jackson. Meanwhile, across the country, Anchorage, Alaska Mayor Dan Sullivan vetoed a measure designed to counteract anti-gay discrimination in his city, saying that he was “not sure of the need for the ordinance.” More

US mayors maintain silence
on high-profile racial incident
4 August 2009: The US media have been buzzing since the 16 July arrest and release of a prominent African-American scholar and subsequent comments by President Obama. The incident touches a nerve about race and class in America – the very issues that US urban mayors must contend with every single day. Curiously, American mayors, rarely shy in front of television cameras or newspaper reporters, have largely avoided commenting on the controversy. More

Youth curfews popular with American cities
but effectiveness and legality are questioned
21 July 2009: At least 500 US cities have curfews on teenage youth, including 78 of the 92 cities with a population greater than 180,000. In most of these cities, curfews prohibit children under 18 from being on the streets after 11:00 pm during the week and after midnight on weekends. About 100 cities also have daytime curfews to keep children off the streets during school hours. The curfews are designed to prevent crime, increase parental responsibility for their children, and give police greater ability to stop people involved in suspicious activity. More

Do not handcuff the
poor and homeless
7 July 2009: The housing and homelessness crisis in the United States has worsened over the past two years, particularly due to the current economic and foreclosure crises. By some estimates, more than 311,000 tenants nationwide have been evicted from homes this year after lenders took over the properties. People being evicted from foreclosed properties and the economic crisis in general have contributed to the growing homeless population. As more people fall into homelessness, local service providers are seeing an increase in the demand for services. In Denver, nearly 30 per cent of the homeless population are newly homeless. More

Ghana mayors beautify their
cities while urban poor suffer
30 June 2009: With 70 per cent of Ghana’s urban population living in slums, 20 per cent in poverty and 13 per cent officially classified as unemployed, the ‘urban question’ is of the utmost difficulty for the government and people to resolve. But the question threatens to be even more demanding because in 2010, just one year away, Ghana will undergo an ‘urban explosion’ – where for the first time more people will live in cities than in the country. More

American cities debate
English-only legislation
25 June 2009: In June 2009, Albertville, Alabama, became the latest US city to pass an ordinance making English the city’s official language.  Albertville Mayor Lindsay Lyons maintains the ordinance will be “a unifying factor,” bringing together immigrants and English speakers. At least 30 US cities have adopted English-only legislation. More

Critics of surveillance cameras
fear racial profiling in US cities
11 June 2009: Since the terrorist attacks in 2001, hundreds of US cities have installed security cameras to monitor their streets. The cameras are funded by billions of dollars from the federal Department of Homeland Security, as well as state and local revenues. Urban video security systems range from a single camera in Liberty, Kansas (population 95) to New York City’s “ring of steel” network of hundreds of integrated video devices, based on London’s ubiquitous surveillance cameras. More

President accused of corruption
while gangs reign in Guatemala
27 May 2009: Government and judicial corruption, organised crime and wholesale murder, all threaten Guatemala’s fragile democracy. While the country is feared to be on the verge of becoming a failed state, its young people are rising up in a fervour they have never before displayed in its history. More

Philippine mayor reported
to approve assassinations
19 April 2009: The Philippine government should investigate alleged "death squads" responsible for hundreds of targeted killings in Davao City and other cities on the southeastern island of Mindanao, the New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch said in a report released this month. The report, You Can Die Any Time: Death Squad Killings in Mindanao, details the involvement of police and local government officials in targeted killings of alleged drug dealers and petty criminals, street children, and others, and describes the lack of any effort by the authorities to investigate the killings and bring those responsible to justice. More

Mexican cities rocked
by ferocious drug war
11 February 2009: Mexico's ongoing war with drug smuggling cartels claimed more than 5,300 lives in 2008 and one of the most violent places in the Latin American nation is Ciudad Juarez, right across the border from El Paso, Texas in the United States. Drug cartel killers have decapitated policemen, shot up restaurants and left bodies on streets all over the city of more than one million 300,000 people. El Paso remains relatively calm, but, the climate of fear affects both cities. More

China’s urban transition
causes growing inequality
27 November 2008: The word transition perhaps best describes China: the world’s most populous country is transitioning from a predominantly rural society to an urban one. China’s urbanization process in the last two decades has been extraordinary: the urbanization level in the country has nearly doubled from 25 per cent in 1987 to roughly 42 per cent in 2007; it is estimated that by 2030, 60 per cent of the country’s population will be urban. While urbanization has led to unprecedented economic growth it has also caused massive inequalities. More

Obama promises to become
America’s first urban president
25 November 2008: Barack Obama has promised to advance a number of issues important to mayors of US cities soon after he takes office on 20 January 2009. America's 44th President says he will create 2.5 million well-paying jobs during the first two years of his administration by renovating infrastructure and schools and developing alternative energy sources. More

Not all cities will benefit
from rising urbanization
22 November 2008: While more than 70 per cent of the populations of Europe, North America and Latin America are already urban, Asia and Africa, which are predominately rural, with 41 per cent and 39 per cent of their populations living in urban areas, respectively, are in for a major demographic shift. More

Western Europe has the most
egalitarian cities in the world
19 November 2008: Major cities in the United States, such as Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington D.C., Miami, and New York, have the highest levels of inequality in the country, similar to those of Abidjan, Nairobi, Buenos Aires, and Santiago. At the other end of the world, Beijing is considered to be the most equal city in the world while, on average, the most egalitarian cities in the world are located in Western Europe. More

Supreme Court rules against
US cities fighting gun violence
28 June 2008: A June 2008 US Supreme Court ruling on gun control appears to be a clear defeat for American cities struggling to control gun violence. The ruling struck down the city of Washington, DC’s ban on handguns and will likely lead to fewer restrictions on the ownership, sale, and possession of firearms. More

American Catholic Church struggles
to maintain presence in inner cities
20 April 2008: Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States demonstrated his support for the 67 million Roman Catholics in America, about 25 per cent of the total population. It also provided an opportunity to examine the changing role of the Catholic Church in US cities. More

America prefers to punish
rather than to provide care
22 March 2008: An African-America boy born in the US in 2001 has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime.  A Latino boy has a 1 in 6 chance. These statistics are from a recently released report America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline by the Children’s Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization that encourages preventive investment in youth and families before problems occur.  The report blames America’s disproportionate investment in punishment rather than prevention for trapping many children in a trajectory that leads to marginalized lives and imprisonment. More

Blacks increasingly wary as Latinos
become fastest-growing US minority
28 November 2007: Traditional minorities – Blacks, Latinos, Asians -- are expected to become the majority in the US by 2050. This is the consensus of most American demographers. According to data released in 2007 by the US Census Bureau, Latinos continue to be the largest minority group in the US at 42.7 million. They are also the fastest growing minority group, increasing 3.3 per cent over the past year, and 19.7 per cent in the past five years. Most of the growth is due to immigration from Mexico. More

With good government, urbanisation
will produce higher living standards
20 November 2007: Almost every part of the inhabited world has been urbanising. Today, half the world’s population lives in urban areas and most of the world’s growth in population is likely to be in urban areas. In addition, there is a profound long-term shift in the distribution of the world’s urban population. Neither Europe nor North America have most of the world’s urban population or most of its largest cities. Europe now has none of the world’s 100 fastest-growing cities — but most of its declining ones. More

Asia has become home to the
world’s fastest growing cities
24 October 2007: Africa now has a larger urban population than North America and has 25 of the world's fastest growing large cities. Half of the world's urban population now lives in Asia, which also has half of the world's largest cities and fastest growing large cities. Europe's share of the world's 100 largest cities has fallen from more than half to under ten per cent in the past century. It now has none of the world's 100 fastest growing cities and most of its declining ones. More

The world’s urban poor suffer most
from crime, violence and disasters
4 October 2007: The world’s poor are the worst affected by urban crime and violence, insecurity of tenure and forced eviction, and natural and human-made disasters, regardless of their geographical location. “Over the past decade the world has witnessed growing threats to the safety and security of cities and towns. Some have come in the form of catastrophic events, while others have been manifestations of poverty and inequality or of rapid and chaotic urbanization processes,” said the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. More

Cities will benefit from and must care for
an increasing number of older residents
3 October 2007: The world is rapidly ageing. The number of people aged 60 and over as a proportion of the global population will double from 11 per cent in 2006 to 22 per cent by 2050. By then, there will be more older people than children (aged 0–14 years) in the population for the first time in human history. And, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), already 75 per cent of older people in developed countries live in cities. More

US mayors concerned about
collapse of immigration reform
15 July 2007: The collapse last month of US immigration reform legislation in June 2007 heightened concerns of mayors. “We will not have an economy, we will not have an America without a constant stream of immigrants coming into this country,” New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg told the New York Post newspaper. Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigoas set up a special commission to explore ways his city can deal with illegal, but necessary, immigrant workers. More

NYC Mayor offers innovative
approach to tackling poverty
10 July 2007: Even for public servants with the best of intentions, the seeming intractability of poverty in America can be awfully discouraging. Its causes are complex and past efforts have met with limited success. Until Hurricane Katrina hit land, poverty had been absent from the public agenda for so long that there was little consensus among policymakers in how to respond. Not only was the toolbox of effective antipoverty proposals empty but partisan gamesmanship often seems to block innovative, good faith efforts to address it. More

For humanity’s sake, developing world
must prepare for soaring urbanisation
28 June 2007: In 2008, the world reaches an invisible but momentous milestone: For the first time in history, more than half its human population, 3.3 billion people, will be living in urban areas. By 2030, this is expected to swell to almost five billion. Many of the new urbanites will be poor. Their future, the future of cities in developing countries, the future of humanity itself, all depend very much on decisions made now in preparation for this growth. More

US cities offer very different ways
of dealing with illegal immigration
31 May 2007: Illegal Immigration has become one of the United States’ most difficult social and economic problems. More than 12 million ‘undocumented immigrants’ – mostly from Mexico – are now estimated to be in the US. American cities have been dealing with this reality for years. More

It’s time for Canadians to
know and love their cities
25 May 2007: In a new book, prominent journalism professor and columnist Andrew Cohen slams Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, as a boring, unimaginative place content with mediocrity and bad restaurants, drowning in urban sprawl, whose downtown is choking in truck exhaust and with so-called grand avenues that have become seedy places for drifters and tattoo shops. More

Britain’s ‘irregular’ immigrants
demand integration in society
16 May 2007: A very rainy Bank Holiday in central London. People motivated to give up their time in the hope of inspiring a debate about immigration. If I told friends I was going to spend my day marching past the national war memorial on Whitehall amid an array of British flags then they’d probably, and understandably, assume I’d taken leave of my senses and was taking part in a Nazi skinhead parade. However, the presence of samba rhythms and pro-immigration banners would alter such preconceptions considerably. More

Economists question 'official' poverty
statistics used for US mayors' report
1 April 2007: In 2006, the US Conference of Mayors formed a task force to address “persistent poverty and middle class erosion” in American cities. The Task Force on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity, chaired by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, worked over a year to craft an action plan. In March 2007, the Task Force released a set of recommendations. While the report makes a convincing argument for a national strategy, its figures probably understate the true extent of poverty in the US. More

Up to 10 million American children suffer
the consequences of convicted parents
17 March 2007: Since 1970, the rate of imprisonment in the US has risen over 400 per cent, and the average length of prison sentences has grown substantially. These increases are primarily the result of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, long and mandatory sentences for third-felony convictions, and other ‘zero-tolerance’ polices. Whatever effect these ‘get-tough’ measures have had on crime, unintended victims have been punished along the way. These victims are children, separated from their parents – and the cities in which most of these children live. More

21st century cities: Home to
new riches and great misery
14 February 2007: Sometimes it takes just one human being to tip the scales and change the course of history. In 2007, that human being will either move to or be born in a city, and demographers watching urban trends will mark it as the moment when the world entered a new urban millennium in which the majority of its people will live in cities. It will also see the number of slum dwellers cross the one-billion mark, when one in every three city residents will live in inadequate housing, with no or few basic services. More

Progress in the world’s cities will
decide the future of Planet Earth
13 January 2007: If global development priorities are not reassessed to account for massive urban poverty, well over half of the 1.1 billion people projected to join the world’s population between now and 2030 may live in under-serviced slums, says a report published in January 2007. Additionally, while cities cover only 0.4 per cent of the Earth’s surface, they generate the bulk of the world’s carbon emissions, making cities key to alleviating the climate crisis, notes the report. More

Affordable housing crisis casts a
shadow over the American Dream
20 January 2007: The United States government defines affordable housing as housing for which the owner or tenant pays 30 per cent or less of his or her income. Using this standard, the National Low Income Housing Coalition calculates that nearly 95 million Americans - 35 per cent of US households - have a housing affordability problem. More

Harare’s middle-class residents take up
urban farming to counter food shortages
10 January 2007: Urban faming, widely practiced by the poor and lower-income groups in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, is fast becoming de rigeur among the city's wealthy set. In affluent suburbs like Avondale and Mabelreign, maize and vegetable plots are sprouting up to counter expected food shortages brought on by an economic meltdown that has seen the inflation rate remaining well above 1,000 per cent, the highest in the world. More

Basketball star unveils low-cost clothing
range to curb violence in US inner cities
17 December 2006: In September 2006, professional basketball star Stephon Marbury of the New York Knicks announced that he was producing a line of inexpensive athletic clothes and shoes. The Starbury-brand items retail for less than US$15, far less than the $150 to $300 for name brands of sportswear such as Nike or Adidas. One of the reasons Marbury gave for entering the apparel business was to “keep kids a little safer.” Marbury reasoned that children wearing low-priced jackets and sports shoes would be less likely to become crime victims. More

Canary Islands: Refugee crisis
on the Afro-European fault line
5 November 2006: The large-scale movement of populations is without doubt one of the great calamities facing the western world – not least in the Canary Islands. On the one hand there are desperate people with no hope of any sort of life either now or in the future in their homelands and desperately seek a new beginning elsewhere. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the developed countries are faced with illegal immigration, and its associated problems, on an unprecedented scale. More

Neglected neighbourhoods
create new Paris underclass
5 October 2006: Between April and September 2005, three fires ravaged residential buildings in Paris, killing 48 African immigrants, primarily from Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Mali. Most of the victims were children; many were undocumented. The immigrants lived in cheap hotels and apartment houses ill-equipped for emergencies, lacking smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, emergency exits, and, in one case, even running water with which to put out the blaze. More

Mexican city paralysed as people wait
for government to end teachers strike

Urban poor worse off than rural poor
but good policies can reduce slums

Megacities must urgently address the needs
of slum dwellers to prevent human disaster

Success of future megacities will depend on
cooperation between citizens and authorities

Mauritania’s urban slums offer
no support to rural newcomers

Authorities ready to go to war
against criminal street gangs

China is at the forefront of the greatest
urban-industrial revolution of all time

With America’s population approaching 300 million
the country’s cities will become ethnic melting pots

America’s poor caught up in clash
between cities and nonprofit groups

Black American men hardest hit
by dysfunctional US inner cities

Hispanic, Black and Asian Americans
are spreading out across the country

NYC Mayor’s policies on welfare
contribute to city’s rising poverty

Economic circumstances discouraged
one million migrants from settling in LA

Amnesty International calls on African
governments to stop forced evictions

Closing the divide between those who
are starving and those who waste food

Changes in Asia’s fast growing cities
are closely watched across the world

Attacks on welfare largely to blame
for New York City’s hidden poverty

Mexico’s urban poor
work harder for less

By 2030 Africa will change
from rural to urban society

Kyrgyzstan rural young move to cities
in search for better jobs and education

Afghan cities offer few opportunities
for rising numbers of rural migrants

Poverty, crime and migration are acute issues
as Eastern European cities continue to grow

Cities can offer the best security
to the greatest number of people

Little behavioural difference between
urban and suburban teenagers

South American cities spearhead
development of direct democracy