| WUF9 Side event
BIG GAINS IN SMALL TOWNS: Organised by Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, India 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm, 11 February 2018, Room 404 |
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Event Summary
A significant proportion of urban residents currently live and will continue to live outside the large metropolises. Using national definitions, 53% of the urban population in China and 50% in India live in agglomerations of less than 500,000 people and their share is not declining. Indeed, in India, the share of small towns (less than 100,000 people) has even risen slightly from 40.3% to 41.1% over 2001 to 2011.
A focus on small towns is needed to attain all major commitments under the New Urban Agenda (NUA), viz. social inclusion, urban prosperity and resilient sustainability (para 14). Highlighting this vital scalar dimension (para 95), this side event presents insights from small towns for the implementation of the NUA and the Sustainable Development Goals (6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.6, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 11.5), in the context of demographic, economic and social transformations in small towns and the nature of service delivery and governance.
The panel will highlight the myriad and thriving economies of small towns, their role in migration and issues of environmental resilience and service provision and cross-learnings for informal settlements. It will, inter alia, draw on extensive field research on Indian settlements (including those recently published as ‘Subaltern Urbanisation in India’ by Springer), Indonesia and West Asia. It seeks to widen inclusion of smaller settlements in policy documents and broader discourse and increase the appreciation of the applicability of decentralised infrastructure solutions in project implementation
The event builds on earlier engagements that spotlighted small towns and informal settlements during Prepcom3 at Surabaya in July 2016 and at Habitat III in Quito in October 2016 organised by the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and its partners.
Panel: Moderated by Partha Mukhopadhyay, Centre for Policy Research (India) partha@cprindia.org
| Panelist | Theme |
| Gregory F Randolph Just Jobs Network (USA/India) gregrandolph@justjobsnetwork.org |
Jobs: Labour-intensive manufacturing is moving into once-rural areas in Indonesia, What does this mean for migration, the role of gender in work and industrial infrastructure services? |
| Hamento Kusuma Widjaja RUJAK Center for Urban Studies (Indonesia) mkusumawijaya@rujak.org |
Environment and Governance: Smaller towns in Indonesia are governed via regencies. Does their broader territorial construct help them integrate urban-rural governance and manage new environmental challenges from growing economic activity? |
| Valerie Clerc L’Institut de recherche pour le développement- IRD (France) valerie.clerc@ird.fr |
Housing: As smaller, once-rural places urbanise and even attract migrants, informal settlements are an issue in smaller towns too as shown by work in West Bengal, India. Can early recognition and intervention help to improve services in such settlements? |
| Anant Maringanti Hyderabad Urban Labs (India) amaringanti@gmail.com |
Discourse: The usual urban discourse has many myths about small towns, which affect the academic and also the policy discourse. How can these misconceptions be dispelled and more focus brought to these places? How can new technologies help? |
