Urbanization, Urban Environment and Land Use: Challenges and Opportunities an Issue Paper

APFED3/EM/03/Doc.5 10 January 2003 ASIA-PACIFIC FORUM FOR ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT EXPERT MEETING 23 January 2003 Guilin, People’s Republic of China

Urbanization, Urban Environment and Land Use: Challenges and Opportunities An Issue Paper
Masakazu Ichimura Visiting Fellow, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies

Introduction Urbanization has been the dominant demographic trend, not only in the Asia-Pacific region, but also in the entire world, during the last half century. With the high pace of social and economic development in Asia and the resulting growth of city and town population, lack of infrastructure, congested traffic, environmental degradation and a housing shortage became the major issues faced by cities and towns in their sustainable development. The Asia-Pacific Forum for Environment and Development (APFED) reviewed the environment and development issues facing in the Asia-Pacific Region and identified five major issues that require priority attention. Based on discussions at the past two substantive sessions, APFED formulated its Recommendations and a Message to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD, in which APFED committed to launch the new partnership initiatives. One of the topics that APFED attaches high importance and is therefore covered by its Recommendations is Urbanization. APFED recommended to take an integrated approach to manage urbanization (Recommendation E(1)) and strengthen local initiatives in the management of urban environment (Recommendation E(2)) 1. APFED, however, has not
1 The APFED recommendations on urbanization are: (E1) Encourage countries in the region to take an integrated approach to manage urbanization; integrate land use planning; infrastructure and services development; recycling of solid wastes; promotion of economic efficiency in production and services; human and natural resources management; and environmental conservation as well as rural/urban linkages in policy formulation to...