Cities are not static. Like living organisms they change and adapt over time. Some grow and others shrink in response to economic, political and environmental shifts. However, they do this in radically different ways, reflecting local responses to regional, national and global changes.
Recently, the research center LSE Cities focused on the patterns of growth, governance, transport and density of the four national capitals of Japan, India, Colombia and the UK. Together, the metropolitan areas of Tokyo, Delhi, Bogota and London have over 80 million residents (equal to the population of Germany) and, according to the Brookings Institution, a combined GDP of US$2.2 trillion, the size of the Brazilian economy or three times that of Saudi Arabia.
Tokyo has become a highly efficient global megacity in the last four decades — but despite its enviable integrated public transport system and the forthcoming Olympics in 2020, the city is likely to lose 400,000 people over the next 15 years as a result of low-birth rates and a slowing national economy.
Illustration: Yusha
London, by contrast, has just come out of the demographic doldrums — overtaking its historical high of over 8.6 million (its size in 1939) and riding high on its global economic pulling power (it has just come top of the Mori Memorial Foundation index of city “magnetism”). Such levels of growth are fueled by a dynamic birth rate (twice that of Rome or Madrid) and strong in-migration attracted to London’s resilient economy, promoted aggressively by its proactive mayors.
The Colombian capital of Bogota, with a city population slightly smaller than London at 8 million, has built on the intelligent policies of successive mayors to cope with typical Latin American patterns of informality, violence and unregulated growth. Famous for introducing the Transmilenio Bus Rapid Transit and an extensive system of cycleways (ciclovias, which predate London’s “Boris bikes” by a decade), Bogota is seen as a regional exemplar (alongside Medellin) on how to manage urban change.
Despite being, or perhaps because it is, the capital of the world’s largest democracy, Delhi is still struggling to find a political voice. After pioneering efforts by the former chief minister to build a metro system and introduce natural gas to its buses and rickshaws, the metropolitan area of more than 23 million people has witnessed a sharp increase in inequality even though it remains one of the safest megacities in the world, with 2.7 homicides per 100,000 people compared with Bogota’s 16.1.
Current debates about the efficiency of urban governance gravitate around the “fit” between the size of the administrative boundary controlled by a city mayor or governor, and the actual number of people who live in the “wider functional metropolitan” area. Many cities spill across multiple political jurisdictions as their populations and footprints have grown over time, leading to fragmented decision-making and lack of coordination even though they all “belong” to a continuous urban agglomeration.
For example, only seven million of Mexico City’s 22 million residents are actually controlled by the city mayor of the Distrito Federal while the majority lives (and pays taxes) in the neighboring political districts.
URBAN EXPANSION
The inability of a metropolitan-wide entity to raise money and determine policy and investment strategies for the entire “functional” area, inevitably leads to dysfunctional transport, infrastructure, housing and environmental policies which cannot be solved within the confines of restricted political boundaries. Sustainable commuting patterns or water supply systems, for example, cannot be implemented without some level of control across broader geographical areas that extend well beyond the city limits of these, and other, global cities.
Using data from the DLR-DFD (the German Space Agency), we tracked how administrative boundaries have changed in recent decades in the four cities. While 8.4 million Londoners are now under the jurisdiction of the mayor, they still only make up 39 percent of the more extensive economic region of the South-East of England, which contains 21.8 million. Similarly, the governor of Tokyo is responsible for only 34 percent of one of the largest metropolitan agglomerations in the world with nearly 40 million inhabitants. Delhi at 66 percent and Bogota at 82 percent have a relatively greater share of the population of their respective metropolitan region.
The four cities have responded in different ways to urban expansion. Tokyo and Delhi in effect implemented oversized governance systems over 60 years ago and have waited for the city to catch up. Tokyo’s Metropolitan Organization Act of 1943, which merged the prefecture and city to form the Metropolis of Tokyo, made the new institutional boundaries three times larger than its boundary at the time. Similarly, Delhi’s 1947 independence boundaries covered 19 times the area of Old Delhi (Shahjahanabad) and Lutyens’ New Delhi.
Today, the built-up areas of both have spilled over these “historic” boundaries, with Delhi showing high levels of new development in the neighboring states to the south and east of the traditional city boundary. Delhi’s built area is still growing rapidly, while Bogota and Tokyo experienced their growth spurts towards the end of the last century.
The 1943 Greater London Plan defined the political boundary of the then-London County Council at what was roughly the limit of the built-up area, but reinforced it with the implementation of the Green Belt. By 1965 the London County Council gave way to the Greater London Council which covered five times the area (which coincides with today’s Greater London Authority boundaries).
NEGATIVE IMPACTS
In 1954, Bogota’s Special District enlarged the city boundary to 37 times its former size, and while much of the administrative area remains unpopulated (due to topography and land constraints) the majority of recent growth is concentrated.
Delhi, Bogota, London and Tokyo have pioneered innovations in transport in the past few decades, from Tokyo’s highly integrated transport system to Delhi’s new Metro, London’s Congestion Charge, Boris Bikes and CrossRail to Bogota’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and ciclovias.
In London, there is a separation between ownership and operations — with some private companies managing buses and trains — while the public sector (mayor and boroughs) still maintains the strategic and managerial power over the base infrastructure. Delhi’s BRT route (50 percent private sector funded) and Tokyo’s rail privatization (representing 63 percent of the transport infrastructure) confirm the growing importance of private sector investment in public transport infrastructure.
Although national governments traditionally control and fund the management of rail-based public transport, this research confirms that they play a less significant role than the sub-city level when it comes to roads. In London, local boroughs manage 90 percent of roads, while the mayor (through Transport for London) controls the major arteries which carry 30 percent of the city’s traffic.
Local boards control 89 percent of the roads in Tokyo. Infrastructure management at the level of the municipality represents an advantage in terms of the exercise of democracy and responsiveness to citizens, but economic growth and the availability of resources will struggle to keep apace of the requirements of urban populations. As a result, support from the private sector or national government will become even more significant to the sustainability of urban transport systems in the future.
Density is a fundamental measure of urban structure and determines the efficiency of its urban footprint. Higher densities can facilitate more sustainable public transport, walking and cycling, making it more efficient to provide services and promote urban vitality. These advantages depend, however, on high-quality urban design and effective city management to minimize the negative impacts of overcrowding, stress and pollution.
While some cities have maintained resident population levels in their central areas, others are losing population from these zones as their boundaries expand. This poses a challenge to cities, as they depend on residents’ taxes to finance urban facilities and infrastructure.
At the same time, most cities have a high percentage of people entering to work each day who do not pay taxes there and often are not represented by the city government as they cannot vote locally. Studying commuters is therefore fundamental to the governance of cities. Tokyo has the equivalent of 20 percent of its population entering the administrative city every day, while Delhi has 13.5 percent and Bogota and London in the order of 9 percent.
Density differs widely within the four case study cities. Delhi and Bogota have higher and more concentrated densities in the city core and outskirts while Tokyo and London present lower and more balanced distribution of densities.
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