Glossary of Terms
Chapter 2: Context review
2.2 Key dimensions of urbanisation
2.2.1 Urban size
For the purposes of water and sanitation management, Pilgrim and colleagues (2004) have categorised urban areas, as shown in Table 2-2. It can be deduced from demographic data that as many people live in towns and smaller cities as there are people that live in bigger cities (United Nations 2002). In fact, as of the year 2000, approximately 27 percent of the global population live in cities and towns with a population of less than 500,000 people (United Nations 2002: 6).
In urban areas of less developed regions, approximately 24 percent of the population are projected to live in urban areas with a population less than 500,000 in 2015 (United Nations 2002: 6). In contrast, in urban areas in developed regions, approximately 43 percent are projected to live in urban areas with a population less than 500,000 by 2015 (United Nations 2002). In Asia and Africa, towns are the most common type of urban settlement (Pilgrim et al.
2004). In terms of frequencies in the occurrences of towns, Pilgrim and colleagues (2004) have found that for every large town there are 2-3 medium-sized towns, and approximately 8-10 small towns.
17 Figure 2-1: Mapping of urban areas based on two key dimensions
Notes: The ovals in Figure 2-1 represent urban areas mentioned in the references in the literature review, and the colours represent the respective regions in which the urban area is located, i.e. black represents the Asian region;
blue represents the American region; green represents Europe; orange represents the Pacific region, and purple represents the African region. The development, x-dimension, has four categories: Low income economies (LIE);
Lower-middle-income economies (LMIE); Upper-middle-income economies (UMIE) and High-income economies (HIE) as per national categorisations by the World Bank (2008). For the y-dimension, the size based categorisation of towns and cities is based on a World Bank sponsored report by Pilgrim et al. (2004). Population data has been collected from a trusted web site (City Populations 2008).
In a time of climate change when it is expected that an increasing number of people will move to cities, increasing the efforts on solving the water and sanitation issues in small towns is likely to slow the migration to slums around larger cities (Word Bank 2009: 12).
18 Table 2-2: Distribution of world population in a range of urban size categories
Urban size bracket
% of total population
2000 2015 Category*
10 million or more 3.7 4.7 Mega city
5 million to 10 million 2.8 3.7 Very large city
1 million to 5 million 11.1 13.3 Large city
500,000 to 1 million 4.8 4.9 Medium-sized city
Fewer than 500,000 24.8 27.1
Small city (>200,000) Large town (>50,000) Medium-sized town Small town (<20,000)
Rural areas 52.8 46.3 Village (<2,000)
Sources: This table shows the size brackets that have been developed by Pilgrim and colleagues (2004) and used
for the purposes of urban water management. The current and projected percentage of population in each urban size bracket has been collected from a United Nations report (2002).
Considering the demographic importance of towns, it is apparent that improving the capacity for town water services provision is of critical importance in order to achieve the Millennium development goals as is argued also by the United Nations as a key step towards addressing worldwide poverty.
Inadequate provision for water and sanitation affects hundreds of millions of people in small urban centres and is a major constraint to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (UN-HABITAT 2006: 1).
It is noted that there are particular problems for (small, medium-sized and large) towns:
Water supply and sanitation services are [critical] to a town’s prosperity.
But service provision in towns has been extremely poor… most often characterised by sporadic government hand-outs for rehabilitation or expansion, followed by long periods of deterioration. There has been a lack
19 of knowledge about institutional arrangements and planning processes
appropriate to towns (Pilgrim et al. 2004: 6).
These problems are particularly severe for small and medium sized towns that are characterised by (adapted from Pilgrim et al. 2004):
• Lack of resources: skilled staff, finances, information and knowledge;
• Unpredictable population growth in population in individual towns;
• High levels of uncertainty in source availability and economic capacity; and
• Close interactions between rural surroundings and urban areas.
Table 2-3: Population sizes of towns and cities mentioned in this chapter
Name Population size
Jakarta, Indonesia 8,839,247
Mexico City, Mexico 8,463,906
Chicago, United States 8,307,904
Sydney, Australia 3,641,422
Melbourne, Australia 3,371,888
Stockholm, Sweden 1,889,945
Fukuoka City, Japan 1,414,417
La Paz, Bolivia 713,400
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe 676,787
Nottingham, United Kingdom 666,358
Pingyao, People’s Republic of China 480,000
Karlsruhe, Germany 286,327
Suva, Fiji 172,948
Kumbo, Cameroon 116,500
Annapolis Valley, Canada 85,000
Tagbilaran City, Philippines 92,297
South Tarawa, Kiribati 40,311
Source: City Populations (2008)
20 To improve the situation for towns, some argue that generating economies of scale through regional aggregation is the only feasible solution, but this is of course in opposition to the decentralisation argument – for which significant disagreement exists (E-Conference on Town Water Supply and Sanitation 2004). There is however agreement that a new framework is required, and as discussed at a conference on small towns in Addis Ababa in 2002, water professionals agreed on the following elements of success:
Financial and management autonomy, transparency and accountability, professional support, competition, legal framework and regulation, demand responsiveness, and incentives for expansion (Pilgrim et al. 2004: iii).
In this first part of the chapter, the main conclusion is that small towns do not currently have an appropriate management approach for water and sanitation provision, but that there are attempts to define such frameworks by international agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank.
The reasons for why small town water services provision is particularly problematic is due to severely limited resources, mainly in terms of finances and staff skills, but also in terms of high levels of uncertainty which partly relates to the availability of freshwater resources; as well as issues such as rapid population growth, and a diverse demographic with complex interactions that can not be aggregated and simplified in the same way as is possible at a larger scale.