Asia must heed warning of recent floods
Changyong Rhee says the recent floods that hit Asia were just a foretaste of the devastation that will follow if the spreading urban sprawl is allowed to overwhelm infrastructure and our environment's capacity
Are Asia's recent floods the result of bad luck, bad weather or bad design? Manila was left paralysed, with a third of the city under water and thousands evacuated from their homes. A few weeks earlier, the worst floods to hit Beijing in decades killed 77 people and affected nearly one million others. A year ago, Thailand's floods caused the deaths of more than 600 people. The country lost 12per cent of its gross domestic product when Bangkok was inundated.
Simple bad luck? The scourge of climate change? Or uncontrolled urban sprawl? The answer is "all of the above".
Asia is on the move, with economic growth attracting millions to its cities. Urbanisation is happening at an unprecedented scale and speed. Infrastructure simply can't keep up. And climate change and erratic weather are altering the way cities need to function.
Asia has added one billion people to its urban population in the past 30 years. That's more than every other region in the world combined. Moving from a 10per cent to 50per cent urban population took Latin America 210 years, North America 105 years, and Europe 150 years. It took Asia only 95 years. In fact, in China, the transition happened in just 60 years.
But the biggest difference is not simply speed - it's how these cities have grown. "Megacities" - home to more than 10 million citizens - are proliferating in Asia at breakneck speed. The three most densely populated large cities in the world are in South Asia. By 2025, 21 of the world's 37 megacities will be Asian.
This pace of urbanisation has not only led to traffic snarls and massive pressure on resources like water and sanitation, it has also created slums - 61per cent of the world's slum dwellers are in Asia - and contributes to rising crime.