In Africa, smaller cities grow faster

As a construction worker in Botswana's booming capital city, Mpontshang Mokwe is hardly struggling for work these days.

"There are too many buildings," Mr. Mokwe says, hauling a long strip of lumber toward the most recent of his projects – guest quarters for yet another new home in Gaborone's Block 8 neighborhood.

Not long ago, Block 8 was all dust and thorn trees and scrubland. Today, it is pure sprawl, with ever-sprouting apartment blocks, single-family homes, and shopping centers. Wander through Block 8, chockablock with construction workers such as Mokwe, and it's not difficult to imagine how, over the past 15 years, the population of Botswana's capital has ballooned more than 50 percent to over 200,000. It is expected to grow to 500,000 by 2020.

This rapid population increase is not unique to Gaborone. According to a recently released UN report, "State of World Population 2007," (www.unfpa.org/swp/) there is mass migration across the globe from rural areas to cities, as well as natural population increase within cities themselves. By next year, the report says, more than half of the world's people will live in urban centers, placing unprecedented strain on land and city services. Much of this shift will take place in Africa – and in smaller cities more than big ones.

"The increase in urban population is happening worldwide," says Cheryl Hendricks, head of the southern African security program at the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies. "But it's particularly strong for Asia and Africa. These are developing countries, and as development occurs there's always a shift from rural to urban areas."

The continent's sprawling megacities, such as Lagos, Nigeria, Kinshasa, Congo, and Johannesburg will absorb many of these new city-dwellers. Already, population pressures in these metropolises have city officials scrambling. In Johannesburg this year, for instance, there have been several riots in the crowded townships, with people protesting what they see as their government's inability to provide basic services such as water and electricity.

But according to the UN report, it is smaller cities such as Gaborone that will bear the brunt of the world's rapid urbanization. According to the study, more than 52 percent of urban-dwellers live in cities with fewer than 500,000 residents, and these smaller cities are growing far more than large ones.

Mark Collinson, a researcher with the School of Public Health at Johannesburg's University of Witwatersrand, gives several reasons for that trend: More rural residents are moving to smaller, regional centers; fertility patterns in smaller cities tend to resemble the larger-family countryside; people have heeded family members' warnings about the "big, bad" megacities.

"Crime and squalor might be higher in the big city, so people might be more attracted to live someplace like Nelspruit," Mr. Collinson says, referring to a small city in northeast South Africa. "Smaller cities might have better housing standards and living conditions."

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