Why Mid-Sized Cities are the Key to Solving Our Most Pressing Needs
It seems to be human nature to place greater confidence in anything that is bigger. When it comes to cities, a handful of the largest cities in the world receive significant amounts of attention while smaller cities carry on their work in the relative shadows.
But those mid-sized cities are critical in solving the most pressing problems we face today. This is doubly true in Africa. Mid-sized, or intermediary, cities of Africa number over 1500. These are cities you may have never heard of – like Kisumu, Kenya.
As the host city for Africities 9, Africa’s largest democratic gathering, Kisumu was significantly stretched to accommodate so many people from so many different countries. Delegates ranged from exhibitors and delegates to VIP heads of state and needed to be registered, security checked, fed and organized each day. It was the largest event gathering ever held in Kisumu and it was done on purpose. Kenya was the host country but UCLG Africa was committed to hosting Africities 9 in a secondary city, choosing Kisumu with a population of 400,000 rather than Nairobi with a population of over 4 million.
The conference theme recognized that the greatest improvement in quality of life for the greatest number of people will require “Improving Lives in Intermediary Cities.” The context of the conference was Africa but this dynamic holds true in the rest of the world as well. Meetings in Italy and Spain re-confirmed the critical but often overlooked role that intermediary cities play there. In the United States, recent research findings confirm that mid-sized and smaller cities and communities are in great need of a wide range of support.
Why are mid-sized, intermediary cities, so important? The deliberations at the Africities conference clarified the reasons:
The largest cities in Africa cannot manage the significant informal growth they are experiencing. Pressures on infrastructure are long past the breaking point in most major cities, particularly for newly arrived and hopeful residents from rural or smaller communities. The perception of opportunities in larger cities is often met with the harsh realities of impoverished margins in major cities.
Major cities struggle to bridge unique urban to rural and agricultural needs without important transitions offered by smaller cities and communities. Value-added services are often incremental, passing from source to finished product. Intermediary cities can supply basic resources but they can also add significant value to supply major city demands.
Intermediary cities offer a greater possibility for true inclusion in democratic, economic and cultural decisions. Smaller settings allow more direct access to democratic processes and leaders, including a more direct linkage between participation and results. These shorter accountability paths may prove essential to overcoming corruption, inequality, and systemic exclusion.
Intermediary cities offer specialized capabilities driven by more direct access to resources and local human capabilities. There are distinct cost benefits if raw materials from farms, ranches, forests, or fields can be transformed into goods close to production. There are also significant environmental benefits in keeping these processes close to the source and reserving transportation costs for finished, marketable products.
Mr. Jean Elong Mbassi, Secretary General of United Cities and Local Governments Africa emphatically noted that “Africa is dependent on how we treat intermediary cities.”
This is true for Africa but applies everywhere in the world. The biggest cities draw significant attention but the dramatic growth of urban populations require that we better understand and support the large number of intermediary cities. The importance of establishing a consistent, comparable data measurement framework is a significant step in helping them to plan and perform well.