T

he new urban agenda proposed during the UN Third Habitat Preparatory Meeting (PrepCom3) currently being held in Surabaya, East Java, requires cities to have better planning in order to view urbanization as a development tool instead of a problem.

The UN Habitat III’s secretary-general, Joan Clos, said during a press briefing on Monday that the new urban agenda proposed by UN member countries during the meeting, held from Monday to Wednesday, was to take action to improve urbanization.

Clos said the proposal was made in regard to the need to strengthen urban planning design, the quality of which had deteriorated over the past 20 years and needed to be fully reinstated to guarantee good and quality urbanization.

“Urbanization is a political and human community process that requires design. If it is not planned, it will generate lots of difficulties that interfere with the capacity of urbanization to address issues like climate change,” he said, adding that it also generated other problems like ghettos and segregation between communities.

Clos said more and more cities were expanding without proper planning. “The number of properly planned cities spectacularly declined.” Eighty percent of city growth used to be planned 20 years prior, he said.

He added that the figure decreased to 50 percent in 2015. “Most of the city does not have the capacity to design and plan. This spontaneous urbanization grew without proper streets or public transportation,” he said.

Indonesia’s urbanization is among the fastest in the world. Its urban population grew 4.4 percent per year between 1960 and 2013, compared with 3.6 percent in China and 3 percent in India.

By 2025, 68 percent of Indonesia’s population is expected live in cities, compared to 52 percent in 2013.

Greater Jakarta annually received around 70,000 newcomers, creating new cities on its outskirts. Weak planning has turned Greater Jakarta into a big, slow and ineffective city, he said.

Jakarta is often inconsistent in implementing its spatial planning. Kemang in South Jakarta, for example, used to be solely a residential area. However, as most of the houses on its main roads were turned into commercial buildings, instead of confronting violations of the spatial zoning bylaw, the city administration changed the bylaw.

Clos added that another issue that was important was climate change. “We have an agreement in Paris [Un Framework Convention on Climate Change] last year, so the government decided to take several measures,” he said.

He said that as the city was responsible for 70 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, urbanization had become extremely important to address climate change.

Public Works and Public Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono said urbanization was unavoidable in Indonesia and other countries.

“We need a better plan to address urban issues,” he said.

Basuki said Indonesia was implementing the 100-0-100 urban plan, which is meeting 100 percent of water supply needs, zero slums and meeting 100 percent of sanitation needs.

“The program is actually in line with the new urban agenda proposed by the PrepCom3,” he said, adding that his ministry was trying to implement the programs throughout the country.

PrepCom3 will be the last opportunity for UN member countries, the local government and other stakeholders to give their perspectives on the new urban agenda to be proposed at the third UN Habitat conference.

The conference will take place in Quito, Ecuador, in October. PrepCom3 is the final round after PrepCom1 and PrepCom2 were held in New York in 2014 and Nairobi in 2015, respectively.