Greg A. Brown

 Originally Published 04/23/07 in the Kansas State Collegian

By the time you finish reading this column, more than 600 people will have migrated from rural to urban areas. In a day, that number reaches 200,000; in a year’s time, it is more thant 70 million.

One billion of these urban dwellers live as squatters, occupying land that isn’t legally theirs.

By 2030, that number will swell to 2 billion, and by 2050, it will be 3 billion.
Listen to emotion, intuition, but continue to think deeply

Though some of that rise could be attributed to overall population growth, it is still an increase from one-sixth to one-third of the projected world population.

Author Robert Neuwirth recounted those facts to an audience at the 2005 Technology Entertainment Design conference, calling this “the new urban world.” Even with fewer rights and legal protections than in the West, developing nations are seeing their urban areas swell.

Most squatters, when asked about their reasons for coming, will tell you they came to these urban areas for opportunities. This is a familiar dream, shared by millions of immigrants arriving in the United States from the 17th century to today.

We’ve had anecdotal confirmation for a while (along with a bevy of movies, including “An American Tail” and “Coming to America”), but last week a study offered some statistical confirmation that urbanization is beneficial.

A team of researchers charted data from across the United States, China, and the European Union, trying to determine how the size of a city affects different costs and benefits.

They found variables like household consumption of water and electricity remain relatively consistent over a wide range of urban sizes.

Transportation and electrical infrastructure enjoyed an “economy of scale” effect, whereby the per-capita cost went down with the increase of urban areas.

A more beneficial class of attributes is more common in larger areas. Gross Domestic Product and other indicators of economic success and innovation all grow on a per-capita basis.

Though some social ills rise along with metropolitan size (like disease and crime), the authors’ study asserts the trend is overwhelmingly positive. Though some people suspect urbanization just pushes the problems elsewhere, it seems like this change is positive on the whole.

For all our concern about globalization and free trade, the United States has a vested interest in ensuring that the rest of the world prospers internally as well.

World Bank loans and programs like the Hundred Dollar Laptop are deisgned to create these types of opportunities.

Because squatting is the primary method of urbanization today, we should pressure our developing allies to adapt their bylaws accordingly.

An excellent model is Turkey, which has two rules encouraging orderly squatting and its ensuing economic benefits.

First, they have an “overnight” rule, whereby any structure constructed in one night cannot be condemned or torn down the following morning without due process.

Second, once any squatter community reaches 2,000 people, the government can be petitioned to recognize it as a legal sub-municipality.

These laws ensure that new residents receive legal protection and inclusion in the political process - two key factors to building the community and connections that drive these urban incomes upward.

Most of the oft-touted solutions for worldwide problems require us to drastically change the behavior of billions. This one is just one step, but it only requires that we recognize the already-drastic migration of more than 600 people in the last five minutes.