For the first time in human history a majority of humanity lives in urban areas.

Witness presents an unsentimental introduction to some of the remarkable women and men who struggle to survive against desperate odds in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum on the outskirts of Nairobi. About a million people live in Kibera and with a population density estimated at 3,000 people per hectare — 750,000 people in one square mile — or no more than 37 square feet per person, Kibera is one of the most crowded places on earth.

Some of the basics from Kibera UK, a project dedicated to improving the lives of those living in Kibera.

Overview
There are approx 2.5 million slum dwellers in about 200 settlements in Nairobi representing 60% of the Nairobi population, occupying just 6% of the land. Kibera houses almost 1 Million of these people. Kibera is the biggest slum in Africa and one of the biggest in the world.

Land Ownership
The Government of Kenya owns all the land. 10% of people are shack owners and many of these people own many other shacks and sub-let them. All the rest are tenants with no rights.

Housing
The average size of shack in this area is 12ft x 12ft built with mud walls, screened with concrete, a corrugated tin roof, dirt or concrete floor. The cost is about Ksh 700 per Month (£6). These shacks often house up to 8 or more, many sleeping on the floor.

Residents
The original settlers of Kibera were the Nubian people from the Kenyan/Sudanese border – they now occupy about 15% of Kibera, are mostly Muslim and are also mostly shack owners. The other shack owners are mostly Kikuyu (the majority tribe in Nairobi) – although in most cases they do not live there but are absentee landlords. The majority of the tenants are Luo, Luhya and some Kamba – these people are from the west of Kenya. There are many tensions in Kibera, particularly tribal tensions between the Luo & Kikuyu, also between landlord and tenant and those with and without jobs.

Electricity, Water & Sewage
Only about 20% of Kibera has electricity. UN-Habitat is in the process of providing it to some parts of Kibera – this will include street lighting, security lighting and connection to shacks (this costs Ksch 900 per shack, which in most cases is not affordable).

Until recently Kibera had no water and it had to be collected from the Nairobi dam. The dam water is not clean and causes typhoid and cholera. Now there are two mains water pipes into Kibera, one from the municipal council and one from the World Bank. Residents collect water at Ksh 3 per 20 litres.

In most of Kibera there are no toilet facilities. One latrine (hole in the ground) is shared by up to 50 shacks. Once full, young boys are employed to empty – they take the sludge to the river. UN-Habitat and a few other agencies are trying to help and improve this situation but it is painfully slow.

In the United States, the Kibera Slum Foundation works to alleviate the grinding poverty found in Kibera.

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Al Jazeera has been highlighting an issue that unites city dwellers around the world: traffic.

Sao Paulo in Brazil, the third-largest city in the world, is no stranger to traffic jams and frustrated commuters.

And as the city’s middle class continues to grow, so does the number of cars joining the roads. Gabriel Elizondo reports.

Below an April 2008 article from TIME:

Residents of Sao Paolo do amazing things in their cars. They shave. They apply their makeup. They chat up the girl or guy in the neighboring car and make dates. They read. They learn foreign languages. They watch DVDs. Paulistas do all these things because they have no choice; the city’s crippling traffic problem forces them to spend a major proportion of their lives inching their way through gridlock.

Morning, noon and night, the people of Brazil’s biggest city are stuck behind the wheel. Saturday morning, Sunday evening, weekday afternoon, the panorama is the same: cars, bumper to bumper. “Here you go,” says Alexandre Teixeira, slowing to a crawl one recent weekend. “Sao Paulo, 7:30 on a Sunday night, and we are in a traffic jam.”

With more than 20 million people living in the greater metropolitan area, a topography of hills and valleys that makes it difficult to get your bearings, and the hum of a city that is South America’s business, design and industrial capital, Sao Paulo has never been easy to navigate. But the growing economy and higher living standards of recent years have made getting around the city increasingly difficult. More cars were sold last year than during any in history, and close to 1,000 new vehicles takes to the streets each day. The result, predictably, is chaotic congestion.

“It’s gotten a lot worse over the last three years,” says taxi driver Fernando Ambrosio. “And it is going to get even worse. Everyone is buying cars now. There is much more financing available. I think I am going to give up and do something else, it’s too stressful to spend 15 hours a day in traffic.”

Like Ambrosio, millions of Paulistas are condemned to spend large parts of their lives staring at the bumper of the vehicle in front. In the city center, the sheer volume of cars — often made worse by stop-start delivery trucks and parents on the school run — brings traffic to a grinding halt. And the absence of ring roads leaves the city’s outskirts clogged by trucks and commercial vehicles, some of which are not even intending to stop in Sao Paulo, but have no route around the place. At peak hours, the accumulated tailbacks can stretch past 120 miles.

Not surprising, then, that Paulistas all have traffic stories to tell. These range from the depressingly familiar — the time it took them two hours to move one city block — to the admiringly audacious — one oft-repeated tale involves a guy throwing a cell phone in the open car window of a girl he fancied, and then calling her to ask for a date. Everyone knows someone who sat so long without moving they gave up and parked their car to wait it out at the nearest coffee shop. And with a construction boom under way, some people are now complaining of traffic jams before they even leave home, as neighbors jostle to get out of underground parking garages.

Not only does their commute eat into Paulistas’ productivity and sense of well-being by taking hours out their day; it also leaves them angry, exhausted and depressed.

“I feel useless, like I am a prisoner,” says Andreia de Oliveira, an architect who spends between two and three hours each day going to and from work. “I could be at the gym, studying, at home relaxing. But instead I am stressed and frustrated.”

Fixing the problem won’t be easy. Sao Paulo currently has a program that obliges each car to be kept off the street during rush hour one day each week, as well as special bus lanes that help public transport move more easily. It recently announced an additional series of measures to help speed up the flow.

But given the scale of the problem, these measures are timid and ineffective, and the city has rejected a full-scale day without a car program such as the one used in Mexico City. It has also refused to even consider the congestion-charge option that reduced traffic in central London by 30%.

The obvious answer is to invest in public transport systems. But Sao Paulo has just 38 miles of metro line, and although it plans to add another 22 miles to the total by 2010, that is clearly too little, too late. Even the city’s traffic chief admits things will get worse before they get better.

“I am not pessimistic,” Roberto Scaringella told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper last month. “There’s a limit to the amount of construction. And to the motorization too. But the consequence is that we are going to have to learn to live with longer traffic jams.”

Kill your car. Carless since 1996.

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For commuters in Bangkok, traffic gridlock is often so severe residents begin their daily commutes well before dawn, and even then there is no guarantee they will make it to their destination on time.

As part of Al Jazeera’s global look at the impact of traffic congestion Aela Callen reports from the Thai capital.

In 2008, Cassandra James wrote about Bangkok’s on-going traffic congestion:

Recently, I stumbled upon some old websites talking about traffic problems in Bangkok. Written about 10 years ago, they mentioned how Bangkok had one of the worst traffic problems in the world with unbelievable traffic jams. However, they went on to mention that once the sky train and the underground lines were opened, these traffic jams would become a thing of the past. Fast forward 10 years and, in Bangkok, we’re still talking about how terrible the traffic jams are and how nothing has changed. But why is this?

Bangkok’s government did do a big push to improve public transportation in the 1990s by adding mass transit systems. The sky train opened in Bangkok in 1999. It reaches only limited areas of the city and, although expansion has been promised for the last five years, it’s yet to happen.

The underground train system opened in July 2004. Initially, the passenger count was good but, due to it being more expensive than the sky train, the number of riders using it every day has fallen considerably. Estimates when it opened said over 400,000 people would use it daily. Lately, it’s had more like 150,000 passengers every day. Not only is it more expensive than the sky train but it also goes to some of the same places the sky train goes to. As this is the case, Thais prefer to use the sky train because at least, when you’re traveling, there’s something to see out of the window.

An accident on the line in 2005, which injured more than 140 people, didn’t help its cause.

People’s expectation that the traffic jams would lessen in Bangkok once the underground and sky train opened also did not take into account the Thai obsession with the car. Owning a car has become an enormous status symbol and even the lower middle-class, who can barely afford to get through to the end of each month, are spending all their money on buying a car. This is causing an even larger congestion of Bangkok’s roads, and it’s expected to continue. Every year, more cars are added to the capital cities roads and less people use public transportation.

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In Russia, more than 30,000 people are killed in traffic accidents every year, costing the economy $6 billion annually. Neave Barker reports from Moscow.

The Russian Federation is facing something of a crisis as its Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) account for two thirds of all the fatalities on Europe’s roads. Relative to the number of cars, it makes Russia’s roads the most dangerous in the world.

And since the collapse of the Soviet Union the problem has got much worse. A capitalist economy and an economic boom fuelled by energy exports means many more cars are now using roads which are simply not up to the job. But poor infrastructure and too many vehicles are only a part of the story.

Most of the deaths on Russia’s roads are caused by excess – too much speed and too much to drink. Every day 100 people will – on average – die on Russia’s roads. It has 10 times more accidents per vehicle than the United Kingdom.

But what makes the statistics all the more shocking is the fact that Russia is facing a demographic crisis. The life expectancy for a Russian man is just 58 – lower than Bangladesh. Preventing the number of needless deaths is now one of the Kremlin’s highest priorities.

A shocking new TV commercial, which show the bodies of car crash victims,has just been released as an attempt to force drivers into buckling up and slowing down. From 1 January the police fines for motorists were also increased.

But campaigners say it will not make a difference as corruption is endemic and bad drivers will still be able to bribe their way out of trouble. They also point to systemic failures in the emergency services. Traffic policeman have no first aid training and ambulances often do not have the most basic life saving equipment. Many people here are pessimistic that the situation will get better anytime soon.

After all, they say, the figures speak for themselves. In last decade 312,000 have died on Russia’s roads – that’s more than the country’s total death toll in Chechnya and Afghanistan.

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Public transport demand experienced a historical decline in Athens in the last 40 years, leading to a dramatic increase of the car ownership. Athens now has some two million cars, one the highest per capita levels of car ownership in the world and the highest per capita car ownership in the European Union. The proportion of private/passenger car ownership in Athens is 2.4 citizens/car, which is considered to be very high, showing an annual increase of 6-7 %.

Athens has had a novel traffic-control system in place ever since 1983 – that was when the government decided that cars with odd and even number plates would be allowed into the city on alternate days.

In theory, the measure is meant to reduce by half the numbers of cars on the road on any given day.

In practice, many Athenian families now own two cars, and as the licensing authorities often allow car owners to choose odd or even number plates, the system is much less effective than it could be.

Pezee is a Greek NGO aiming at the protection of pedestrian rights in Athens. From their website:

Athens is currently the most polluted by traffic and the most pedestrian unfriendly capital in Europe. The inhuman conditions have serious consequences in economic activities like tourism. The share in the total tourists arrivals constantly declines, despite the excellent natural climate and the plethora of monuments from the millennia-long history of the city. The monuments of Athens, like Acropolis, spared from time, suffer serious damages from motorised traffic due to pollution. For this reason it is not possible for many statutes to remain in their original place, for fear of damage by air pollution, and the most significant among them are preserved in special nitrogen atmosphere. The common use of cars and motorcycles and the persecution of pedestrian and bicycle traffic contributed to the deterioration of the health conditions of the population. So, Greeks walking less than anywhere else in Europe, have been turned into the most obese nation in Europe. Greece has also higher accident rate compared to other EU countries because of the higher motorcycle use (which is 15-30 times more dangerous than cars) and the pitiful pedestrian traffic conditions. The administration which promotes an anti-pedestrian mentality offers to pedestrians more obstacles (like fences erected on the sidewalks) and traffic tickets for the pedestrians who are forced by the conditions to move on the road pavement. On the other hand, the administration offers new privileges for motorcycles (like the use of dedicated bus lanes) and new tax discounts for motorised vehicles, falsely presenting them to the public as social policy measures.

The public space for the pedestrians is under constant pressure from various lucrative activities of the nearby properties and strong economic interests. An entire popular movement for the protection of the last free spaces in Athens has been developed, when, in numerous cases, the local population reacted to the downgrade of such spaces, through building and greenery destruction. However the issue is often settled through the use of police violence. Unfortunately the interest of some cronies has in most cases for the administration higher priority over the health, safety, dignity and welfare of the citizens. Instead of the protection of the common interest the administration leads mass operations for the deception of the public opinion. Thus garages in the city centre, destroying public spaces, are presented as projects for the benefit of pedestrians and urban motorways splitting apart densely inhabited areas as projects for the protection of the environment!

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Karachi, Pakistan’s financial capital, is a city of 18 million people, where traditional ethnic tensions have always been high.

But in recent weeks, those tensions have turned into armed clashes, with officials warning that the Taliban might use the city as a financial base to fund their activities.

As Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan reports, some residents say a political solution is the only way to halt the violence and unite the city.

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“He is carrying out a redistribution of wealth without a discourse of rage,” said Héctor Abad Faciolince, a prominent novelist and political commentator here. “If Medellín cannot take these risks, then what place can?”

A look at the transformation of Medellín under the administration of Sergio Fajardo Valderrama.

Elected in 2003 as an independent, and riding a growing economy and this decline in violent crime, Mr. Fajardo has turned the city into a showcase for new educational and architectural projects.

He increased city spending on education, bringing it to 40 percent of Medellín’s annual budget of $900 million, while also raising spending on public transportation and microlending projects for small businesses. Five new libraries are at the center of his social policies, but Mr. Fajardo is also building a sprawling public science center and dozens of schools, and expanding public transportation by building cable cars up into the slums on the city’s hills.

He contends the poor will develop the skills they need to compete through these investments in education and new public spaces, reflecting a faith in architecture to help achieve this goal.

“Fajardo is making a long-term wager by carving out a foothold for the state in areas that were neglected for years,” said Aldo Civico, who as director for the Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University has done extensive fieldwork on Medellín’s violence. “You need to start a process of transformation somewhere.”

Many parts of Medellín remain far from idyllic. Police officers toting assault rifles and wearing combat fatigues still patrol many parts of the city. Downtown, just steps away from the elegant plaza filled with voluptuous sculptures by another native son, Fernando Botero, street children sniff glue out of plastic bags and snort cocaine. Some in Medellín whisper that Diego Fernando Murillo, the paramilitary warlord known as Don Berna, still controls much of the city from his cell in nearby Itagüí prison. Others say drug traffickers launder revenues into the construction boom in high-rise apartments and malls that is accompanying the mayor’s architectural reconfiguration.

And yet Mr. Fajardo’s transformation of Medellín has captivated the city and, increasingly, other parts of Colombia. His approval ratings stand at more than 80 percent, making him the country’s most popular mayor and leading him to be widely mentioned as a potential presidential candidate after his term ends this year.

Fajardo 2010.

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Wanted: Good Ideas that Fight Corruption

The Global Integrity Impact Challenge is seeking proposals for projects that use Global Integrity’s diagnostic tools to fight corruption. The best proposals get a US$1,000 prize and a chance to pitch the Partnership for Transparency Fund (PTF) for funding to implement their ideas. This year, Global Integrity released our third annual assessment of anti-corruption and good governance trends around the world.

The Global Integrity Report: 2008 highlights the strengths and weaknesses of government accountability mechanisms in specific country contexts, creating a checklist for incremental reforms. Now that the data has been gathered, where do we start addressing these governance gaps? This a question that Global Integrity believes has to be answered locally. To answer this question, the Global Integrity Challenge will offer cash prizes to groups that use the Report’s Integrity Indicators to develop projects that fight corruption. We’re looking to promote direct linkages between the problem of corruption, Global Integrity’s diagnostic tools, [your proposed project here] and measurable change on the ground. For more information on the types of proposals we’re accepting and the application process, please see Impact Challenge.

The application deadline is April 5th, 2009. A jury will review the proposals and select six to ten finalists. An online public vote will select three winners. Each winner will receive a US $1,000 prize as well as an introduction to the Partnership for Transparency Fund, an organization that provides grants to groups working on corruption issues. You can learn more about the Impact Challenge at Impact Challenge.

Global Integrity is an independent, non-profit organization tracking governance and corruption trends around the world.

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Lagos, Nigeria is already struggling with overpopulation problems. There is widespread poverty, poor sanitation, pollution and perhaps the worst traffic in the world. And the worst may be yet to come. The United Nations projects that by the year 2015 the population will grow to 20 million, making it the third largest city in the world. But as VOA Brian Padden reports, city officials are surprisingly optimistic about the future. They say Lagos has nowhere to go but up.

I admit it’s not my favourite city in Africa or even Nigeria but I have heard great things about the new governor, Babatunde Fashola. It’s amazing what good governance can accomplish.

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President Obama met 60 of the nation’s Mayors at the White House Friday, promising closer cooperation but urging them to spend the massive new infusion of government funds wisely.

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