A panel of Moroccan and foreign experts met in Tangier to debate issues relating to urban growth and access to essential services in developing countries.
Gathered within the framework of a colloquium on the theme "Urban growth and access to essential services", organised by the think tank on water and energy access issues "(Re)Sources", the participants examined, last Thursday, themes related to the dynamics of urban governance, essential services within sprawling and fragmented urban territories, the financing of access to essential urban services, and the consideration of climate risk. Speaking at the opening of this colloquium, the President of the think tank, Patrice Fonlladosa, made it known that the phenomenon of urbanisation, especially in the cities of emerging countries, will have to accelerate in the coming decades, estimating that the number of urban inhabitants would reach 6.4 billion by 2050.
Urbanisation, when it is done in an uncontrolled manner, fragments the city and creates informal neighbourhoods not connected to essential services, he observed. Moreover, he noted, efforts to develop access to essential services are often cancelled out by galloping urbanisation, adding that in this context of intense concentration of populations, infrastructure needs become considerable and require a real strategy for their definition, financing, and implementation.
For his part, the President of the Tetouan City Council, Mohamed Idaomar, who indicated that urbanisation concerns 60% of the population in Morocco, estimated that its speed of development by 2050 would reach the global estimate, that is to say, 80% of the population would be in the urban space. The situation will be "catastrophic" if it is not associated with good management and forward-looking governance, he warned. In a statement to MAP, the former Prime Minister of France, former Member of the European Parliament, Ambassador of the Republic in charge of negotiations for polar zones, and member of "(Re)Sources", Michel Rocard, noted that the predictability of urban concentration and the speed of the phenomenon constitute one of the major factors for organising the supply of essential services, stressing that access to good information concerning new arrivals in the city, as well as their needs, is one of the challenges to be met to face this organisational problem.
