UN Calls for Harmonious City Development in Cambodia

By Soy Sophea

The UN agency for Habitat, based in Phnom Penh, has called for harmonious city development in Cambodia especially in Phnom Penh, home to many less well-to-do citizens. The call was made in the occasion of World Habitat Day October 6, with this year’s theme being “Harmonious Cities”.

Another significant threat to harmonious city development today, particularly within the Cambodian context is the concentration of development in Phnom Penh. This has been characterized by inequality of urban redevelopment, forced evictions, improper resettlement planning, insecurity of land tenure for urban poor communities and unhygienic living environments for urban poor communities. This has been the case both in central districts of Cambodia’s cities as well as in the suburban areas. The drive towards real estate development has been purchased at the expense of environmental and social considerations, according to the United Nations Human Settlements Program.

According to preliminary data from the census of 2008, 19.5 percent of Cambodia’s population live in urban areas, with 1,325,700 or nearly 50 percent of them concentrated in Phnom Penh. The majority of national development projects are also concentrated in this city, with some related tourism development projects in Siem Reap and Sihanoukville.

However, the report makes clear that efforts to continue and encourage development and investment in other urban areas apart from Phnom Penh should be considered.

The UN agency said that the urban poor communities constitute around 30 percent of the current population of Phnom Penh. It added that whilst the thousands of migrant factory workers who are sharing tiny rented spaces with unhygienic living conditions around the industrial zone of Phnom Penh are not counted in such surveys. At the same time, there is an increase in the number of informal settlements and urban poor communities in some secondary towns such as Sihanoukville, Battambang, Siem Reap, Kandal, and Poipet. These have sprung up as a result of increased urban economic activity.

The UN Habitat program manager Din Somethearith said October 6 that the gap between the poor and the rich is widening. Given this fact, little heed is paid to the poor when development decisions are made.

He added that Cambodia “…understands the concept but it does not have the technical guidelines to turn the concept into reality.”

He said that his agency is a technical organization and his office is ready to give advice if the government wants to ensure that urban development is achieved without ignoring the needs of the poorer members of society.

Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka, executive director of UN-Habitat, said in a statement to welcome World Habitat Day “We mark World Habitat Day at a time when the majority of the world’s people are living in towns and cities.”

She explained that the theme “Harmonious cities” had been chosen because the process of urbanization is accelerating; this transformation has a direct bearing on the strategies that “we must adopt to attain the Millennium Development Goals. The other historic turning point came when the number of urban slum-dwellers worldwide broke the one billion mark, making it clear that the urbanization of poverty was arguably one of the biggest challenges facing development today.”

She continued, “We need to raise awareness of the problems of rapid urbanization, their impact on the environment and the consequences and challenges of spiraling urban poverty.”

Mann Chhoeurn, Phnom Penh Municipal deputy governor, told the Cambodia Weekly on October 6, 2008 that the Phnom Penh Municipality always pays attention to the poor communities although there is a boom of private investment in the capital. He said that the municipality has plans to develop the city.

“We have done a lot of things to develop our city, and we don’t leave the poor behind,” he said. “We take care of them.”

He was referring to thousands of homes for settlement of the urban poor and the facilities they enjoy within these housing developments.
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