product (GDP) per capita. However, when compared with international standards, GDP in the Middle East and North Africa is below its potential. Although urbanization is indeed associated with economic growth, GDP per capita remains, on average, below what could be expected for any given urbanization level based on the world average.
Notably, however, the patterns vary widely by country. Egypt, for example, dis-plays astonishing economic growth with a near constant urbanization rate, whereas Algeria is associated with rapid urbaniza-tion but slower growth of GDP per capita.
Among the possible factors in the lower GDP per capita is the domination of the non-tradables (services) sector in the region’s urban employment, which limits returns to scale, economic growth, and job creation.
The share of the tradable sector (such as manufacturing) in urban employment is only around 41 percent (figure 1.5), in line with Sub-Saharan Africa (42 percent) but well below South Asia (53 percent), Europe and Central Asia (50 percent), and East Asia and Pacific (49 percent).
Specializing in nontradable goods means that the demand for the region’s urban out-put is local and necessarily limited in volume.
Faced with limited demand, urban firms in the Middle East and North Africa benefit from limited scale economies and, all else equal, create fewer jobs (Lall, Henderson, and Venables 2017). Conversely, specializa-tion in tradable goods such as manufactured products allows for a larger and elastic poten-tial demand that goes well beyond local mar-kets. Catering to such international needs implies making the most of firm-level scale economies and beyond, often boosting agglomeration economies through a buoyant ecosystem of local suppliers. In the Middle East and North Africa, cities and their firms risk being unable to reverse the current trend and break into tradables because cities are too costly. Expensive cities typically require wages that would compensate workers for high urban costs and so would entail produc-tion costs above the internaproduc-tional price for any given good (Venables 2017).
standpoint, the ideal city can be viewed as an efficient labor market, matching employers and job seekers through connections (Bertaud 2014). When the matching is efficient, cities benefit because by increasing the size and diversity of their labor force, employers and job seekers are more likely to find appropriate matches that make the best of workers’ skills and aspirations. As such, compact cities have the potential to reduce the separation between people and jobs by reducing com-muting time and cost (Burton 2000a).
Fragmentation—understood as either low-density development or spatial development broken up by areas of underdeveloped land use—implies higher costs to ensure access to public networked infrastructure. To service fragmented urban areas with networked infrastructure (such as roads, sewerage, and water) is typically costlier per capita for a given service quality because it requires longer and more intricate networks. For example, in the context of U.S. cities, Burchell et al.
(2005) found that urban sprawl increases local road lane-miles by 10 percent and public services and housing costs by 8 percent.
Besides, in financially constrained urban areas, these high costs may be difficult to match with resources, decreasing service quality. Libertun de Duren and Guerrero Compeán (2016) examined the relationship between municipal spending on services and population density in 8,600 municipalities in Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Mexico. They find that optimal expenditures for a given quality of services are obtained for high pop-ulation densities (around 9,000 persons per square kilometer). The authors also find that coverage is strongly and positively associated with population density. Urban planning for higher density and lower land consumption can also decrease infrastructure costs, as fur-ther described below.
Urban fragmentation typically impedes public transport and other public services, because minimum densities are needed for those infrastructures to be viable. In a com-pact city, households are not only close to facilities (such as hospitals) but also likely to enjoy more facilities per capita. Localized
public services (again, such as hospitals) require a minimum density to be economically viable (Burton 2000a). So compact cities pre-sent some advantages, especially for low-income households, many of whom lack access to a car and would find public transport to be more efficient in nonfragmented urban areas.
Newman (1992) has provided strong evi-dence that higher-density cities are associated with higher use of public transportation.
Such impact also inherently promotes social equity, because the disadvantaged rely pri-marily on public transportation. And although the investment needed to build pub-lic transport is high, the usage costs, provided sufficient ridership, are low compared with large road infrastructure. Rode et al. (2017) show that although the up-front costs of col-lective transportation infrastructure are on the same order of magnitude as—or even higher than—the costs of capacity high-ways, collective transportation has the edge when cost estimates take carrying capacity into account. Capital costs divided per capita (after dividing by capacity) would be in the range of US$300–US$500 for a bus rapid transit system, compared with US$5,000–
US$10,000 for a dual-lane highway.
Finally, it is widely argued that compact cities offer more opportunities for social inter-action and reduce segregation. Compactness encourages interaction between urban dwell-ers from different economic strata and origins (locals and migrants). Sprawling development, characterized by scattered gated communities or informal development in the peri-urban region, tends to increase residential segrega-tion (Zhao 2013). This sometimes gets rein-forced by unevenly distributed public services and unbalanced investments.
Do the region’s cities truly function as cities?
Can cities in the Middle East and North Africa qualify as well functioning? Arguably, a primary raison d’être of cities is to reduce the economic distance between people and economic opportunities and to reduce the costs of providing networked basic services.
Cities thrive, in particular, because they enable matchmaking—between people, between firms, and between people and job opportunities (Avner and Lall 2016). With this framework in mind, we ask whether cit-ies in the Middle East and North Africa enable matching and provide networked infrastructure at reduced costs. In other words, are cities in the Middle East and North Africa functioning as efficient cities?
Cities’ urban footprints and fragmentation vary considerably. Using satellite imagery, this section examines the growth patterns of the region’s urban areas and their degree of spatial fragmentation. Fragmentation is approached here through two different metrics: (a) the interaction potential index ( hereafter called the Puga index), which measures fragmenta-tion in the spatial distribufragmenta-tion of the urban population; and (b) the noncontiguity index,
which measures spatial fragmentation in the urban built environment.
The Puga index was calculated for the cap-ital cities of the Middle East and North Africa using a methodology that measures the num-ber of people an average person can interact with in a specific city within a given travel dis-tance (De la Roca and Puga 2017).7 The results show important gaps in many cases.
For example, while Casablanca and Baghdad display fairly concentrated population pat-terns with high interaction potential, Amman and Tripoli rank much lower in terms of inter-action potential because of their more linear layout with higher fragmentation (figure 1.6).
In Amman and Baghdad, although low- density informal settlements have contributed to urban expansion, the urban footprint of each city largely results from long-term urban patterns. Amman’s linear layout reflects
a. Casablanca, Morocco (4 million population)
c. Amman, Jordan (3 million population) d. Tripoli, Libya (1.5 million population) b. Baghdad, Iraq (10 million population)
FiGURE 1 .6 Fragmentation varies significantly across urban areas in several capital cities in the Middle East and North Africa
Source: Developed from LandScan Global 2012 dataset, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, https://landscan.ornl.gov/.
Note: Fragmentation is represented here by the distribution of population within urban areas. (Each square represents population density per square kilometer.)
largely the growth of Zarqa, the industrial town on the northeast side of the city.
Although Middle East and North Africa cities display average potential for interaction compared with other regions, its subregions have high variations (figure 1.7).8 On aver-age, controlling only for population, an indi-vidual living in a city of 2 million inhabitants in the Middle East and North Africa is exposed to around 1.13 million people—
which, taking confidence intervals into account, is below South Asia’s potential for interaction and not significantly different from East Asia’s or Sub-Saharan Africa’s.
However, the interaction potential is signifi-cantly lower in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and in Latin America and the Caribbean. Among the subregions, the Mashreq displays a relatively high potential for interaction (exceeding 1.5 million), while the GCC and Maghreb subregions lag behind.
The Maghreb subregion’s high intraur-ban fragmentation—with lower interac-tion potential than in the comparator subregions—increases the costs of providing networked infrastructure. This high urban fragmentation (as measured by the Puga
2,000,000
1,750,000
1,500,000
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750,000
500,000
250,000
Regions Subregionsa
0
Interaction potential within 10 kilometers, number of people
Middle East and No rth Afr
ica
Sub-Saharan Afr ica
Latin Amer ica and the Car
ibbean OECD GCC
Maghreb
East Asia and P acific
Mashreq South Asia
Sources: World Bank calculations using the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s Global Human Settlement Layers 2014; Henderson and Nigmatulina 2016.
Note: OECD = Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. “Interaction potential” is measured here as the number of people an average person can interact with in a specific city within 10 kilometers. (The selected cities include the primary [largest] city of each country and, depending on data availability, all cities above 500,000.) As the Puga index equation illustrates (annex 1B), an increase in a city’s population mechanically increases the index of interaction potential. Therefore, to compare several cities, it was necessary to control for at least the city population (the T-bars indicating the confidence intervals controlling for population). As such, the method used to produce the graph consisted of predictions from the statistical model based on the Henderson and Nigmatulina (2016) methodology, setting city population at 2.019 million and controlling for city population.
a. Maghreb refers to Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia; Mashreq to the Arab Republic of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Syrian Arab Republic;
and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
FiGURE 1 .7 The Middle East and North Africa as a whole displays average interaction potential compared with other regions but varies widely by subregion
Interaction potential, controlling for population, by region and subregion
index, controlling for population) indicates low-density or leapfrogged urban fabrics. To service such urban areas with networked infrastructure (roads, electricity, sewerage, and water) is typically costlier per capita, for a given service quality, because it requires longer and more intricate networks.
In financially constrained urban areas, these high costs may be difficult to match with resources and can lead to a decrease in service quality. Prospective scenario model-ing exercises in Jordan, for example, find that future urban growth patterns significantly affect the costs of providing infrastructure.
Comparing a business-as-usual urban growth scena rio w it h one t hat i mplements Amman’s master plan and results in lower
land consumption, CAPSUS (2018) finds that implementing the master plan would decrease new infrastructure costs by 42 percent (from JD 231.67 million to JD 135.23 million).9 The Jordan study is a partial costing exercise of urban development trajectories—partial because it does not account for the barriers to accessing jobs, for example.
Urban fragmentation can also hinder accessibility to labor market opportunities (by lengthening trips and travel times), but higher investments in transportation seem to compensate for this effect in the Middle East and North Africa. When controlling for both GDP and population, the Puga index results tell a different story than when con-trolling for population alone (figure 1.8).
Sources: World Bank calculations using the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s Global Human Settlement Layers 2014 and World Development Indicators database; Henderson and Nigmatulina 2016.
Note: OECD = Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. “Interaction potential” is measured here as the number of people an average person can interact with in a specific city within 10 kilometers. (The selected cities include the primary [largest] city of each country and, depending on data availability, all cities above 500,000.) As the Puga index equation illustrates (annex 1B), an increase in a city’s population mechanically increases the index of interaction potential. Therefore, to compare several cities, it was necessary to control for both city population and gross domestic product (GDP) (the T-bars indicating the confidence intervals controlling for population and GDP per capita). Predictions for representative cities—from the statistical model based on the Henderson and Nigmatulina (2016) methodology—set the city population at 2.019 million inhabitants and GDP per capita at US$4,280 as a proxy for commuting costs (averages of the sample cities in the Middle East and North Africa).
a. Maghreb refers to Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia; Mashreq to the Arab Republic of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Syrian Arab Republic;
and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
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0
Regions Subregionsa
Latin Amer ica and
the Car ibbean
Sub-Saharan Afr
ica OECD GCC
Maghreb Middle East an
d
North Afr ica
East Asia and P
acific
South Asia Mashreq
FiGURE 1 .8 Gulf Cooperation Council countries seem to compensate for their urban fragmentation with lower commuting costs
Interaction potential, controlling for population and GDP per capita, by region and subregion
Although the difference between the Middle East and North Africa and most regions remains or becomes insignifi-cant (apart from Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the OECD countries), the subregional pic-ture changes: the interaction potential decreases in the Maghreb and Mashreq countries, but it strongly increases in the GCC countries—from about 1 million potential interactions (figure 1.7) to about 1.2 million (figure 1.8). As such, the differ-ence in potential interactions between the GCC and Mashreq subregions becomes less significant, and the gap between GCC and the Maghreb subregion increases significantly.
This change occurs because countries with higher GDP tend to display high urban fragmentation, as their populations can afford higher commuting costs than those in lower-income countries. Therefore, the richest countries compensate for urban dis-persion with faster transport within cities.
Adding GDP as a control (in addition to population) is a proxy for increased motor-ized mode shares (that is, higher shares of people driving instead of walking) and accounts for the compensation of faster transport for more fragmented urban fabrics.
Similarly, an urban footprint analysis shows that the Mashreq subregion has the lowest noncontiguity, which is a measure of bu i lt- up sp at i a l f r a g m e nt at ion . (See annex 1B for methodology.) When controlling for city size, the urban foot-print noncontiguity of cities of around 2 million inhabitants in the GCC is twice as high as in the Mashreq subregion and 30 percent higher than in the Maghreb subregion. However, when controlling for both city population size and GDP per cap-ita, the difference between subregions dis-appears. This reinforces the conclusion that the Mashreq subregion displays the lowest fragmentation and that the GCC subregion compensates for its fragmenta-tion through lower commuting costs.
Subregional differences reflect tension between modernist urban planning theory and the traditional “compact city”
The subregional differences embody a much larger tension between two paradigms:
the modernist approach to urban planning and the return of the “compact city” pattern.
Many historians point to the medieval Arab cities (such as Fes in Morocco and Aleppo in Syria) as supreme representations of dense, compact, and livable urban centers. In the past century, those urban systems progres-sively became representations of underdevel-oped urban systems as modernist planning theory prevailed, focusing on urban func-tional segregation, private car orientation, and low-density spatial layouts—the interna-tional norm. However, many unforeseen impacts of the modernist city such as depop-ulated centers, traffic congestion, urban air pollution, or fragmentation have led Western planners and urban theorists to rediscover the viability of compact cities.
The compact city concept, however, is still not one of the drivers of most of today’s plan-ners in the Middle East and North Africa, and many countries have taken the modernist planning theory to its extreme. Gulf cities are among the greatest examples. Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, for example, displays a very fragmented urban fabric (photo 1.1, panel a) of modern low-density neighborhoods, such as the Mohammed Bin Zayed City neighbor-hood (photo 1.1, panel b). Even downtown areas of GCC countries created in the 1950s and 1960s are being pulled down and replaced with large business buildings surrounded by parking garages and vacant lots.
Similarly, in Egypt, a strategy was imple-mented in the 1970s based on the construc-tion of funcconstruc-tionally segregated and isolated new towns (photo 1.1, panel c), which ended up attracting few people. New Cairo, built on t he sout heaster n edge of Cai ro Governorate, is a good example (photo 1.1, panel d). In Morocco, the state developer Omrane has been proceeding to construct satellite dormitory towns miles away from
existing cities. Although wealthy countries compensate for fragmentation with lower commuting costs, the trend creates many problematic aspects, as discussed earlier, such as providing urban public services.
informality stitches gaps in the urban fabric
Nonetheless, in some Middle East and North Africa countries, informal settlements have been constituting a new path to emerg-ing compact neighborhoods. Although informal settlements are considered as over-crowded and illegal, in many cities, they are dense, inclusive, energy-efficient, and multi-functional urban neighborhoods, displaying spatial patterns similar to medieval historic
centers (photo 1.2). In Cairo, for example, although the informal neighborhood of Fostat Plateau was established in the 1980s (photo 1.2, panel a.2), its structure is very similar to the neighborhood of Bab el Wazir, established more than 800 years ago (photo 1.2, panel a.1).
In 2010, in Greater Cairo alone, 12 million inhabitants lived in informal areas, and 75 percent of the demographic increase found homes in informal areas. Informal neighbor-hoods in other cities have been stitching gaps in the urban fabric as well, filling vacant or abandoned spaces. Still, this does not mean that urban informality is the desired future of the Arab city, but rather that urban dwellers are rejecting the modernist city and that urban planners must consider PHOTO 1 .1 Developments in or near the capitals of United Arab Emirates and Egypt represent modernist urban planning theory
a. Aerial image of fragmented urban fabric in Abu Dhabi
c. Aerial image showing New Cairo’s isolation
from Cairo metropolitan area d. Aerial image of detail of New Cairo’s layout b. Aerial image of Abu Dhabi’s Mohammed Bin
Zayed City neighborhood
Source: Google Earth 2018.
a.1 Bab el Wazir (established 800 years ago) a.2 Fostat Plateau (established informally in the 1980s) a. Cairo, Egypt
b.1 Beirut historic center b.2 Jnah slum
b. Beirut, Lebanon
c.1 Rabat historic center c. Rabat, Morocco c.2 Douar el Garaa slum
PHOTO 1 .2 Aerial views show that, in density and spatial patterns, recent informal settlements highly resemble historic districts across several cities of the Middle East and North Africa
photo continues next page
d.1 Tyre historic center d.2 Borj el Chmali (West Bank and Gaza settlement) d. Tyre, Lebanon
Sources: UN-Habitat 2012; Google Earth 2018.
PHOTO 1 .2 Aerial views show that, in density and spatial patterns, recent informal settlements highly resemble historic districts across several cities of the Middle East and North Africa (continued)
In 1975, violence erupted in the streets of Beirut, and in a matter of days, the city became a battle-field, with clashes among different Lebanese fac-tions and global political players. The urban warfare continued almost uninterrupted for the next 15 years and resulted in massive destruction and widespread displacement of people. The city eventually became divided between Christians and Muslims—and the city center, once cosmopolitan and vibrant, became an uninhabited green buffer between the rivals.
Each community started gathering in its respective sector of the city, and economic activity progressively shifted from the center to the community sectors (Hanna 2016). This resulted a few decades later in a polycentric city with three centers: the traditional center, the Christian sector, and the Muslim sector (figure B1.2.1).
BOx 1 .2 The impact of Lebanon’s civil war on Beirut’s urban form
Source: Hanna 2016.
Note: The darker the square, the higher the population density.
FiGURE B1 .2 .1 After decades of conflict, Beirut became a polycentric city
readapting their framework for higher effi-ciency and welfare (UN-Habitat 2012).
Informal neighborhoods, being similar in structure to the medieval historic centers of Middle East and North Africa cities, display much denser road lengths and intersections, characterizing higher compactness. In a sub-set of 20 historic centers and informal neigh-borhoods in the region, the road density is on average higher than 40 kilometers per square kilometer, and intersection density is higher than 300 per square kilometer. In contrast, modernist neighborhoods (such as New Cairo) have an average road density of 27 kilometers per square kilometer and intersection den-sity of 131 per square kilometer ( figure 1.9).
(For the methodology used to compute road intersection density, see annex 1C.)
Urban spatial expansion is trending toward compactness in the Mashreq, less so in other subregions
The trend of compactness has been espe-cially strong in the Mashreq subregion.
Between 1990 and 2014, the urban popula-tion increased four times quicker than the built-up areas in Mashreq capitals, which highlights a strong densification. By compari-son, the urban population has increased on average only 1.3 times quicker than built-up expansion in the Maghreb subregion, which implies that Maghreb cities have been densi-fying more slowly.10 The Mashreq’s faster densification can be linked to its higher urban population growth and strong migratory flows to the cities generated by conflict and lack of economic opportunities.
Based on the methodology developed by Liu et al. (2010) and used in Baruah, Henderson, and Peng (2017), we classified the 1990–2014 urban expansion in the capital cities of each subregion (with the exception of Casablanca, which we used for Morocco instead of Rabat) in the three following categories: infill, exten-sion, and leapfrog. As expected, the Mashreq countries showed the largest share of infill expansion (28 percent) and the lowest share of leapfrogging (3.7 percent) compared with the two other regions (figure 1.10).11
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Historic centers Informal
neighborhoods Modernist neighborhoods
Number of intersections per km2
Kilometers of road per km2
Road network density (left axis) Intersection density (left axis) Source: World Bank calculations based on OpenStreetMap data 2018, available under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) by the OpenStreetMap Foundation.
Note: km2 = square kilometer.
FiGURE 1 .9 in the Middle East and North Africa, historic centers and informal neighborhoods display higher road and intersection density than modernist neighborhoods
28 23 21
69 72
66
4 4
13
0 10 20 30 40
Percent
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Mashreqa Maghrebb GCCc
(without Manama) Infill Extension Leapfrog
FiGURE 1 .10 Aggregated urban expansion trends in capital cities in the Mashreq, Maghreb, and GCC subregions show divergent patterns, 1990–2014
Sources: Datasets from the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s Global Human Settlement Layers. See Annex 1D for sensitivity analysis.
Note: The analysis uses the Landscape Expansion Index developed by Liu et al. (2010), in which extension and leapfrog expansion increase infrastructure costs, with leapfrog having a higher cost impact.
a. Mashreq comprises the Arab Republic of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Syrian Arab Republic.
b. Maghreb comprises Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. For Morocco, Casablanca was analyzed instead of the capital city, Rabat.
c. GCC = Gulf Cooperation Council, comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Manama, the capital of Bahrain, was excluded because of the bias created by its geographical constraints and resulting in an exceptionally high share of infill urban expansion.
The divergence between the Mashreq and GCC subregions corresponds to the conse-quences of extensive modernist urban plan-ning policies in GCC cities and trends of compactness in the Mashreq subregion. The larger shares of extension in the Maghreb and leapfrogging in the GCC subregion reflect the trends previously highlighted in our analysis of noncontiguity and interaction potential.
However, the cities of the same subregion vary in their development patterns. Although each subregion, on average, displays different trends, some countries display distributions similar to the averages from other subregions (figure 1.11). For example, in the GCC subre-gion, the cities of Riyadh and Manama dis-play relatively high shares of infill and low shares of leapfrog expansion. In the case of Manama, this is the consequence of high geo-graphical constraints considering that the
city growth is constrained and contained because of its location on the peninsula of the island. Similarly, Tunis and Casablanca in the Maghreb subregion have higher shares of infill expansion than Cairo, Damascus, and Amman in the Mashreq subregion.
These variations within subregions and city-specific scenarios often reflect discrete place-based policy interventions (map 1.1).
For example, in Cairo, a large share of exten-sion can be attributed to a government policy:
the construction of New Cairo, a settlement on the east side of the city created to unclog downtown Cairo. In Dubai, the leapfrog and extension patches at the south and southwest of the city can also be attributed to the gov-ernment’s industrial policy through which the Dubai Investments Park was created in 1997, which in turn incentivized the placement of industries around the urban area.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Share of development type (%)
Algiers, AlgeriaTunis, Tunisia Casablanca, Morocco
Amman, JordanBaghdad, IraqBeirut, Lebanon Doha, Qatar
Kuwait City, KuwaitRiyadh, Saudi ArabiaManama, Bahrain
Infill Extension Leapfrog
Maghreba Mashreqb GCCc
Damascus, Syrian Arab Republic Tripoli, Libya
Cairo, Egypt, Arab Rep.
Muscat, Oman
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Source: Datasets from the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s Global Human Settlement Layers.
Note: Uses the Landscape Expansion Index developed by Liu et al. (2010), in which extension and leapfrog expansion increase infrastructure costs, with leapfrog having a higher cost impact.
a. Maghreb comprises Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. For Morocco, Casablanca was analyzed instead of the capital city, Rabat.
b. Mashreq comprises the Arab Republic of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Syrian Arab Republic.
c. GCC = Gulf Cooperation Council, comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Manama, the capital of Bahrain, was excluded because of the bias created by its geographical constraints and resulting in an exceptionally high share of infill urban expansion.
FiGURE 1 .11 The urban expansion of Middle East and North Africa capital cities varies within subregions, 1990–2014