It is estimated that the world’s urban dwellers increase by 50 million annually with 90 percent of this growth taking place in developing countries. This number is expected to double by 2050, leading to unprecedented rates of urbanisation.
Urban areas are always considered a nexus of prosperity and job opportunities because of organisations being located in close proximity, increasing productivity and raising revenues.
However, this connection is not always smooth as it is accompanied by many challenges. One of them is that youth living in cities are affected largely by spatial mismatch as they seek employment.
Further, the problem is worsened by the fact that the current infrastructure layout falls short in promoting walkability, accessibility, and dense developments coupled with smart growth principles. This huge distance between residential areas and work places as well as poor layout leads to high costs of searching for jobs and commuting to work.
Investments in infrastructure delivery can have important implications for employment creation. Cities expand because of their capacity to attract business and create jobs to drive that growth.
They are currently evolving as the drivers of economic competitiveness. In addition to its direct benefits, infrastructure plays crucial roles in enabling density and coordinating private investment decisions. Many cities have failed to invest in sufficient infrastructure due to inadequate financing tools in particular failure to capture benefits through land value reducing job creation opportunities for youth.
Various World Bank reports have indicated that infrastructure plays an important role in stimulating urbanisation and development as well as private economic activities.
Sufficient infrastructure can contribute to diversifying production, expanding trade, coping with population growth, reducing poverty, or improving environmental conditions in turn determining a country and county success. Policy makers and actors are encouraged to use infrastructure systems to attract private investments for housing and economic development as a result creating employment for youth through the entire value chain.
However, even as they do this, they must be alive to the fact that there are problems that persist in the form of discrepancies in the level of infrastructure across regions, deficiencies in cost recovery, inadequate sources of financing, and the lack of incorporation of sustainable principles in shaping urban growth and linking youth to job opportunities.
Moving forward there is need for both national and count governments to consider more efficient and green infrastructure development in urbanisation, evaluate existing infrastructure systems and land development in the cities to integrate sustainable planning practices, utilise advanced planning techniques to developed, improve and transform current infrastructure provision practices into a more integrative, sustainable, and inclusive public policy-making process.
This way each component will create job opportunities for youth through value addition.
Kellen Kiambati, management consultant and lecturer, Kenyatta University.
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