The Challenges
The Pacific has a very rapid rate of urbanisation and high population growth and is not well enough prepared to cope with the challenges and opportunities that urban growth presents.
UN-Habitat provides training, expert advice, proven tools and methodologies for small-medium sized urban centres within alignment of national needs and demandss, to assist Samoa to improve its urban management and planning practices and enable new thinking and actions about how best to evolve city development stratgies for the future.
Samoa has an urban population of over 35,000 within 2 political districts. Apia’s urban development challenges arise from problems of policy and planning. Therein lacks a strong mechanism necessary to coordinate policy and planning across infrastructure and service providers. As a result, integrated urban management is unable to effectively coordinate land use policy, or plan for strategic infrastructure investments at the city level that are demanded by a growing urban economy. In this respect theoverriding need to coordinate infrastructure improvements with policies and planning is crucial.
