THE PHILIPPINES

Future shock
could be near at hand for the
inhabitants of the Asia and
Pacific region. At a seminar
on'Mega-cities management
in Asia and the Pacific' held
on October 24 at Manila,
experts maintained that the
lack of basic services for hundreds of millions of Asians in
large cities were symptomatic of a major urban
nightmare in the making.
The only solution to halt this
alarming trend in its tracks,
they pointed out, was channelising huge investments.
The World Bank seems to
share this view. In a report
released in September in
Bangkok, the Bank estimated
Asia's general infrastructure
financing needs, including
those for urban planning, at
US $1.5 trillion in the coming
decade.

From the looks of it,
things are likely to get worse
before they get any better.
According to experts at the
recent seminar, Asia will
have 13 of the world's 21
mega-cities - defined as
those with more than 10million people - by the turn of
the century.