The Role of Data Partnerships in Paving the Road Ahead for Secondary Cities

By Steph Pietras and Alyson Marks

Photo of Santa Fe, Argentina by Joaquín Jesús Mántaras from Wikipedia.

Local action is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. According to the UN, 3.5 billion people – nearly half of humanity - currently live in cities. And this number will only continue to increase over the next several decades. The latest UN-Habitat World Cities Report reports that the world will continue to urbanize over the next three decades - from 56 percent in 2021 to 68 percent in 2050 - an increase of 2.2 billion urban residents, living mostly in Africa and Asia. Cities are also becoming increasingly interconnected. As such, cities, particularly “Secondary Cities,” will play a critical role in advancing the sustainable development agenda in the years ahead.

Secondary City Challenges

A “Secondary City '' or “2C” ranges in size from 150,000 to five million residents depending on the size of the country's population. According to the Cities Alliance, a global partnership committed to fighting urban poverty and supporting cities to deliver sustainable development, 2Cs are the “fastest-growing urban areas of all and [have] the greatest potential to shape our urban future.” More important than their size, though, is their function and geographic location within the national system of cities. Many serve as hubs for regional commerce and services, and many of the most rapidly expanding 2Cs are located in low and middle-income countries. Yet, in many countries, the important role of 2Cs is often overlooked, particularly in terms of investment and policy attention. 

While 2Cs are regionally important because they often house universities, hospitals, and other key infrastructure and services that serve the surrounding area, data needed for city planning and infrastructure development are frequently inadequate. Projections are often based on out-of-date censuses, migration flows to secondary cities is understudied, and very little is known about the impact of climate change on secondary cities. Additionally, the lack of geospatial data and analysis for local city planners to understand how to meet current and future growth needs in many 2Cs reflects how they have been understudied. 

Funding also remains a challenge. Despite governing entities becoming more decentralized across the world and local governments continuing to take up more responsibilities for municipal service provision, the levels of fiscal decentralization have remained relatively unchanged and 2Cs are often still reliant on the national government for funding.

Data Partnerships to Support Secondary Cities

Fortunately, in recent years a handful of governments and donors have begun to see the value of supporting secondary cities, and data partnerships within these cities across institutions are paving the path for improved local evidence-based decision-making. Some of the noteworthy partnerships include: 

The Secondary Cities Initiative: Led by the United States Department of State’s Office of the Geographer, the American Association of Geographers, and Colorado State University, the initiative builds local partnerships to create geospatial capacity, enhance understanding through data and mapping, and enable science-based decision-making. Projects have included work in Boké-Kamsar, Guinea to develop the essential data needed for urban planning by generating a baseline dataset of services and infrastructure; in Darkhan, Mongolia to support the local capacity for geospatial data collection among teachers and students, create a database of key indicators for solid waste management and support the use of data to inform urban planning on solid waste management; in Mekelle, Ethiopia to build geospatial capacity for water management by creating high-priority local and regional geospatial datasets focusing on infrastructure, land-use, and water resources; and in Santa Fe, Argentina to improve health outcomes in flood-prone areas by developing data for unmapped neighborhoods in the floodplain and analyzing existing infrastructure and gaps.

Africapolis: A partnership between the OECD’s Sahel and West Africa Club and e-Geopolis.org, Acropolis is a research and data visualization tool for mapping, analyzing, and understanding urbanization across Africa. Policymakers can explore data for more than 9,200 urban conglomerates (including secondary cities) in 54 African countries, build custom data visualizations on urbanization in Africa, and access country reports to understand urbanization dynamics across these countries with data dating back to 1950.

Ghana Secondary Cities Support Program: The World Bank is supporting the Government of Ghana to scale up and improve services in 35 secondary cities across the country. It aims to strengthen local systems (including data) and assist regional and national institutions to provide municipal assemblies with the support needed for effective urban management and delivery.

Looking Ahead
The above case studies demonstrate the importance of data partnerships within secondary cities in driving local decision-making and progress. However, these partnerships are few and far between. On this World Cities Day and ahead of the upcoming COP27, it is clear that greater attention is needed on secondary cities to fully advance urban action on the sustainable development agenda.