(IPS) feature

New technologies have helped Asia, already home to many of the world's biggest cities, cope with its ever-widening urban sprawl, but they are far from enough to ensure the quality of urban life.

Indeed, some urban planners at a regional conference on cities in Singapore this month are warning against the tendency to depend too much on ''new technologies'' to deal with the myriad of problems that are bound to come with rapidly rising populations.

Countries such as the tiny city state of Singapore, with some four million people, have come up with habitable urban space following such a path. But many others in the region, home to megacities from Tokyo down to Jakarta and New Delhi, may not find success using the same or even similar measures.

By 2025, the region's population of 6.1 billion is expected to increase to nine billion, of which 60 percent will be in cities. According to demographers, almost half of the rise in population will occur in the Asia-Pacific.

Duan Liping, acting director of the Administrative Centre for China's Agenda 21, is among those who express concern with a massive adoption of new technologies for exploding urban populations.

This is even as she acknowledged that ''in our programme, we try to use the new technology to provide services for the people and if you use the new technology in the right way, you can help the people a lot''.

According to Duan, technology became a positive tool in China's Agenda 21 where a pilot programme located at Jiangxi province developed a comprehensive strategy to curb environmental problems and alleviate poverty. This included the establishment of 112 large farming bases.

But she also pointed out: ''A lot of people have been talking about the new technologies, but I also know a lot of people are concerned much more about (emphasis given to) economic growth by use of new technologies.''

Serious consequences unaddressed

Other experts who, like Duan, attended the regional meeting here this month, apparently agree. Some cited the fact that more and more urban workers are being rendered jobless as even small firms across the region try to stay competitive by switching from manual labour to machines.

The businesses themselves manage to stay afloat, at least for a while. But experts say there are other serious consequences that are often left unaddressed.

Nathaniel von Einsiedel of the United Nations Urban Management Programme, noted at the two-day Asian summit that ended here Sept. 13: ''Displaced workers in declining industries are unable to find new employment while young workers with limited qualifications are finding it difficult to enter new labour markets because they are deficient in skills required by new industries.

''This places an overwhelming social burden on a city to meet its citizens' needs for employment.''

Malaysian consumerist Anwar Fazal echoed the call for cities to focus not just on physical development, but on development that is people-centred.

He said, ''When you are designing a city, operating a city, if you lose that humanness and that spirit of community that pins a society, you find technology becomes an obstacle or it becomes even, a dangerous oppressant in achieving what would be a good liveable society.''

According to Fazal, the danger in adopting modern technologies lies in using these to ''disempower'' people and to ''exercise power in a way that is profit-driven or sectorial driven and doesn't really care about the impact directly on human beings''.

He hints that this may only lead to cities that are hotbeds of discontent and unrest.

''Cities themselves, with this growth and with this speed, if they're trapped in it, anger grows and people feel alienated and they will feel disconnected with the city,'' observed Fazal, who is also senior regional adviser of the Urban Governance Initiative of the United Nations Development Programme.

''So anger manifests itself internally,'' he said, ''and you find there's a lot of stress that develops and that kind of stress leads to road rage, leads to people expressing views and all kinds of very destructive ways.''

'City of hope'

But many speakers at the meeting here - the first of its kind in the region - were insistent on technology being ''people-friendly'' and therefore a primary solution to many urban ills.

Wee Huay Neo, senior manager of Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), for instance, advocated the adoption of modern technology to solve problems of urbanisation.

In an interview, Wee defended the MSC against perceptions that it would only create an elitist city enclave within the Malaysian capital.

''We hope to set a template for new cities development, we hope to change the way cities are being developed in the past, the conventional approach,'' she said. ''Now we're going for a more innovative approach.''

While many consider the centrepiece of Malaysia's cybercity - Cyberjaya - as being its 5,022 sq m of commercial space, Wee argued that it should be viewed as a ''city of hope'' by Asians instead of being seen as merely emphasising all the more a digital divide.

''At the end of day,'' she added, '' if you look at the issue of the digital divide, everybody will have to be knowledgeable, so that is the higher agenda. It is a knowledge society that we are creating so I do not think you will see the disparity between the haves and have nots.''