Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540.
Yale School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Apr 12;119(15):e2119890119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2119890119. Epub 2022 Apr 4.
Urbanization can challenge sustainable development if it produces unequal outcomes. Infrastructure is an important urbanization dimension, providing services to support diverse urban activities. However, it can lock in unequal outcomes due to its durable nature. This paper studies inequalities in infrastructure distributions to derive insights into the structure and characteristics of unequal outcomes associated with urbanization. We analyzed infrastructure inequalities in two emerging economies in the Global South: India and South Africa. We developed and applied an inequality measure to understand the structure of inequality in infrastructure provisioning (based on census data) and infrastructure availability (based on satellite nighttime lights [NTLs] data). Consistent with differences in economic inequality, results show greater inequalities in South Africa than in India and greater urban inequalities than rural inequalities. Nevertheless, inequalities in urban infrastructure provisioning and infrastructure availability increase from finer to coarser spatial scales. NTL-based inequality measurements additionally show that inequalities are more concentrated at coarse spatial scales in India than in South Africa. Finally, results show that urban inequalities in infrastructure provisioning covary with urbanization levels conceptualized as a multidimensional phenomenon, including demographic, economic, and infrastructural dimensions. Similarly, inequalities in urban infrastructure availability increase monotonically with infrastructure development levels and urban population size. Together, these findings underscore infrastructure inequalities as a feature of urbanization and suggest that understanding urban inequalities requires applying an inequality lens to urbanization.
城市化如果导致不平等的结果，就可能对可持续发展构成挑战。基础设施是城市化的一个重要维度，为支持各种城市活动提供服务。然而，由于其耐久性，它可能会导致不平等的结果。本文研究了基础设施分配方面的不平等，以深入了解与城市化相关的不平等结果的结构和特征。我们分析了两个处于全球南方的新兴经济体（印度和南非）的基础设施不平等。我们开发并应用了一种不平等衡量标准，以了解基础设施供应（基于人口普查数据）和基础设施可用性（基于卫星夜间灯光[NTL]数据）方面的不平等结构。与经济不平等的差异一致，结果表明，南非的不平等程度高于印度，城市的不平等程度高于农村。然而，从精细到粗糙的空间尺度，基础设施供应和基础设施可用性的不平等都在增加。基于 NTL 的不平等衡量标准还表明，印度的不平等在粗糙的空间尺度上更为集中，而南非则更为分散。最后，结果表明，基础设施供应方面的城市不平等与城市化水平密切相关，城市化水平被概念化为一个多维度的现象，包括人口、经济和基础设施维度。同样，城市基础设施可用性的不平等随着基础设施发展水平和城市人口规模的增加而单调增加。总之，这些发现强调了基础设施不平等是城市化的一个特征，并表明要理解城市不平等，需要将不平等视角应用于城市化。
