Urdal & Hoelscher: Urban Youth Bulges and Social Disorder

# **1. Introduction**

According to UN projections, the year 2008 marks a milestone in that more than half of the world population now lives in cities (UN, 2008a). This trend will continue unabated over the next decades. By 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will be urban dwellers and virtually all population growth in this period, a total increase of around 3 billion people, will take place in cities around the world. Although cities in developed countries will also continue to grow over the next decades, less developed countries will experience the most rapid urban growth. In particular, this pertains to Africa and Asia where rural households still account for around 60 percent of the total population, but are expected to drop to 35-40 percent by 2050. In Asia alone, the absolute increase in urban population is projected to be 1.8 billion, in Africa 0.9 billion (UN, 2008a: 1).

Strong urban growth creates considerable challenges for governments in terms of managing urban development sustainably, and providing for housing, electricity, water supply, health care, education and jobs. These challenges are widely acknowledged by developing country governments, and 78 percent of African and 71 percent of Asian governments state that they have implemented policies to reduce migrant flows to large cities (UN, 2008a: 12). In many developing countries urban centers offer better social and economic opportunities for young people than rural areas do. But if governments fail to provide opportunities and services to a growing urban population, increased grievances may arise, fuelling protest and possibly also political violence. A particular security concern has been that disenfranchised and economically and socially excluded urban youth may engage in violent activities, whether ‘criminal’ or ‘political’. Youth often constitute a disproportionately large part of rural-to-urban migrants, and in countries with young populations, strong urbanization could lead to an extraordinary crowding of youth in urban centers. This could lead to pressures in the labor market or educational institutions that could cause grievances. Goldstone (1991; 2002) observes that historically, the coincidence of youth bulges with rapid urbanization, especially in the context of unemployment and poverty, has been an important contributor to political violence.

Previous research has found that on the aggregate national level, large youth cohorts are statistically associated with an increase in risk of outbreak of low-intensity conflict (Urdal, 2006). On the other hand, and despite much concern for the ills of urbanization, rapid urban growth rates do not appear to correlate with political violence (Homer-Dixon, 1999: 155). If anything, high urbanization rates appear to be associated with lower levels of violent conflict (Urdal, 2005; 2008). These results reflect the observation that most armed conflicts take place in peripheral and often rural areas (Buhaug & Rød, 2006; Sommers, 2006; Buhaug, Cederman & Rød, 2008). Urban slum areas are rarely the location of conventional violent political conflicts between organized armed groups.

Acknowledging the lower relevance of urbanization and urban social and economic conditions for conventional armed conflicts, this study addresses the issue of youth and urbanization from a different angle than most previous quantitative studies. It focuses on how urbanization and patterns of social and economic exclusion affect social disorder in urban centers with a high concentration of youth. It utilizes a newly collected event dataset of urban social disturbance covering 55 major cities in 49 Asian and African countries for the 1960-2006 period. The data are compiled from electronic news reports in the Keesing’s Record of World Events, and involves both non-violent events like peaceful demonstrations and protests, as well as violent events like riots and organized armed conflict. The analysis addresses the importance of urban 2