Urbanization and Development in the Third World

Rogers, A. & Williamson, J.G. (1982). Urbanization and Development in the Third World. IIASA Research Report (Reprint). IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: RR-82-024. Reprinted from Economic Development and Cultural Change, 30 [1982].

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Abstract

Roughly 1.8 billion people, 42 percent of the world's population, live in urban areas today, and this total is growing by almost 3 percent per year. Even more dramatic are the growth rates in large cities in developing countries. Rates of 5-8 percent are not uncommon, and the urban growth multipliers that they indicate are truly awesome - a doubling time of 8-15 years.

Scholars and policy makers are divided on the issue of rapid urbanization and urban growth in the Third World. Some see these trends as effectively speeding up national processes of socioeconomic development; others believe their impacts to be largely undesirable and argue that they should be slowed down. Yet many of the determinants and consequences of urban and rural demoeconomic patterns of change are poorly understood, and there is an urgent need for improved methods of analyzing the fundamental issues and options that they bring about.

The five papers in this collection, written by current or past scholars in the Area, are a representative sample of this research. Together with three papers by other authors (not included here) they form the proceedings of a symposium on urbanization in the Third World published by the journal "Economic Development and Cultural Change".

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