Nigel Harris

Urbanisation, economic development and policy in developing countries

Abstract This paper aims to provide an account of the economic significance of urbanisation and of cities in the process of economic development in order to better understand the demographic transition to predominantly urban societies which will occur in developing countries over the next three decades. This is the background to a consideration of appropriate policy responses to this process. The first section examines the strength of the correlation between the size and growth of the urban population and the level and rate of change in national output. It confirms the well known observation that the relationships vary considerably between low-, high- and middle-income countries, and between countries experiencing high and low economic growth. The paper then discusses why the correlation exists, and the effects of economic development in creating patterns of territorial specialisation, of which the distinction between urban and rural sectors is one. This is examined between countries, within developing countries and within metropolitan areas. Economic development results in rising levels of productivity and this provides the basis for national growth, the differentiation of sectors and territorial areas. The paper then discusses trends in the world economy at present, including an examination of high-growth developing countries and sub-Saharan Africa, in order to assess whether urbanisation trends are likely to continue. It then moves to examining the projections for the redistribution of population in developing countries — urbanisation, the growth of larger cities and their internal organisation, migration, etc . The paper enumerates some of the resulting policy problems that confront governments in developing countries as a result of continued urbanisation. There follows an evaluation of the theory and practice of policy in the past in the field of territorial organisation in developing countries, and the emerging trends concerning the role of government. There is finally a discussion of the role of aid in the context of urbanisation.

The emerging global city: transport

Abstract Cities are emerging as pre-eminently junctions in flows — of people, goods, information and finance. The need for 0-error systems of transfer is exemplified in manufacturing with Just-in-Time stock policies reliable movement of inputs and outputs is fundamental to maintaining manufacturing. The reorganization of seaports and shipping provides a dramatic example of the pressure to minimize delays; inefficiencies here can severely damage a countys export performance. In airports, the same is true of freight movements. Thus the role of urban management in sustaining the efficiency of land movements to sea and airports becomes crucial to the competitive strength of cities.

The Pacific Rim

Korea: Managing the Industrial Transition, Vol. 1: The Conduct of Industrial Policy. By D.M. Leipziger and others (World Bank Country Study). Washington: World Bank, 1987. Pp.xiv + 182. US

SOME TRENDS IN THE EVOLUTION OF BIG CITIES: STUDIES OF THE USA AND INDIA

10. ISBN 0 8312 0887 4. Public Intervention and Industrial Restructuring in China, India and the Republic of Korea. By Amiya Kumar Bagchi. New Delhi: International Labour Organization (Asian Employment Programme, ARTEP), 1987. Pp.xii + 162. US

Metropolitan planning in the developing countries: Tasks for the 1980s

8. ISBN 92 2 105774 7. Policy Options for the Singapore Economy. By Lim Chong Wan and Associates. Singapore: McGraw Hill, 1988. Pp.xv + 499. US

Wastes, the environment and the international economy

29.95. ISBN 0 07 099133 2. The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism. Edited by Frederic C. Deyo. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987. Pp.252. US

Urbanisation: An economic overview of some of the issues

32.95 +

The war‐making state and privatisation

14.25. ISBN 0 8014 9449 4. Financing East Asias Success: Comparative Financial Development in Eight East Asian Countries. By Michael T. Skully and George J. Viksnins. London: Macmillan Press in association with the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy...

Should Europe end immigration controls? A polemic

The article examines changing patterns in the development of urban areas and the significance of these changes on the industrial and economic growth of a country. The development of urban industrial areas in some countries indicates growing manufacturing power, industrial development and changing employment patterns in which rural inhabitants are gradually transformed into urban inhabitants. In some developing countries however growing urbanisation by population movement to the cities has been brought about by the poor being driven off the land to the relative security of the cities. The author examines such developing patterns of domestic labour redistribution in the USA, processes of changing employment levels in Europe, and compares common and differing elements of such changes as they affect population levels and manufacturing growth in India. (TRRL)

Export processing in Mexico

It is a truism that in the contemporary experience of planning there appears to be a growing gap between aspiration and performance, a gap increasingly visible over the past 15 years or so. ’ It has become difficult quite often to identify unequivocal benefits flowing from the more or less elaborate machinery of planning, benefits that can be unambiguously related to real improvements in popular welfare. The disillusion is an element in the revival of a faith in the market and, in economics, in the ‘automatic’ mechanisms said to flow from monetary policies. Improvements there have certainly been, but how far has planning achieved them? Could more have been achieved with the same effort? Would things have been better or worse without the planners? In retrospect, the long-term ‘crisis in planning’ was largely an intellectual problem; it became a real and painful one with the onset of the world slump in 1974-75, and apparently long-term stagnation thereafter. In the past there were hosts of problems, particularly in securing the coordinated action of many competing public agencies; the Ministry of Agriculture’s fertiliser plant defied the metropolitan ban on new industry; sudden urgent projects with the Presidential seal of priority the new Conference Hall, the new complex of government buildings, the new capital, the new facilities for the international sporting occasion drove a coach and horses through the best laid plans. But those were at least the problems of growth, of growing incomes and aspirations. World downturn, although affecting countries differently, tends to put universal pressure on the sources of public revenue and to create an increasingly unstable environment. Governments are driven to live from week to week, eschewing hopes of longer term coherence. It is understandable that people should grow sceptical of the possibility of defining mediumor long-range objectives and pursuing them; that there should be increasing irritation at the planner, apparently fiddling while great Rome burns. The disillusion was epitomised in the conclusion of an important multinational company in a 1979 discussion of company planning: “Planning is just a waste of time nowadays, especially so-called strategic planning. In today’s world, there’s no point in looking further forward than a one or two year budget. Anything long term is just not worth the paper it’s written on.“2 It emerges in the laconic comment on the performance of a government which has prided itself on its planning machinery for 25 years two-thirds of the projects