‘TWPR. 15 (1) 1099 URBAN PLANNING AND THE FRAGMENTED CITY OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES by MARCELLO BALBO Dipartimento di Analisi Economica e Sociale del Terriorio, \situto Universitario di Architeuura, Venice, Italy A distinctive feature of most Third World cities is the fragmented character of their spatial organisation Planned districts, illegal settlements and slums draw together ina sort of continuously discontinuous pattern impossible to handle with the conceptual and operational tools of traditional city planning, To be effective, urban management and planning need to understand the relationship between the functioning of the urban economy and society. and the spatial fragmentation of the city, whose segregative effects should be compared with its possible distributive ones. Upside-Down Planning That traditional master planning and planning techniques are unsuitable to the needs of the city in Third World countries is widely acknowledged.' There is hardly one city where master planning, urban standards and building codes have played a significant role in directing urban growth and changes in the physical environment, not even in new cities such as Brasilia, Chandigarh and Abuja. Together with the carefully planned city, a second one has appeared and developed, rapidly growing larger than the planned one, for all those who cannot afford living in the latter. There are many reasons for this, some of them well known. Master planning is too slow: its timing is incompatible with the growth rates of most Third World cities; master plans are based on medium- to long-term forecasts, while in the Third World city the only important decisions are the ones which can be enforced immediately and controlled in a simple way; plan preparation and implementation require administrative and technical skills which are rarely available; master planning is seldom concerned about the costs of its decisions, or where the resources come from: finally, physical planning has been conceived for the city of the developed countries, not at all for the largely ‘illegal’ city of the Third World Master planning has almost inevitably failed for all these ‘technical’ reasons. But basically it has failed since it is the idea of the state itself that does not work. In the rich countries of the West the concept of state is tied to the idea that a collective interest does exist; the welfare policies pursued in the 1960s and 1970s have significantly reinforced this perspective. and even where they are in retreat, such an idea of what the state is and does (or is expected to do} remains well rooted? By contrast. there is hardly one country in the Third World where the state can24 MARCELLO BALBO claim legitimately to represent, if not the whole population, at least a significant majority. As stressed by Hettne, public debt in Latin America, food shortages and droughts in Africa and inter-ethnic conflicts in many parts of Asia, have drastically reduced the prospects for nation-building: ‘In Latin America the state is in full retreat and to the extent that it acts with a strong hand it is dismantling the state- as-planner structure. In Africa many states have for all practical purposes ceased to exist and local (more or less “traditional'’) networks are filling the vacuum. In many parts of Asia the states are disintegrating due to the emerging ethnic and territorial identifications.”* The future seems even gloomier. The lack of resources makes it almost impossibe to sustain any meaningful welfare policy, which is the foundation for the making of a nation-state, particularly because most countries are following policies geared at increasing internal conflicts more than eliminating them. Modernisation policies, increasing military expenses, market liberalisation, structural adjust- ments, will inevitably further delegitimate the state in the eyes of the poor, ie. the majority of the population The Fragmented City The western city is made up of different parts which participate in forming a single whole. Urban space shows many and sometimes strong differences, which nevertheless form part of and constitute an essentially homogeneous spatial structure. In a similar way, primary infrastructure runs through the different areas of the city, servicing them all under essentially similar conditions: schools, clinics, parks are more frequent in the wealthier parts of the city, but are not totally absent from the poorer ones.’ The industrial city is an orderly city, according to an idea of urban space which is basically the same in Paris, Milan and Montreal, and by now even in Tokyo; thus the industrial city is easily recognisable and predictable, at least from the type of ‘order’ specific to European and American cultures.” Master planning has been instrumental in shaping the order of the western city. Due to its primary origins in engineering and architecture, ‘order’, ‘integration’, balance’, ‘unity’ were always among the primary goals of master plans directed at the construction of a well-defined and controllable spatial organisation By contrast, the city of the Third World is made up of parts which do not make up a homogeneous whole, a single ‘organism’: 'The major metropolis in almost every newly-industrialising country is not a single unified city, but, in fact, two quite different cities, physically juxtaposed but architecturally and socially distinct’ ® The truth is even more extreme: the city of the Third World is a city of fragments, where urbanisation takes place in leaps and bounds, creating a continuously discon- tinugus pattern. In the fragmented city, physical environment. services, income, cultural values and institutional systems can vary markedly from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, often from street to street. An aerial view of the city shows a spatial structure made of many different pieces drawn together in a rather accidental way There are more of some kinds than of athers. Those in the periphery are incomplete and more ‘fragile’. while older areas are well established with clearly-defined boundaries.THE FRAGMENTED CITY OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES 25 Even in Latin America, where most cities date from the sixteenth century , a process of 'tribalisation’ seems to be under way: the city is splitting into different separated parts, with the apparent formation of many ‘microstates’.’ Wealthy neighbourhoods provided with all kinds of services, such as exclusive schools, golf courses, tennis courts and private police patrolling the area around the clock intertwine with illegal settlements where water is available only at public fountains, no sanitation system exists, electricity is pirated by a privileged few, the roads become mud streams whenever it rains, and where house-sharing is the norm. Each fragment appears to live and function autonomously, sticking firmly to what it has been able to grab in the daily fight for survival. Sometimes a fragment may grow into a proper city, a kind of poor cousin whose existence the original city does not want to acknowledge, keeping the distance between them as wide as possible. Such is the case with Villa el Salvador, the well known barriada of Lima where the 300 000 residents have given themselves a set of norms and ‘laws’ of local bosses over which the state has hardly any control, and where the police cannot set foot." In the city of the Third World the social structure is not simply stratified and fragmented,” its situation may rather be described as one of urban apartheid, such as that of Rabat-Salé, as mentioned by Abu-Lughod,'” The fragments which make up the city may vary according to a number of factors but some of them are common to all cities: the centre, which frequently corresponds to the ‘colonial city’ core; the planned districts of both the pre- and post- independence periods: the illegal settlements, where constructions are often quite similar to those in the legal districts, though having been built on illegally subdivided land; the squatter settlements, or bidonvilles or favelas, the illegal housing of the poor; the slums; and, in those countries with an urban tradition predating the colonial period, the historic city. Site and services projects could also be added as a fragment for the ‘officially poor’, created in the last few years."' The fragmentation of cities in developing countries is a direct consequence of the colonial period. The two cities, one for ‘the population’ and the other for ‘the natives’ were to be spatially separate.'* Various reasons were at the root of such distinction: sanitary reasons, as in Francophone Africa where mosquitos were supposed to spread yellow fever so that it was necessary to separate the ‘clean’ (European) population and the ‘dirty’ (African) one;!* social reasons, as in Delhi, where in planning the new city Lutyens obviously referred to the British housing models (single-family housing, garden, parking space!, but also bore in mind the rigid stratification of the colonial society (minutely classified into 175 different roles and 61 basic positions in the ‘Warrant of Precedence’), zoning the land accordingly:'* and cultural reasons, such as those alleged by Maréchal Lyautey, Morocco’s first French Governor, in support to his decision to build a completely new city for the Europeans, in order to preserve the medinas from being destroyed or contaminated by the ‘modern’ city. Though obvious, it should be added that in fact the essential reasons for building two distinct cities were ideological and political. The large avenues of the European city, its modern services and infrastructures were to show very clearly on which side progress, wealth and power were situated. Some ‘natives’ could be granted the26 MARCELLO BALBO gracious concession of living in the European city, thus taking advantage of its ‘modernity’, but they could never expect to be fully integrated into the colonial urban society.!” As Frantz Fanon pointed out: ‘The colonial society is split in two. Its divide, its border line is indicated by the barracks and the police-station’.'° Colonialism has deeply marked the organisation of space, at the urban as well as the regional level, so as to lead King to consider the colonial city as a specific type of urban development, guite distinct from the industrial city!” It is obvious, therefore, that the few decades which have elapsed from the end of colonialism were not sufficient to transform what had been canceived as a dividing space into an integrated one; to overcome the inertia inherent in any spatial organisation a much longer span of time is required. However, the fact is that the post-independence city is not at all heading towards greater homogeneity; instead it seems ta be accepting and reinforcing its spatial fragmentation. In my opinion, that is one of the most distinctive features of the city of the Third World, and the one which most differentiates it from the western city. Strangely enough, very little research has been carried out on the subject. Defining Fragmentation Spatial fragmentation can be considered from different points of view. The most perceptible one is that of the built environment, and the different settlement patterns referred to above: the ‘modern’ centre, the historic city, the planned districts, the various types of illegal settlements, the stum areas. Each one exhibits distinct features, and the differences are clear, even if there are imitative patterns in search of ‘modernity’, Within every fragment the ‘urban landscapes’ vary. Urban structures where private, collective and public spaces have different meanings, give rise to a variable planned or fortuitous mix of built-up and empty plots, areas of concentra- tion and areas of dispersal, connecting and dividing elements. Asecond symptom of fragmentation is represented by the differences in services and infrastructure levels, and their accessibility. In theory, this is strictly related to each fragment’s degree of Jegality, and to the number of years elapsed since its construction. Recently-built legal housing developments are connected with water and sewerage, but they usually have few or no services; on the other hand squatter settlements usually lack basic infrastructure, but often have more schools, clinics, churches or mosques. even jf informally built and managed. However, the picture is usually more complex: since building costs were far beyond estimates, the new housing does not have access to water and sanitation favelados and slum dwellers might be provided with water and electricity, either after long harsh conflicts with the government or by connecting illegally to the main pipes: ‘historic’ housing is not always serviced better than the squatter settle- ments, due to the technica) and financial constraints facing the realisation of underground networks in usually densely populated and totally built-up areas, where no vacant land is available for new services. A third essential way to look at spatial fragmentation is to consider the wide variety of tenure conditions. The spatia) structure of Third World cities is shapedTHE FRAGMENTED CITY OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES 27 first of all by the land tenure systems, in particular the different degrees of security each system guarantees Needless to say, fragments recognised by and belonging to the ‘modern’ law rank highest in security: the large single-family houses with their well tended lawns, the row-houses in the compounds and the ‘modern movement’ style multistorey buildings in the estates are all the physical outcome of this safest condition However, although the only one to be officially recognised, formal ‘modern’ land ownership is by no means the only type of arrangement through which people can have access to land!* In the Islamic countries an important share of land. particularly in urban areas, belongs to religious organisations (Habbous or Wadf), while in Francophone Africa forms of intermediate’ ownership are becoming more and more important Each tenure condition has different spatial outcomes and results in different ‘fragments’: illegal settlements where urban regulations and building norms are respected as much as, if not more than. in the planned ones: evolutionary housing. well established squatter settlements where land tenure is sufficiently secure and rehabilitation is well under way; poor but ‘safe’ areas with a significant proportion of rental housing The Causes of Fragmentation Born out of the colonial dualistic city, today’s fragmentation finds its main causes in: (a) the extremely rapid urban population growth; (b) the functioning of the urban economy; (c) the ideology of urban planning; and (d) the role of the state. As is well known, the rate of urbanisation is so rapid as to make impossible any effective mastering of city growth. The public as well as the private ‘supply’ of the city, i.e. the provision of housing, infrastructure and services, cannot keep up with the size of the demand. The lack of a legally recognised and financially accessible production of urban goods and services for the low-income population, that is, the majority of the urban population, activates a variety of substitute mechanisms. Though involving almost every part of the city as well as every sector of its functioning, such mechanisms tend to be very local in nature (one reason often being their conditions of illegality), thus adding to the segmentation of urban space. Aside from the rate of urban population growth, its components also play an important role: mainly natural increase in Latin America, migration in several African countries (though the number is diminishing), and foreign refugees in a significant and increasing number of cities. Natural growth and migration flows shape the city structure differently: house-sharing and overcrowding is more common in Latin America where the population is already mostly urban, while in Africa rural migrants often settle on the urban fringe, creating vast low density semi-rural settlements.'” A further cause of fragmentation is the role of the city within the national system of cities, as well as its share of the national urban population. Any capital city or main economic urban centre is more or less integrated into the world economic28 MARCELLO BALBO and political system. As such, it needs the many activities specific to any primary city, however small, and the related differentiation of its social structure and use of land. The ‘consultants’ economy’, for instance, is a primary component of the urban economy in many African cities, and has an important impact on the city structure itself, through the housing, hotels, commerce, sport facifities or services it fuels As mentioned above, the functioning of the urban economy is largely based on the informal sector. Though initial formulations, such as those by Geertz and Hart,2? pointed to the contrary, by now it is widely accepted that informal activities are a structura] component of the urban economies of developing countries, resulting essentially from their ‘dependent’ condition; as such they are destined to be an important feature in the urban scene for quite some time to come.”! Nonetheless, very little attention has been paid to the ways informal activities affect the spatial structure of the city. its growth pattern, the uses of land, the provision (ar lack) of infrastructure and services. This is rather strange considering that in most cities informal activities are not simply the most dynamic part of the economy, but also the only ones offering some potential for the absorption of the large and expanding urban labour supply. Though very little is known on the subject, it seems fairly obvious that the particular features of the informal sector have an important say in shaping urban space. In fact, fragmentation could be a response to the organisational needs of informal activities, not simply the consequence of an informal housing and land market. As demonstrated in many case studies, lack of capital, use of local resources, poor technologies, small market size and large participation of women and children in the labour force are among the main features of any activity belonging to the informal sector. All of these are likely to benefit from a focal dimension, giving them the possibility of establishing and strengthening the network of linkages essential to secure credit promptly, raw materials, skilled labour and ‘specialised’ services when needed, at the least cost The community organisations existing at the neighbourhood or even building level in many countries are the clearest evidence of such a locally-centred functioning of the urban society. Similarly, water street vendors, scavengers reclaiming plastic bottles or coke cans for shoe-or pan-making, women selling food prepared inside the house or beer brewed in the courtyard, the boss recognised for his power to talk to the people in the City Hall, all survive, work for and rely on an urban society which is strictly local in size. Informal space—physical as wel] as economic and social—is primarily loca! space. Fragmentation is the result of a similar condition, in which centripetal forces are more powerful than those of relation and integration. Given its engineering and architectural origins, the ideology of urban planning has always looked at the city as a homogeneous object. Planning laws and urban technologies have always been forged in this perspective. Services are established uniformly for the entire city. The idea that everyone should have access to a similar amount of education, health, transport and sport facilities is obvious in the developed countries, where governments have enough resources to provide infrastructure and public services. By contrast, it makes little sense in Third WorldTHE FRAGMENTED CITY OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES 29 cities, where the limited money available is not sufficient to maintain the existing stock, let alone permit new investments. Building norms refer to a ‘modern’ type of housing accessible to a minority of the urban population, while most people build the house they can with whatever they have whenever they can afford it. Laws and procedures have often remained the same as those of the colonial period, when the city was conceived as a city of planned housing developments, building permits and registered property deeds Instead. the actual city is the result of other types of laws such as the traditional or the ‘intermediate’ ones or is simply outside the law ** The city of the master plan is made of finished products, while the city in developing countries is by and large a city in progress, where very little is completed and very much is used in a way different from that for which it had originally been designed. The city of master planning is a city of networks: water, electricity and sewerage systems are all conceived as a network which begins at a central point and permeates the whole city, serving in essentially the same way each of its parts. In the city of master planning any different form of supply is inconceivable. Network-technologies do not, however, simply need pipes and wires running throughout the urban space, they also require standardised norms and management procedures:?* as a matter of fact, the network city is the concreti- sation of the master planning approach to the idea of the unitarian city. Those who cannot afford to have their own WC or water tap and adopt other types of solutions for their needs (oil lamps, street water vendors, foot travelling, pit latrines) are not acknowledged as citizens of the network city, even if they are the majority of the population Finally, one should mention the role of the state, which aims to produce and control everything, with very little power to do either. The state, however, with its investments and laws and, therefore, its power of inclusion or exclusion, is one of the main causes of fragmentation, at least in theory if not in practice. The state defines what is legal and what is not, dictates the rules governing access to the ‘official’ city. It also sets standards and establishes permits and licences while exercising its power to deliver or refuse them. As a matter of fact, fragmentation often results from the inability of the state to follow the rules it has itself adopted Paradoxically, however, this becomes a further source of power, for it strengthens the discretionary powers of the state. A settlement is illegal largely because the state did not provide enough housing or land; nonetheless, its inhabitants have to beg in order to get water and sanitation. Water, electricity or public transport are never acknowledged as a right; they always have to be negotiated with those who hold the right to the city. The periodic demolition of squatter settlements, as well as the clean-up programmes by which street vendors and shoe-cleaners are removed from the city centre, are certainly decided according to the economic appetite of some local businessman or politician (or both) or the modernisation wave that springs up every now and then. Most often, though, they are a means for the currently dominant social groups to reaffirm their power, frequently more for ethnic, religious or political antagonisms than for economic ones.30 MARCELLO BALBO The Spaces of Urban Society The colonial city was a dual city because its urban society was dualistic. The relationship between today’s urban society and its fragmented space is far less explicit as well as insufficiently explored,” The Marxist approach to the city,” as well as rent theory,” appear to be of little help in analysing the city of developing countries. On one hand, the capitalist mode of production cannot expfain the multiple facets of the city's spatial structure. The relationships between economy, ideology and politics, ie. what Marxists consider to be the only possible way of studying the city, give very little insight into an organisation of space which is largely shaped by economic processes and social actors who belong to the capitalist mode of production only marginally, or not at all. On the other hand, it is difficult to contend that land rent has been a primary factar in determining the structure of contemporary cities: as mentioned, illegal settlements, which make up the major part of the city, are located anywhere possible, even in central areas with high land values. As stressed by several authors, Jand rent is also becoming an increasingly important factor in shaping urban space in the city of the Third World *” However, it is hatd to imagine that it will result in any significant changes in the short term. More likely, the clash between the inertia of the spatia] environment and the pressure fram land values will result in the substitution of the present population by new social groups in some fragments, by no means in the construction of a socially more homogeneous urban structure As is well known, many studies have been carried out on the issue of economic dualism in developing countries, and the linkages between formal and informal activities. Quite a number of these studies have stressed the existence of different ‘segmented’ and ‘fragmented’ labour markets.”* This stream of research is certainly the closest one to the subject matter of this paper. Oddly enough, however, the studies on the informal sector have never examined its impact on the city structure and its functioning *” On the contrary, it seems indisputable that informal activities influence the structure of urban space, by locating close to particular areas in the city on the one hand, and by carrying out their production or commercial activities within the home on the other. Nearly fifty per cent of those making up the informal sector of Jakarta live and work in the same place, two thirds in Kano, more than seventy per cent in Cordoba.*° In the Thitd World, housing, work and recreation are not spatially distinct as they are in the western city.*! Moreover, the informal sector produces ‘customised’ goods and services, since consumers demand very specific goods and most of the time have very little money to spend. Informal activities can survive only insofar as they are properly tuned to market demand. They also need to strengthen all the commercial, political and parental linkages necessary to receive what they need (credit, transport, skilled work, taw material), when necessary and at the least cost. Thus localism is an essential feature of the informa] economy and the organisation and ‘control’ of local space a primary condition for its survival Though only recently recognised as an important subject of research,** the role of women and their needs in terms of spatial organisation is one more factorTHE FRAGMENTED CITY OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES at influencing the urban structure. This is likely to be a major reason why the city expands and consolidates in a fragmented way, since the participation of women in the informal economy is large and growing, as long as they are able to work at home or close to it and thus continue to carry out all the tasks related to their reproductive functions. As a matter of fact. the production/reproduction nexus seems to be one of the most promising perspectives for looking at the city in developing countries, and has yet to be explored.** Study of the production/reproduction nexus can bring a deeper understanding of the role of women and of the functioning of the household in relation to the urban spatial structure and economy. The household must be adopted as a primary unit of analysis not only for its obvicus importance from cultural and social viewpoints, but also and foremost because the survival strategies which prevent the city from collapsing, despite all statistical evidence. are all centred around the household Income production and resource allocation decisions are made in the framework of complex strategies. some of a long-term character, where the role of each individual is defined precisely.** For its survival, the household usually relies on resources generated within both the formal and the informal sectors, according to whatever opportunities are available and to the workload required by reproduction activities. Many of these activities, such as house-building, food-preparation or taking care of the children and the elderly, are carried out by different components of the household, and quite often by the extended family or the clan at large: in many developing countries, the ‘individual family’ often does not serve as a useful conceptual tool for analysing the urban (as well as rural) society. Therefore, the spatial structure of the city and its use are likely to play an essential part in supporting, or weakening, the household survival strategies. Similarly, fragmentation of urban space results from the necessity of superimpos- ing continuously the production and reproduction spheres Revisiting the Fragmented City European urban planning has always looked at the city as a homogeneous, well- balanced unitarian object. The dual city of colonial urbanism was an ‘unfortunate’ exception to the norm, made inevitable by a cause beyond control: instead, the fragmented city of developing countries is looked at as a strange case in kind, of which very little is known and of which the little that is known does not promise a bright future. Fragmentation certainly raises the cost of urbanisation. To supply the new planned residential areas with water and sanitation, infrastructure has to pass through illegal settlements without servicing them. Spatial discontinuity not only entails higher investment and operating costs (for obvious technical reasons), but also makes it easier to pirate water and electricity through illegal connections. Moreover, the use of land resulting from spontaneous settlements is thoroughly inefficient: in most cases such settlements are made of self-help low-density housing, with numerous vacant plots in between the built areas. Thus transport is32 MARCELLO BALBO problematic and expensive, for distance increases and road conditions are so bad that motor vehicles cannot use them. in addition to the monetary cost of transport, people have to spend a great deal of time to get where they can catch a bus or any other means of collective transport. To the direct costs of fragmentation must be added other negative non-monetary consequences, nonetheless important. Those who live in the illegal fragments are not fully recognised citizens and have, therefore, only limited access to services and infrastructure, both in quantity and quality; second, lack of tenure security minimises spontaneous upgrading investment; third, land and housing in the illegal settlements, once again almost by definition, are not taxed, though benefiting from the (albeit insufficient) public resources invested in the area (roads, water fountains, public lighting); finally the ‘illegality’ of spontaneous settlements automatically limits the political representativeness of their residents and their contractual power, affecting the democratic dimension of the political process. In the last twenty years or so, most of the people concerned with urban problems in the Third World, both scholars and international organisations, have stressed the urgency of recognising the ‘real’ city, the physical (i.e. the illegal settlements) as well as the economic one (i.e. the informal sector).*° Sites and services and upgrading projects, or the World Labour Programme, all aim to achieve this objective However appropriate and inevitable, due to the size of the ‘real’ city, this approach does not go without contradictions. For one thing, fragmentation resulting from exclusion from the ‘legal’ city and its tules could be the only currently feasible solution to the seemingly unmanageable situation where the state has few or no resources to satisfy the needs of a rapidly growing urban population. To live in the ‘real’ city means to be able to gain access. albeit at minimum levels, to the urban services at little or no cost; informal activities are certainly linked to the modern sectars of the economy, but they can exist insofar as they can locate in the ‘real’ city, where plots are illegally subdivided and houses built without abiding to the norms so as to keep costs down, and where they are not subject to the fiscal, wage or union regu/ations which control formal activities. Similarly, many inhabitants are connected illegally to water and electricity, often supplying them to several families in their neighbourhood. Fragmentation might also be instrumental in creating formal or informal networks of mutual aid, which only explain the extraordinary fact that Lagos. Manilla or Rio de Janeiro do not collapse as one constantly expects.” Finally, spatial fragmentation could also facilitate the founding of interest groups around local issues, leading eventually to active participation in the political urban arena.’’ The question must be asked whether in reality fragmentation is not only a mechanism of exclusion, but also and foremost a means of resource redistribution and political dynamisation, although unintentional. ‘We need more slums’ was the provocative title of an article published some years ago in the New Delhi The Indian Express, stressing how the city, the illegal one, offers the rural poor the opportunity of improving the quality of their lives significantly; by contrast it is the quality of life of the rich that is negatively affected, compelled as they are to put up with the wastethe streets, the streets crowded with vendors and beggars, or higher ‘crime—i.e. with the manifestation of poverty. al fragmentation is one way of achieving greater equity, we need to be very in fostering solutions which aim at making the city more integrated, eous, legal. Similar objectives might be consistent with the conditions of THE FRAGMENTED CITY OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES 33 strial (and post-industrial) city, but contradictory to the ways of function- af the city in those developing countries which so far have been able, among ‘difficulties but with unexpected flexibility, to accommodate (for better or ) an absolutely astonishing number of people. “United Nations Centre for Human ents—HABITAT, Global Report on Human 5 1986, Oxford, Oxford University Press, Datta, S. (ed.), Tira World Urbanization sats and New Perspectives, Stockholm, HSFR, lish Council for Research in the Humanities Social Sciences, 1990; Bardss, P., Action ig (IHS Working Paper 2), Rotterdam, fe for Housing and Urban Development es, 1991 What has been happening in the last uple of years in various European countries Id suggest that a collapsing state is more sily found in the North than in the Third World. gh the state is undergoing a number of \ges almost everywhere, what is happening most of the ex-socialist countries cannot be taken as a state crisis indicator. The previous ie had frequently been imposed and did not espond to the cultural and historical con- ditions of mast countries. 3 Hettne. B, Development Theory and the Three orlés, Harlow, Longman, 1990. 4 Recently it has been suggested that the city in developed countries is also assuming a dual “character as a result of the increasing importance the informational economy, leading to a ety of social universes whose fundamental ‘characteristics are their sharp fragmentation, the sharp definition of their boundaries, and the low level of communication with other such universes (Castells. M., The Informational City, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989). Though this may “be the case for the US, such an interpretation “does not seem to fit closely to the European or _lapanese city, where urban society continues to be strongly integrated and interconnected, with the obvious exception of foreign migrants, whose ‘importance is admittedly growing 5 Rapoport, A, ‘Culture and the Urban Order NOTES AND REFERENCES in Agnew. |., Mercer. J. and Sopher. D. (eds.), The City ix Cultural Context. Boston, MA. Allen and Unwin, 1984. 6 Abu-Lughod, |. L., ‘Tale of Two Cities: The Origins of Modem Cairo’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 7, 1965. 7 Schneier, G., ‘Latin America: A Tale of Cities’, International Social Science Journal, no. 125, August 1980. 8 Driant, J. C., Las barriadas da Lima: historia e interpretacién, Lima, IFEA-DESCO, 1991 9 Aguirre, R. et al , Conversaciones sabre la ciudad del Tercer Mundo |\IED America Latina), Buenos Aires, Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1989. 10 Abu, Lughod, |. L., Urban Apartheid in Morocco, Princetan, NI, Princeton University Press, 1980 11 One move fragment could be mentioned, that of the pavement dwellers, 12 In some cases there was an appendix to the dual city, such as the district for the Chinese migrants in East Asia, the Indian district in East Africa, or the commercial district in the French African colonies 13 Le Pape, M, ‘De l'espace et des races Abidjan, entre 1903 et 1934’, Cahiers d'études africaines, XXV (3). No. 99, 1985. 14 King, A.D, Colonial Urban Development London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976. 15 Massiah, G. and Tribillon, |. F., Villes en développement, Paris, la Découverte, 1988; Balbo, M (acura), La citta degli altri, Venezia, Cluva, 1989 16 Fanon, F., Les damnés de (a terre, Paris, Mas- pero, )962 17 King, op. cit 18. Baross, P. and van der Linden. J. (eds ), The Transformation of Land Supply Systems in Third World Cities, Aldershot, Avebury, 1990 19 However, African cities are also experi- encing the overcrowding of their central areas,34 MARCELLO BALBO where an increasing number of migrants settle as renters in very crowded conditions. 20 Geertz, C., Peddlers and Princes. Social Change and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian Tow Chicago. Chicago University Press, 1963; Hart, K., Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana’. lournal of Moder African Studies, 11, 1973. 21 Maldonado, C., Petits producteurs urbains @Afrique francophone, Geneve, BIT, Programme mondiale de l'emploi, 1987; Castells and Portes, £990; Castells, Mand Portes, A, ‘World Under- neath: The Origins, Dynamic and Effects of the Informal Economy’ in Portes, A,, Castells, M and Benton, L.A. (eds. |, The Informal Economy. Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries, Baltimore and London. The Iohns Hopkins University Press, 1989; Turnham, 0, Salome, B. and Schwartz, A “The Informal Sector Revisited, Paris, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1990. 22 Doebele. W. A., ‘The Evolution of Concepts of Urban Land Tenure in Developing Countries Habitat International, U1 (1) 1987; Le Bris, E Osmont, A, Quattara, A. 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A Strategy for Increasing Pro- ductive Employment in Kenya, Geneva, ILO 1972, World Bank, Urbanization, Washington DC, World Bank, 1972 36 Santos, M,, Metropole corporativa fragmentada © caso de Sa0 Paulo, Sa0 Paulo, Nobel, 1990 37 Even if this may very well be the case in Genevary ur situations, in others there are indications he contrary, as is clearly illustrated by the & of F Navez-Bouchanine on Morocco 0, M., Povera grande citfa, Milano, F. Angeli Durand-Lasserve, A., ‘Land and Housing in World Cities; Are Public and Private Strat- jes Contradictory?’ Cities, November 1987 Gilbert, A. ‘Home Enterprises in Poor Urban lements: Constraints, Potentials and Policy Regional Development Dialogue, 9 (4) Hardoy, | E., Cairncross, S. and Satterthwaite. {eds.|. The Poor Die Young, London, Earthscan, 1990. Lee-Smith, D. and Syagga. P.M. Access by the Uréan Poor to Basic Infrastructure and Services (Africa Region Paper for Economic Development Institute Infrastructure and Urban Development Division), Nairobi, Mazingira Institute, 1990. Mouyi, K, ‘Kinshasa: Problems of Land Man- comments and suggestions THE FRAGMENTED CITY OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES 35 Habiter, modéles socio-culturels et appropriatios de Fes- pace. These de doctorat d Etat. Rabat, Université Mohamed V, J991 ADDITIONAL REFERENCES agement, Infrastructure and Food Supply’ in Stren, R. E. and White, RR. (eds.), African Cities in Crisis, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1989 Rogerson, C. M., The First Decade of Informal Sector Studies: Review and Synthesis (Environmental Studies Occasional Paper No. 25), lohannesbure, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, 1985 Sinnatamby, G., ‘Low Cost Sanitation’ in Hardoy et al. feds, op cit United Nations Development Programmey World Bank/United Nations Centre for Human Settlement-HABITAT, Urban Management Pro- gramme, Integrated Urban Development, Nairobi, 1990 World Bank, World Development Report 1988, Washington DC, World Bank, 1988 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ‘The ideas underpinning this paper have been discussed at length with F. Navez-Bouchanine. | am indebted to P. Bardss, D. Dowall, A. Durand-Lasserve, P. Garau, A. Gilbert, B. Misra, M. Santos, T. Sudta and, in particular. E Le Bris for their