Urbanization in

developing countries

«It is not only the scale of urban growth that has T he accelerated growth
changed but also its nature. The urbanization of of cities
customs has been gradually spreading; it contains the
Growth of urban populations is
seeds of a global generalization of urban values. It is determined by several factors: on
in the cities that our economic development capacity, the one hand, the increasing
our society’s future and even the ecological future of tendency towards natural
our planet will henceforth be played out.»1 demographic growth of urban
populations, and on the other hand,
the migratory movements from more
or less remote rural areas towards the
cities, the development
of small rural towns into the status
of urban centres – which forms the
urbanizing process as such – and

4
1
G. Cavallier, “De la ville à l’urbain”, Urbanisme, May 1996
 the absorption of rural clusters on Urban and world population trends (in billions)
the outskirts of growing towns. source: World urbanization prospects - The 1994 revision», UNO, 1995

Between 1970 and 1995, the world

8
urbanization rate, measured by the
ratio of the urban population to the 7
total population, increased from 37%
6
to 45%. At the present pace, by the
year 2005, half the world’s 5
population will be living and working
4
in urban areas. And according to
projections, this rate will reach 55% 3
in 2015 and more than 60% in 2025. 2

C ontinent-based 0
differences 1970
1995
urban population 2020
Urbanization is a historically and geo- world population
graphically diverse phenomenon. At the
level of the major planetary regions, advanced: Europe and North America
three basic situations can be observed have similar urbanization levels
which depend on how the current (approximately 75%) and because
urbanization level combines with the of their low natural growth rates
natural demographic growth rate: (having completed their
demographic transition), have urban
● The continents in which growth rates of no more than
urbanization is the oldest and the most 1% per year.
Urban population percentage in 1970, 1995, 2020
source: «World urbanization prospects - The 1994 revision», UNO, 1995

100
● Latin America, where urbanization
is as advanced as in the first group
but demographic growth remains
80
buoyant, with an urban growth rate of
approximately 2% per year. Note that
60 this rate reached 3.2% per year
between 1975 and 1990.

40 ● Today’s least urbanized regions: the

Middle East, Asia (except Japan) and
Africa, where the urbanization level is
20 less than 50% but depending on
whether demographic growth has
1970 slowed down (China) or is still strong
0
1995 (up to 3% per year), the urban growth
Africa Asia rate is between 2.5% and 5% per year.
Europe Latin 2020
North
America The most rapid urban growth is
America

5
 The global system of the network of cities with
more than five million inhabitants in 1995

currently happening in Africa. It is

estimated at around 4% per year for
the 2000-2020 period. However, the
greatest additional annual urban
population volume is in Asia, owing
to the population masses concerned: New York
Chicago
a billion additional city-dwellers are
expected between 2000 and 2020, Los Angeles
500 million of which in China and
India alone. The distribution of the
Mexico
world urban population is naturally
tending towards the distribution of
the world population. At the dawn
Bogota
of this century, two thirds of the
world’s urban population were living
Lima
in the now-developed countries. At
the close of the century, two thirds
of the urban population are to be Sao Paulo Rio Janeiro
found in the developing countries.
Santiago
Buenos Aires

Urban population distribution in 1994

source: World urbanization prospects - The 1994 revision», UNO, 1995

Asia and Oceania 64%

Africa 15%
Europe 61%
Japan 11%
C ompetition in cities
Australia and territorial areas
Latin America 21% New
Zealand 2%
The transformation of the world
North economy has been gaining pace since
America 26%
the early 1990s. Five indicators are
statistically significant of this change
and of the growing weight of
countries in the South. Firstly,
international trade is continuing to
grow faster than world output.
Between 1991 and 1994, exports rose
by 6% per year and output by 1%.
Moreover, the share of the developing

Less developed countries Developed countries

6
 Saint Petersburg
Moscow

London Essen
Paris
Shenyang
Istanbul Peking Seoul
Teheran Tianjin Tokyo
Lahore Delhi Shangai Osaka
Cairo
Karachi Dhaka Hong Kong
Bombay Calcutta
Bangkok Manila
Hyderabad Madras
Lagos

Jakarta

source: World urbanization prospects - The 1994 revision», UNO, 1995

countries in world output has
increased from 34 to 40% in ten years
and their participation in trade is now
27%. In 1995, capital movements
towards developing countries reached
a record level of 231 billion dollars.
The development of seaborne trade
also reflects the reorganization of
commerce throughout the world. Thus
today’s share of trade in the Atlantic is
33% (60% thirty years earlier) and in
the Pacific it is 40%. The build-up of
transpacific trade results primarily
from the growth of exports from
Southeast Asia. The globalization of
the economy is leading to the
emergence of new regional economic
centres structured around networks
of cities, more particularly based on
the development of new technologies.
In this context, cities must seek to
develop their assets to attract
international investors, large
multinationals and their subsidiaries.
The competition in which cities are
now engaging, not only at regional
level but also at international level, in
order to take up this challenge, is one
of the significant developments of this
turn of the century.
M egapolises and
networks of cities
Between 1970 and 1990, the
emergence of cities with more than 10
million inhabitants was twice as great
in the developing countries as in the
developed countries. According to UN
projections, in 2015, 23 of the 27
cities with more than 10 million
inhabitants and 36 of the 44 cities
with more than 5 million inhabitants
should be concentrated in the South.
It is in these fast-growing cities that
the greatest challenges must met,
those of ensuring sustainable

7
The new order of world
competition, the spatial
redeployment of the economy
and competition between cities

The industrialized economies in both

the North and the South are increa-
singly marked by the use of high-
intensity technical knowhow: new
technologies for information and
communications, training, marketing
and advertising, research and deve-
lopment, innovation. This tertiariza-
tion of productive activities has tech-
nical and economic repercussions on
the transformation of the world eco-
nomic system. Businesses are
constantly having to compete and
their competitive effectiveness has less
of an effect on physical investment
than on innovation, company orga-
nization and management methods.
In their concern to move closer to the
markets and adjust to them better,
businesses are carrying out internal
and external redeployment and deve-
loping worldwide partnership agree-
ments. This is leading to spatial
diversification of company bases and
strengthening of interdependence bet-
ween the decision-making centres and
the production sites. The choice bet-
ween different potential locations is
increasingly made on the basis of the
logistical environment available to
companies in the competing urban
areas.
It is up to cities to provide this envi-
ronment by supplying facilities and
services on competitive terms and
backed by high-quality human resources.
development and contributing to
economic and social expansion, while
enabling greater solidarity between
the inhabitants. The build-up of
megapolises often results in the
multiplication of informal
neighbourhoods, favelas and barrios.
In this fast-changing phase, not
enough human and financial resources
are available to meet people’s needs,
the majority of whom are young
people. But at the same time, it is in
the megapolises that the dynamic
momentum is the strongest.
Cities are not all enjoying the same
sustainable development. Their growth
depends not only on their internal
dynamics but also on the degree to
which their activities are oriented
towards global trade. The
development of cities also depends on
their relations with one another, with
their own hinterlands and with the
networks of cities.
T he economic and
social dimension
of cities
«Household expenditure
requirements and economic
opportunities increase with the
size of agglomerations and it has
likewise been shown that the
average productivity of the
various informal activity and
modern activity strata of cities
also increases with their size. The
productivity of a medium-sized
city with 50,000 inhabitants is
thus twice that of a town with
5,000 inhabitants and half that of
a city with two million
inhabitants. These agglomeration
effects are partly masked by the

8
increasingly informal nature of
Real economic activities of West African cities
cities. Thus in many respects, the
urbanizing process is emerging as A study of the long-term outlook for West Africa3 has shown that the «real» Gross
both a condition and an Regional Product (GRP), which includes unrecorded activities, is some 40% higher
expression of economic than that indicated by official national accounts. The usual verdict of economic
development – by enabling a stagnation in this region of Africa, or even regression in some countries, often results
large number of individuals to from an underevaluation of these real economic activities. Between 1960 and 1990,
move from a low orbit to a higher the region’s total GRP tripled, and the urban GRP increased fivefold. The contri-
orbit (with greater spending bution of cities to the regional GRP increased from 38 to 66% (at the same time as
requirements and higher the urban population increased from 15 to 40% of the total population).
productivity), by causing work to
be divided between sectors and considerable, of non-monetized or development and analyse the
between rural and urban areas, unrecorded activities. The economy of efficiency of economic policies. At the
and by offering farmers more cities in the South is characterized by other end is the popular or informal
the co-existence of three sectors sector, made up of individual activities
markets for their produce.»2
varying in importance according to with low capital intensity. This close-
the national economies. proximity economy spawns popular
One is modern and formal, settlements and meets virtually all the
The contribution of cities to the
encompassing private and public basic needs of most of the citizens.
national Gross Domestic Product
companies and structured public Between these two sectors, small and
(GDP) is usually far greater than the
services. It is the visible part of the medium-sized businesses, whose
proportion of the urban population in
economy against which to gauge developers may be from modern
the national population. Cities have a
far higher per capita productivity
(ratio between a city’s GDP and its
population) than that of rural areas.
This is true both for the oldest
industrialized countries and for
developing countries.

In 1990, the per capita productivity of

Sao Paulo ($ 4,694) was 1.7 times
higher than the national per capita
productivity ($ 2,797). And still in
1990, the per capita GDP in Calcutta
($ 953) was three times higher than
that in the whole of India ($ 299).

However, these figures, drawn from

countries’ official national accounts,
do not reflect the exact nature and
weight of urban economies. As they
are based on structured sectors of the
formal economy, they do not take
into account the contribution, albeit

2
J.M. Cour, “Les enjeux de l’urbanisation en Afrique de l’Ouest”, Économie et Humanisme, May 1996 9
3
West Africa Long Term Perspective Study – WALTPS, OCDE, 1994.
 companies, the administration or the
The city’s efficiency and/or social equity
popular economy, form an
Current thinking on the efficiency of cities is undecided as to whether they should be intermediate business sector.
primarily dedicated to the economy or to social equity.
Socially speaking, these three sectors
Targeting economic efficiency means prioritizing urban business investment. The remain constantly interlinked through
economic success of this urbanization, which may go hand-in-hand with the uncom- the mobility of the labour force,
fortable surroundings in which most of the urban residents live, is particularly cha- through members of the same family
racteristic of some emerging countries in Southeast Asia. working in each sector, through
The will to provide urban facilities and services for all user categories without dis- workers engaging in more than one
activity at the same time, and through
tinction often translates into social charges that are lower than break-even levels.
households patronizing all three of
And yet these policies, which are often financed by public subsidies, do not enable them for their day-to-day
urban comfort to be extended to all city-dwellers. consumption. Technically and
Because urban planners and managers cannot control growth and income redistri- economically speaking, their relations
bution mechanisms and the causes of economic and social inequality, they are usually multiply through sub-contracting.
unable to correct the negative effects on people and businesses. And yet it is their task These exchanges usually increase in
proportion to the degree of
to propose solutions that will tend to reconcile economic efficiency and social equity.
urbanization.

T he attraction of cities
over rural communities.
The progress of communications has
changed the conditions of rural-urban
exchanges. Both worlds are tending
towards each other through the
extension of peri-urban areas.
Urbanization intensifies flows from
rural areas. And at the same time,
globalization and foreign supplies are
a source of competition for the local
economy. In general, urbanization
arises out of growth in rural sector
productivity generated by an increase
in the demand to be met. Rural-urban
migration is not always synonymous
with rural depopulation. It mainly
affects areas with a low farming
potential, or landlocked areas isolated
from urban markets. The migration
towards the primate urban centres,
mainly the capitals, also involves
strong intra-rural migration towards
good farming areas, which gradually
nurture the growth of small towns.

10
Thus rather than draining the
countryside, urbanization profoundly
restructures the peopling of territorial
areas around urban markets. The
growth of small towns encourages
urban investment in rural areas. It is
conducive to the organization of
agricultural markets and enhances
urban/rural interchange, brings urban
services closer to the rural community
and increases the monetization of the
agricultural economy.
U rban cultures
«Cities and towns have been the
engines of growth and the
incubators of civilization and
have facilitated the development
of knowledge, culture and
traditions, as well as industry and
commerce.»4
4
Habitat Agenda, par. 7
With the advent of globalization, adopted an urban way of life, an
cultures are henceforth continually urban culture.
made to link up and interact, at the This movement is not specific to
risk of becoming standardized and industrialized countries. It is found the
levelled downwards. But cultural world over.
creation remains closely tied to places At the dawn of the XXIst century, the
that are strong and vibrant, crossroads convergence of many development
between influences from the past and patterns is not an impediment to the
from other climes, but also places of growth of strong urban identities.
outreach. Cities aim to make the most
of their potential for artistic, scientific
and economic creation by investing
simultaneously in the conservation
and enhancement of their assets
which form the basis of their identities
and testify to their differences. City-
dwellers, who benefit from many
services but are continually subjected
to the new constraints of the urban
environment, have long since adapted
their ways of life to make the most of
the innumerable possibilities offered
by urban clusters for encounters,
business and leisure activities. Today it
can be said that in the most advanced
societies, the entire population has
11