Cities in the Developing World: Issues, Theory and Policy

THIS BOOK BRINGS together specialists on various aspects of urban development, and their contributions are divided into six sections. The first includes a discussion of the validity of the three principal urban theories: modernization, urban bias and economic dependency, while also looking at the impact of the debt crisis on urbanization. It notes that debt and austerity have forced more women into the labour market. There is also a discussion of how falling per capita food production throughout the 1960s and 1970s in Africa contributed to the exhaustion of foreign reserves and the consequent deterioration of infrastructure, industry, health and education. This chapter suggests that a strong agricultural sector is necessary for growth in manufacture and, consequently, that urban bias policies are not entirely viable.

Part II looks at rural–urban migration and relates it to the globalization process. Migrants move to the city in the hope of better living conditions and the decision to move is made after careful consideration of the implications. A case study of the migration of men from Sugao to Bombay in India serves to illustrate this. Whole family migration in Nigeria is the subject of a second case study by the editor. The families maintain strong family ties with the village of origin. The maintenance of these ties is taken up in the next chapter, which contrasts the kind of migration that takes place in one Amer-Indian village in Peru and another in Mexico. The section concludes with a more macro look at policies to stem migration to cities.

Part III considers the employment structure of the city. The editor considers the concept of over-urbanization in the first chapter, looking at unemployment, underemployment, misemployment and the informal sector. A case study of street occupations in Cali follows, where more than 8 per cent of the population are involved in street activities. A two-decade study of a woman’s struggle to support her dependents in Jakarta opens the analysis of women in the urban workforce, an issue which is continued in following chapters. The section concludes with a look at child labour.

Part IV considers the social organization of the city, particularly the formal and informal methods of integration adopted by migrants to construct social capital. The crisis of the 1980s increased the poor’s reliance on mutual self-help networks. However, the increased stress on these ties led, in some cases, to their disintegration at a time when state service provision was also diminishing.

Part V looks at housing and the environment. The chapters cover areas such as the dismal living conditions of the urban poor and the government failure to ensure better conditions; the issue of self-help housing as a solution to the shortage of low-income housing; and the evolution of housing policy in Chile.

The final part considers patterns of political integration and conflict, focusing on inequalities in political leverage between the rich and poor. The first chapter analyzes the ethnic conflict that has come to the fore in a South Africa under majority rule. The following two chapters describe and analyze two systems of patronage. The first, in Lebanon, where the peculiarities of patronage are traced to a feudal past, serves as a contrast to the second, a discussion of the PRI in Mexico, who have kept the opposition in check by political and administrative cooptation. In the next chapter, three categories of country are identified in Latin America, according to the contrast between the political élites and social groups within them. Those from the Southern Cone are regarded as having the most sophisticated sets of political, civil and social rights in the region. The political representation of the poor is the focus of The New Labour Movement in Brazil. The account of the developments in a post-dictatorship Brazil starts with the metal workers’ strike in Sao Paulo in 1978. The transition to democracy in