Urbanization in the Developing World

Forces at work in the urbanization of the Developing World may be described as "push" and "pull" forces. As changes in agricultural practices – through innovative techniques of cultivation and other factors – create unemployment in rural areas, people are pushed into the cities. And, as the cities become industrialized they create a strong demand for labor that exerts a "pull" on workers, moving them into the urban areas. The relative importance of the "push" and the "pull" may vary from city to city, but both lead to migration from rural to urban areas and an increased pace of urbanization.

Other factors that contribute to urbanization are socioeconomic development and improved education. Some studies indicate that as a population's socioeconomic position improves, more of the population wants to live in the city with its easier access to modern conveniences and cultural resources. In addition, rural educated people migrate from rural to urban areas in order to attain further education or to take advantage of better paying job opportunities in the urban area.

Unfortunately, there are other forces at work in urbanization. In most countries there is usually a historic urban structure, often a relic of a colonial period, which is highly skewed in favor of one large city, or in larger countries, a few large cities where capital and infrastructure resources are concentrated. There is apparently a tendency for the largest cities to accumulate much of the increase in urban population in spite of the best efforts of governments to plan development. Unfortunately a significant part of that urban growth is the surplus agricultural labor that has migrated to a city and, which often cannot find employment in the industrial sector. Because that growth is unable to earn a formal wage, it becomes part of a large, informal sector of the economy that offers little more than sustenance and increases the strain on city infrastructure.

Another factor in urbanization may be another relic of colonial rule – the fact that urban development was originally based on a commercial export oriented economy. Over the years that economic base has industrialized and expanded to meet the domestic needs of the growing population. The result is a concentration of industrial development in these existing centers where labor, consumers, and infrastructure are already available. This breaks the linkages between the city and the surrounding rural areas and creates a physical separation between the rich and the poor through the creation of a rich city core surrounded by the poor.

As a result of these trends, selected cities are growing at unprecedented rates, taxing the infrastructure that serves the city population and creating air and water pollution that may endanger the health of the citizens. These changes in the urban environment have obvious consequences for their human populations. Increased levels of airborne and waterborne pollutants have adverse effects on human life. Large cities develop air pollution problems from the burning of fossil fuels for transportation, electrical generation, and heat. Urban water supplies have to be monitored carefully for increased levels of toxins. Changes in the flow of water through cities may make them vulnerable to flooding. A conference on Environmental Quality and Sustainable Development held in the United States in October 1992 reported data from World Health Organization and United Nations Environmental Programme world air monitoring network. Scientists found that the ambient air quality found in most mega-cities was poor enough to cause serious health effects. The problems are common in all mega-cities, but are particularly serious in the developing countries of the world.

American Urban Sprawl

The United States is experiencing a similar demographic challenge. Between 1950 and 1997 the country's population increased by 116 million. In the next 50 years it is estimated that the population will grow by an additional 125 million. No other rich country faces such population pressure. However, no other rich country has the amount of relatively empty space that America has that can accommodate this population growth. America has chosen not to push the extra people into European style cities with their mesh of residential blocks, contiguous shops, and public transport. Instead they have experienced almost the reverse of the trend toward urbanization. In 1920, there were roughly ten people per acre in America's cities, suburbs, and towns. By 1990, there were only four.

As a result, all over America people have begun to worry about the unfettered expansion of jobs, factories, houses, offices, roads and shops that goes by the name of "urban sprawl". In November 1999, voters approved 173 local referendums to limit suburban sprawl by, for example, allowing the purchase of farms near cities or by imposing boundaries restricting urban growth to particular spaces. There is a widespread view that sprawl is wasteful and ugly. There are several efforts to create national and statewide incentives to limit development in the suburbs and revitalize the urban cores, just the opposite of the urbanization problem of much of the rest of the world. Yet at the same time, Americans are flocking to malls, highways, and 100-mile wide cities. In fact, they appear to be doing so more enthusiastically, more wastefully and, in more sprawl creating ways than in the past.

The "push" and "pull" of America's urban sprawl are more closely related to "push" of crime and the "pull" of socioeconomic advantage. In 1992, a survey of people leaving New York City found that fear of crime was the most common reason for migrating to the suburbs. Those that are economically able are pushed to the suburbs. Over the past three decades, urban poverty has grown distinctly worse and the number of people living in ghettos where 40% of the population is below the poverty line has doubled. This is the result of the evacuation of city centers by the middle classes, since they take jobs and tax revenues with them. Thus the middle class is also being pulled to the suburbs, attracted by the jobs and socioeconomic advantages resulting from the move. In this manner, urban sprawl is changing the nature of the division between rich and poor in American society by creating a physical separation.

An article in The Economist (8/21-27/99) draws the conclusion that urban sprawl is a product of public policy. Of particular interest are the factors that are cited as policies and subsidies that encourage urban sprawl. The first is America's transport policies. America is committed to sustained public spending on highways. Spending has totaled well over $1 trillion in the past 20 years. Because of the larger areas and low population density, spending on roads is disproportionately greater in suburbs than in city centers. The Economist quotes the State of Maryland's state planning director as calling the roads program an "insidious form of entitlement-the idea that state government has an open-ended obligation, regardless of where you choose to build a house or open a business, to be there to build roads, schools, sewers." Without such policies, the growth of the suburbs would not have been possible.

The second factor is the fact that America is a country where tradition and laws are often based on the Anglo-American philosophy of private property rights and local land use control. Almost every metropolitan area is divided into dozens, sometimes hundreds, of local administrative units (265 in Chicago, 780 in New York). Generally, each local government is free to make its own decisions about whether to permit a new project, regardless of the cost the decision imposes on neighbors. In addition, local government usually gets to keep any resulting property-tax revenue. This results in a competition for commercial development that pulls new buildings towards richer suburbs and out of city centers. Adding to this pressure is the fact that city centers usually have ill-trained workforces, heavy welfare burdens, and cannot afford favorable tax treatment for developers. It is estimated that around 70% of American jobs are now in the suburbs.

The third factor is the American tax system. In America, all interest payments on a home can be deducted from income subject to federal and state income taxes. The profit on house sales can also be exempt from capital gains tax. The cost of this aspect of the tax system is estimated at $8 billion in 1998. By lowering the real cost of owning a house, it encourages people to buy bigger properties, which favors larger houses and large lots. One study has suggested that the tax system alone reduces the population density in urban areas by 15%.

Comparison of Forces

In comparing the problems of urbanization and American urban sprawl, one is struck by the power of two forces: The desire of the rich to be separated from the poor, and tradition. Both problems have resulted in a physical separation of the rich from the poor. In the cities of the developing world, the core of the major city tends to house the rich. Their neighborhoods are surrounded by the urban poor, who are generally housed in marginal areas of the cities, and at greater distance, the rural poor. In the United States, urban sprawl has placed the rich in gated communities in the suburbs with the poor housed in the ghettos of the central city. As the middle class gains wealth, it naturally tends to move toward the areas reserved for the rich.

Tradition is also an important underlying factor. Urbanization continues the tradition of a major city as the center of culture, capital, and education, as well as an agent of exploitation of the region around it. American urban sprawl continues the tradition of local land use control, private property rights, and disregard for impacts of local land use actions on others or the community at large.

Lessons to be Learned

The American experience suggests that a well-planned and maintained road system allows free movement of people and goods. America is finding that poor people are easily able to move from the central city to the suburbs. Regulations requiring large lots and houses keep them out of the gated communities, but they are able to find housing in some of the older suburbs. Coincidentally, the suburbs are starting to suffer from some of the crime and joblessness that afflict inner cities. A reliable road system also allows decentralization of industry as can be seen from the proliferation of industrial parks in the American suburbs.

Applying this notion to the problem of urbanization in the Developing World, we must assume that the funds can be found to develop a reliable expanded road system in the region of major cities. Such a system could contribute to solving the problem of urbanization by providing the mechanism for the easy movement of people and goods. This mechanism could then help support establishing better connections between the urban area and the surrounding region. An initial step would be the relocation of administrative functions to smaller cities. This could lead to industrial expansion in designated areas (similar to industrial parks) once the needed infrastructure is installed. Infrastructure needs may be minimized by collocating industries that can use each other's byproducts. This would lead to relocation of significant middle class populations from the large city and a source of jobs in the smaller cities and the rural area.

The Developing World's experience in putting their centers of culture, education and capital in the central areas of their major cities is instructive to America. With the decampment of the middle class to the suburbs, America is also experiencing a migration of museums, libraries, galleries, schools, banks, and corporate headquarters out of the centers of her cities. This diffusion is limiting the synergy that occurs when these institutions are in close proximity with each other. Their reinstatement in the city center will also attract the middle class and help to balance the urban and regional populations.

The people of the world have much to teach each other. It only takes a willingness to listen and share. The advent of the information age has opened new means for the creative use of the full intellectual resources of the world. The creation of a more efficient urban system with equitable growth benefiting a whole nation is a goal worthy of our best joint efforts.