LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CHAPTER 5: URBANISATION, SLUMS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
5.2 Urbanisation in Developing Countries: An Overview
built environment, construction, social, cultural, construction and technology recycling waste management on the other. The focus will be on housing, which is one of the crucial issues created by rapid urbanisation and will examine whether the approach adopted by underdeveloped countries to solve housing issues responds to the criteria of sustainable development.
Figure 5.1 World Urban Population (1950-2025)
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1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025
o Rural Developing Countries _ Rural ndustrial Countries _ Urban ndustrialised Countries
o Urban Developing Countries EI 50% of Total F\:)pulation
Source: Adapted from United Nations, Population Division, 2002
During the period from 1965 to 1975, the population increases in rural areas of developing countries accounted for more than half of the global population increase.
Two decades later the picture had been reversed to more than half of the global population growth occurring in the urban areas of developing countries. During the same period the average annual urban population growth of developing countries had increased from 24 million to 51 million people. Almost one half of the urban population growth in developing countries is caused by rural-urban migration. Table 5.1 illustrates this scenario.
Table 5.1: Urban Population and Level of Urbanisation, By Region (1950 - 2025)
Share of population living in urban Urban population (millions)
areas (per cent)
Region 1950 1975 1995 2000 2025 1950 1975 1995 2000 2025
Latin America and Caribbean 69 196 358 401 601 41.6 61.3 74.2 76.6 84.6
Sub-Saharan Africa 20 70 184 233 661 11.3 21.0 30.8 34.0 51.4
North Africa and Middle East 27 90 208 246 465 26.3 45.3 59.3 62.5 75.3
South Asia 11 33 82 105 284 9.9 16.8 25.4 28.4 47.6
India 62 132 251 292 630 17.3 21.3 26.8 28.6 45.2
East Asia and Pacific 36 104 223 264 486 16.8 27.0 39.9 42.7 59.0
China 61 160 369 443 832 11.0 17.3 30.3 334.5 54.5
Developing countries 286 785 1,675 1,983 39,527 17.0 26.3 37.4 40.5 56.9 Industrialised countries 452 753 909 943 1,108 54.1 68.8 73.4 74.7 82.4
World total 738 1,538 2,584 2,926 5,065 29.3 37.7 45.2 47.5 61.1
Source: Adapted from United Nations, Population Division, 2002
Although Africa has a long history of urban settlements, which possibly date from as early as 2000BC and ranged across the continent from the modern State of Ghana to that of Zimbabwe, the urban population of the continent has always represented only a small minority of the total population. However, while this is still the case in most sub- Saharan African countries, the urban population of the sub-continent has expanded rapidly throughout the course of the twentieth century. Moreover, although the impetus for this increase in urbanisation is largely credited to the colonisation of Africa from the 1880s onwards and the Europeans desire for colonial administrative centres and ports from which to ship raw materials, in reality, it was not until 1950 that the rate of urbanisation began to accelerate rapidly (United Nations, 2000).
It is necessary to examine the fundamental causes of urbanisation. According to Preston (1988), an issue that is often overlooked is the increase in population due to the natural rate of increase in the urban population itself. In addition to this, migration of people from rural to urban areas usually leads to increased 'urbanisation' in a country. An increase in the proportion of the population living in urban areas in the Third World is largely the result of economic growth and development of a country. While, the importance of rural to urban migration, as a source of increase in urban population varies from place to place, as Preston (1988) notes, judging from the unusual rapid urban growth in Africa, it is likely that urban rural migration is more important a source of growth than natural population increase is. This point is supported by Harris (1990) amongst others, who estimated that for the period of 1965 to 1980 the contribution of migration to urban growth was 51 % in the case of sub-Saharan Africa, 26% for East
Asia, 40% for South Asia and 36% for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Given that rather large Figures are often associated with the rates of urbanisation and the growth of cities in Africa, it is no wonder that many commentators tend to use cautious terminology to analyse the changes. For example, in his overview of urbanisation in the Third World, Preston (1988) regularly used the phrase 'unusually rapid growth' in the African context. However, a major problem with such statements is the implicit assumption that there is a 'usual' rate of urban growth. Traditionally, this has involved a rather ethnocentric debate as to whether there are contemporary patterns of urbanisation in currently developing countries during the nineteenth century, as argued by various academics such as Davis and Golden (1954) and Hoselitz (1957).
Using Hoselitz's (1957) work on South East Asia to illustrate this argument, it was proposed that many of the countries examined were 'over-urbanised' or when compared to historical examples set by currently more developed countries, contemporary developing countries have a much lower proportion of their labour force engaged in non-agricultural occupations, in relation to the size of their urban population. This in turn raised the possibility that due to 'excessive' population, urban centres would lose much of their dynamism and their capacity to be agents of change in contemporary developing countries, a role they supposedly filled in the case of European and American economic development. In addition to this, and combined with the preceding argument, was the prospect that an excessive urban population would increase the demand for social and infrastructural projects, which were less productive to use in a developing country with scarce capital resources.
Furthermore, as many countries have moved towards independence during this period, especially Africa, and adopted economic policies aimed at fostering an industrially orientated economic development, governments were simply not interested in the issues related to over-urbanisation. Instead, rapid urbanisation in Africa, accompanied by positive economic performances throughout the 1950s and 1960s, seemed to support the modernisation theories, within development economics at the time, when the twin forces of industrialisation and urbanisation would propel current developing countries on a path of economic development, similar to the historical precedent set by currently developed economies.
Finally, a major weakness of the 'over-urbanisation' hypothesis was that the concept did not seem to be part of a wider theory of economic development. As Moore (1984) points out, "there was no attempt to link the idea of 'over-urbanisation to any over- reaching theory of development". This, he argues, put the ideas at a severe competitive disadvantage in the academic world of grand theories of development.
United Nations Human Settlements Programme draws a link between urban expansion and the growing number of slums. It states, "In 2001, 924 million people, or 31.6 per cent of the world's urban population, lived in slums. The majority of them were in developing regions, accounting for 43 per cent of the urban population, in contrast to 6 per cent in more developed regions" (2003, 68). The report warns that if concrete measures are not taken, in the next 30 years, the global number of slum dwellers will increase to about two billion. According to United Nations Human Settlements Programme (2003), although slums do not accommodate all the urban poor, nor are all
slum dwellers always poor, slums are the direct physical and spatial manifestation of urban poverty and intra-city inequality.
Referring to the United Nation Human Settlements Programme (2003) report, it can be argued that poor housing conditions including slums and housing backlogs are the result of unplanned rapid urbanisation that underdeveloped regions have been experiencing. In fact, the increase in population or demographic trends requires the mobilisation of additional resources in order to deal with the post Apartheid demand, including the need for adequate and affordable shelter created by the population growth. Unfortunately, given the degradation of living conditions in the cities of developing countries (UNCHS, 1996), it seems justifiable to stress that governments of underdeveloped countries are irresponsive in facing the socio-economic challenges of rapid urbanisation. As Badshah (1996) notes, "the performance of government is critical to the effective management of urban growth. While access to basic infrastructure, shelter and employment depends much on the private initiatives and enterprise, these are critically affected by public sector policies and functions, which only government can perform".