Third world city

Although most people in the Third World still live in rural areas, the focus for much of the change which has occurred during the colonial and especially the post-colonial periods has been the city. Development strategists from all shades of the political spectrum agree in this respect, although they differ considerably in their assessment of the consequent benefits of such change. It is one of the principal objectives of this book to examine the character of the urbanization process in the Third World and draw some conclusions about the nature of the change it has encouraged.

Urbanization, and more particularly the urbanization process, thus refers to much more than simple population growth and involves an analysis of the related economic, social and political transformations. However, the dimensions of urban population growth do form an essential background to the distribution and extent of the urbanization process, and it is to this topic that this initial chapter now turns. Almost all of the major texts on urbanization contain detailed examinations of these trends, but the most readily comprehensive data are those compiled by the World Bank in its annual World Development Reports.