Urban Growth in Developing Countries: A Demographic Reappraisal

In view of the importance being attached to population distribution issues particularly to urban growth it is useful to examine carefully the demographic processes that are currently responsible for and associated with such growth. The rate of change in the proportion urban in developing countries is not exceptionally rapid by historical standards; rather it is the growth rates of urban populations that represent an unprecedented phenomenon. Among the factors that influence the growth rate of individual cities national rates of population growth stand out as dominant in intercity comparisons. Urban growth has been fastest other things being equal where economic levels and economic growth rates are highest; changes in proportion urban among developing regions are not outpacing historical standards; relations between urban and industrial populations do not seem to have deteriorated in the postwar period; and urban growth is partly self-limiting since growth rates of cities decline as their size increases and as urban populations grow. However there is no cause for complacency in these findings both because the population shifts accompanying urbanization are being superimposed upon what remain very rapid rates of national increase and because the aggregate measures used in the analysis preclude consideration of a wealth of economic social and institutional factors that influence and are influenced by this phenomennon. If a recession in rates of urban growth ranks high on the list of development objectives then it seems important to recognize the central role of natural increase in current levels of an variations in urban growth rates.