About the Book
By many estimates, the world has recently crossed the point where more than half the global population is urban, a trend driven by rapid urbanization in developing countries. Urban centres offer economies of scale in terms of productive enterprise and public investment. Cities are social melting pots, centres of innovation, and drivers of social change. However, cities are also marked by social differentiation, poverty, conflict, and environmental degradation. These
are all issues that not only matter to cities, but also lie at the heart of development. As such, the time is right to consider afresh the relationship between cities and development.
This volume presents a significant new collection of multidisciplinary papers focused on urbanization and its implications for development. It raises four questions: What is so special about the urban context? Why is urbanization and urban growth important to development at the present conjuncture? What are the strengths and limitations of our current state of knowledge about urbanization and development from the policy perspective? How can a multidisciplinary perspective
on the urban context add value to development research and policy? Leading scholars in urban economics examine the data and definitions associated with the field, and look
in-depth at the economic and social consequences of urbanization. Special focus is given to urban violence, and planning and governance issues, and the text is supplemented by case studies demonstrating the recent effects of urbanization in key countries such as India, Brazil, Tanzania, Lebanon, and South Africa.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
1: Jo Beall, Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis, and Ravi Kanbur: Beyond the Tipping Point: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Urbanization and Development
Data and Definitions
2: David E. Bloom, David Canning, Günther Fink, Tarun Khanna, and Patrick Salyer: Urban Settlement: Data, Measures, and Trends
3: Hirotsugu Uchida and Andrew Nelson: Agglomeration Index: Towards A New Measure of Urban Concentration
4: Janice E. Perlman: Parsing the Urban Poverty Puzzle: A Multi-generational Panel Study in Rio de Janeiro's Favelas, 1968-2008
5: David Satterthwaite: Urban Myths and the Mis-use of Data that Underpin Them
Economic Benefits of Urbanization
6: Henry G. Overman and Anthony J. Venables: Evolving City Systems
7: Wim Naudé: Suburbanization and Residential Desegregation in South Africa's Cities
Urbanization: Social Consequences
8: Ben C. Arimah: The Face of Urban Poverty: Explaining the Prevalence of Slums in Developing Countries
9: Ignacio A. Navarro and Geoffrey K. Turnbull: The Legacy Effect of Squatter Settlements on Urban Redevelopment
10: Caroline Moser and Andrew Felton: The Gendered Nature of Asset Accumulation in Urban Contexts: Longitudinal Results from Guayaquil, Ecuador
Urban Violence
11: Nasser Yassin: Violent Urbanization and Homogenization of Space and Place: Reconstructing the Story of Sectarian Violence in Beirut
12: Deborah Fahy Bryceson: Dar es Salaam as a 'Harbour of Peace' in East Africa: Tracing the Role of Creolized Urban Ethnicity in Nation-State Formation
13: Dennis Rodgers: Urban Violence Is (not) Necessarily a Way Of life: Towards a Political Economy of Conflict in Cities
Urban Planning and Governance
14: Somik V. Lall, Hyoung Gun Wang, and Uwe Deichmann: Infrastructure and City Competitiveness in India
15: Martin Medina: Solid Wastes, Poverty and the Environment in Developing Country Cities: Challenges and Opportunities
16: Adriana Rabinovich and Andrea Catenazzi: Building Sustainable Historic Centres: A Comparative Approach for Innovative Urban Projects
Epilogue
Jo Beall, Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis and Ravi Kanbur: Themes Emerging, Questions Outstanding, and the Value of a Multidisciplinary Approach
About the Author :
Jo Beall is Deputy Vice Chancellor of University of Cape Town and Chair of the Executive Committee of the African Centre for Cities at UCT. She is still affiliated with the London School of Economics, where she was Director of the Development Studies Institute, and taught for 18 years. She also taught at the Development Planning Unit of University College London and at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where she now holds an honorary professorship. She has consulted
for the World Bank, the European Union, UN-Habitat, and a number of bilateral development agencies, and has published widely in development and urban studies journals.
Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis is a Senior Economist at UNDP. Previously, he worked with UNU-WIDER (Helsinki), ICRIER (New Delhi), EXIM Bank of India (Bangalore), and IGIDR (Mumbai). He has worked and published extensively on international trade and finance, capital markets, growth, development, food security, informal sectors, gender, and urbanization. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Rochester (NY, USA).
Ravi Kanbur is T.H. Lee Professor of World Affairs at Cornell University, having previously taught at Oxford, Cambridge, Essex, Princeton, and Warwick. He has served on the senior staff of the World Bank, including as resident Representative in Ghana, Chief Economist for Africa, Principal Adviser to the Chief Economist of the World Bank. He has published in the leading economics journals, including the Journal of Political Economy, The American Economic Review, and the Economic Journal.
Review :
Urbanization and Development: Multidisciplinary Perspectives provides a stimulating account of opportunities as well as challenges that the low and middle-income countries face.
This is a vital collection of essays exploring the full spectrum of perspectives on the connections between urbanization and human progress in the global South. It should be essential reading for academics and decision-makers in development studies, economic development, spatial planning, policy analysis and urban and regional studies.
This volume is a welcome addition to the growing urban literature, particularly for exploring a multi-disciplinary approach to the relationship between cities and development and, equally, for recognising the hope and opportunity that cities can offer.
Thorough and authoritatively written; it makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of urban issues from a multidimensional perspective. The book also emphasizes the importance of the urban context in addressing developmental issues- a feature previously lacking in development policy.
Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT)
This collection presents state of the art findings on cities and development which draw on a wide range of different but equally rigorous approaches from a variety of disciplines. It suggests some fresh methodological starting points for both academic and policy research on cities. It stages conversations amongst disciplinary perspectives which are currently seldom drawn together, and sets the agenda for the innovative and interdisciplinary research which is needed to respond to the substantial challenges of city life around the world.
