Inside Third World Cities

Stella Lowder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367774080
• eBook ISBN: 9781000384543
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Originally published in 1986, this book focusses on life within global cities in the developing world, analysing on a city-level the circulation and consumption of goods and services within them. When the book was first published it was one of only a few to offer systematic comparative analyses of developing world cities, and those stemming from different regions, with examples from different continents in each chapter. It discusses the problems faced by such city populations and shows how the procedures, distributive systems and social conventions reflect the complex histories of the cities, most of which have been subject to colonial rule, and of their inhabitants, many of whom are either migrants or first generation citizens.

1 Third World Cities and Their Contexts

Read any newspaper, listen to any broadcast or watch any television news programme in Britain and one cannot escape the impression that cities in the Third World are large, poverty stricken, socially divided and present problems on a scale hitherto unencountered by administrators of their developed counterparts. The events which are considered newsworthy and the manner in which they are presented combine to generate a number of popular misconceptions about Third World cities — that life in them is chaotic and unorganised, that they need help and that institutions which serve cities in Western developed countries may be transferred to them beneficially. These impressions symbolise much of the confusion surrounding these cities in which the ethnocentricity of the viewer plays a part. The media tailor their programmes to their audiences; observations are expressed in terms comprehensible to them, rather than those relevant to the country in which they occur. Of course, Third World cities do have substantial populations that are poor by any standards and which lack access to basic utilities but their condition does not arise from rapid population growth and ignorance per se; these are symptoms of underlying processes within national economies and societies.

The aim of this book is to counteract some of the superficial impressions about Third World Cities (TWCs). The nature and implications of underlying historical, economic, social and political structures become apparent in the organisation of such facets of city life as housing and provisioning. Research over the last three decades has much improved our understanding of the mechanisms at work in employment, land and housing markets and in structuring retailing. It is becoming evident that the conventional wisdom on how to improve conditions needs to be reconsidered by all concerned. This educative process reiterates two maxims: (a) outward form is not a reliable indicator of the quality or viability of a structure, whether it be physical or administrative; (b) changes that do not touch the underlying factors responsible for generating particular conditions are palliatives beneficial to a few, rather than solutions. These truths need stressing where perceptions are coloured by different cultures and economic systems. It is counterproductive to promote measures based on the principles governing cities in developed contexts and then to attribute their short comings to cultural differences in the Third World setting. Culture is a product of society and what distinguishes TWCs from cities elsewhere is the political and economic constraints within which their societies evolve.

Originally the ‘Third World’ was a political term applied to those countries which were aligned neither with the Western developed nations of the First World nor with those of the Soviet-dominated Eastern bloc of the Second. Subsequently economic criteria were attached to the term. The Third World consisted of nations with low per capita incomes, a high proportion of employment in the rural sector and low ratios of professionals to population. This tendency culminated with the designation of a Fourth World composed of the 40 poorest nations by the World Bank. The wide range in wealth, service provision and employment structure revealed by such economic indicators within the Third World lessen their value as a classificatory device. Furthermore, it is not the type of economic activity so much as the context and its resulting organisation that is distinctive. The Third World consists of those countries whose economies are dominated by the capitalist networks emanating from North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. This definition leaves a very few countries in an ambiguous position: Cuba which is now an active member of the Soviet trading bloc and China, which until recently practised autarky. Significantly their cities display features attributable to their different contexts and to the corresponding organisation of society.

The concept of a city also has various connotations. Fundamentally a city is a settlement with certain responsibilities for self-administration; they are usually large, dense and the majority of their residents are occupied in non-rural pursuits. The political criterion alone is not a useful definition for the purposes of a comparative study, as scale is a critical factor in the nature of administrative tasks, while the lack of data precludes the addition of such variables as density and employment. Even the population criterion is difficult to apply worldwide, given the reluctance to publish figures for other than administrative units, the inconsistencies between their boundaries and the functional areas of cities and the periods that lapse between censuses and before their results are published. Nevertheless, population has been considered the most reliable indicator of city status and here a city is considered to be a settlement surpassing 100000 people. There are at least 1051 of these in the Third World, 1234 if one includes China (Table 1.1). These figures understate the situation, as a number of countries have not had censuses for a considerable time. The Demographic Yearbook for 1983 contains data for the 1960s for Iraq, Tunis, Libya and Uganda; South Africa and Malaysia’s figures are for 1970 while the Lebanon, El Salvador, Colombia and several central American countries report nothing more recent than the early 1970s. If these shortcomings are over-looked, the accumulated data for regions display remarkably similar patterns; 80 per cent of the cities in sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab World and Asia and 87 per cent of those in Latin America have populations of less than half a million, while 6 to 8 per cent of each have over a million. Three countries, India, Brazil and China dominate the table; they contribute over 40 per cent of the cities while sub-Saharan Africa is the least well represented for even Nigeria contributes only 2 per cent.

Table 1.1: Location of Third World Cities (population in millions)

Regions and		.100	.500	1.000	over
Countries, sub-regions		.499	.999	4.999	5.000	Total
Africa, sub-Saharan		70	12	5	-	87
Nigeria		25	1	1	-	27
South Africa		12	2	2	-	16
Arab World		76	13	6	1	96
North Africa		42	6	3	1	52
Middle East		34	7	3	-	44
Asia		357	53	32	6	448
India		173	29	9	3	214
Indonesia		24	3	4	1	32
Iran		18	3	2	-	23
Pakistan		18	5	2	1	26
Philippines		22	1	2	-	25
Republic of Korea		28	2	3	1	34
Turkey		20	7	3	-	30
Latin America		366	25	23	6	420
Mexico		47	4	2	1	54
Central America & Carib.		21	3	1	-	25
Brazil		114	4	6	2	126
South America		184	14	14	3	215
Total^a		869	103	66	13	1051
China	.100	.200	.500	1.000	over	Total
	.199	.499	.999	4.999	5.000
municipal estimates^b	–––	128	–––	30	7	165
shiqu data 1979^c	68	72	28	12	3	183

Notes: a. Based on United Nations Demographic Yearbook 1983; b. based on China Map Folio 1980 and Pannell and Ma 1983, p. 239; c. Kirkby 1985, p. 271.

The estimation of the population of super cities which exceed five million is complicated. They usually form metropolises which consist of a dominant centre and its subsidiary suburbs or of a conurbation formed when a number of adjoining centres expand and coalesce. However, boundaries may not reflect these formations. Table 1.2 reveals that there is often a considerable difference between the figure for the city ‘proper’ and its urban agglomeration. In the case of the cities in the United States this reflects extensive urban sprawl: Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs) are made up of the city and its adjacent counties provided that at least 50000 of their residents are in the core and that two-thirds of their employment is non-agricultural. These rules give rise to SMSAs for Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco which are over two-thirds the size of their core cities. The cause for the disparity in Chinese cities is their administrative structure. Most publications quote the set of higher figures which represent municipalities; however, these are delimited so as to bind the city to its crucial supply areas of agricultural produce, water and in some cases, even to the mines on which their industries depend. On average over half of their populations are engaged in agriculture. The first set of figures are for the shiqu or city district populations of whom 78 per cent are employed in non-agricultural occupations (Kirkby 1985). In other cases an extensive planning region is taken as the urban agglomeration; in Paris’ case, this includes 309 communes from adjacent departments, while a whole province of 307572 km² i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Endorsements
• 1 Third World Cities and their Contexts
• 2 Indigenous Urban Traditions
• 3 Colonial City Legacies
• 4 Administering Third World Cities
• 5 Housing Markets
• 6 Supplying Household Needs
• 7 Models of Third World Cities
• 8 Conclusions
• Glossary
• References
• Index