Conclusion: The Appropriateness of Compact City Concepts to Developing Countries

Abstract

Demographic forces, of migration from rural areas to cities that offer better life chances and health care, and high rates of population growth, fuel urban expansion. So too do global markets, although the spread of capital and income is both uneven and often inequitable. Whether as a result of educated workforces or cheap labour, or as a result of government policies and subsidies, globalisation seeks out and favours some metropolitan regions and neglects others. The global competition for investment is intense, success breeds success, and the potential prize is a city that achieves world status. Inevitably the winners tend to be those developing countries with the strongest economies, and the losers the poorest, struggling in many cases with the highest fertility rates, or in sub-Saharan Africa, with the impact of HIV/AIDS. In the more successful regions, a twin process of both centralisation and decentralisation appears to occur. The city core attracts global headquarters and service industries and acts as a global market place, but the resulting rising prices (and congestion) drive the poor to the periphery. Here the poorer people face social exclusion and inadequate access to facilities and transport, while in close proximity the rich seek protection in gated, luxurious developments. The prospects for the poorer regions and cities are uncontrolled growth, dominated by the informal sector, problems of inadequate infrastructure and services, and environmental degradation.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 12 citations exist upstream.