CITIES IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD

Since World War II cities in the developing world have been growing at a an enormous rate such that by 2025 the majority of the world's largest cities will be in the so-called developing world. Cities in the developing world began to grow dramatically after about 1960 as world population, especially in the Developing World began to grow quickly. By 2000 the majority of the world's 6 billion people were in the developing world as these countries moved through the Demographic Transition. Today most of these countries are in this transition. Much of the population of developing countries remain in rural areas. However a variety of factors in terms of population growth and change and a variety of factors (often labeled "push-pull" factors) in rural areas influence large scale rural to urban migration.

As noted in class lecture and discussion, the development of cities in Latin America, Africa and much of Asia has been a product of colonial rule. * Colonial rule in the form of Mercantile Colonialism and/or Imperialism had the goal of securing wealth and/or territory for the colonial power. Therefore, city locations were chosen to reflect the goals of colonial rule. Furthermore, colonial rule set in motion a variety of processes/characterisitics which greatly influenced the long-term development of cities in the Developing World. As one author has noted: "Fundamentally, the urban transformation of the Third World in the post-war period has led to unprecedented demands for basic services and infrastructure that most governments have been unable or unwilling to meet. These and related social, economic and political difficulties are characteristic of the phenomenon of Peripehral Urbanization" (Pacione: Urban Geography: A Global Perspective, p.443).

While some areas of the world had well developed cities before European colonial rule (notably East Asia and North Africa and the Middle East) many regions did not. Thus city developmnent and morphology often reflected European goals and ideas about urban development and the relationships of the colonial powers to the indigenous peoples colonised. We have examined three types of cities that were developed during the colonial era and whose developments today reflect the conditions of colonial rule up through the recent past. These are the Latin American City, the Colonial African City, and the Apartheid City. Most European urban design reflected the desire to segregate European settlers, entrepeneurs and colonial administrators from the indigenous populations. Thus, the city models reflect a great deal of residential segregation by race and/or ethnicity and which is translated today into a great deal of segregation by socio-economic status (income, class, etc.). High rates of rural to urban migration have created large, mostly peripheral squatter settlements (barrios, favelas, bidonvilles, shanty towns, slums, pueblos jovenes, etc.) on the edges of most of the cities in the developing world, especially their Primate cities.

Like most cities of the world, the urban economies and the geography of the urban economy is complex. However, generally the economic organization of urban places in Developing Countries can be divided into a Formal Sector of employment and an Informal Sector of Employment. The Informal Sector is often more important that the Formal Sector in the urban economy, employing huge numbers of people. The landscape of the Formal Sector often imitates the landscape of the CBD's of Western cities (as seen here in Nairobi, Kenya) or the Maquiladora (as seen here in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico) while the Informal Sector appears (Nairobi) throughout the city and the various marketplaces (like the one here in Latacunga, Ecuador) of the urban area.