ABSTRACT

Recent literature has drawn attention to conceptual analogies in the cities of poor countries, particularly in terms of the growth and outward spread of metropolitan areas and the tendency for initially separate urban centers to be merged in wider metropolitan regions. There is a suggestion that the megacities of low-and high-income countries may have more in common with each other, irrespective of their locations on the globe, than they have with other parts of their own urban systems (Champion, 1998). McGee and Griffiths (1998), for example, note the convergence of Bangkok and Los Angeles, both being territorially vast, amorphous, multicentered regions with populations residing up to 100 kilometers from the city core.