ABSTRACT
The global trend towards greater urbanization continues to dominate processes of human settlement and although not even over time and space, they have produced the large city as a worldwide phenomenon. Nearly half of the worlds population, and three-quarters of those in western societies, now live in cities; between I960 and 1992, another 1.4 billion urban dwellers were added; between 1992 and 2007, another 1 billion will follow (Parker 1995). Major metropolitan complexes of over 10 million people, such as Mexico City (15.1 million), Tokyo/Yokohama (25.0 million), New York/New Jersey (16.1 million) and Shanghai (13.5 million) are found in both developed and developing countries. There is a dynamism in urbanization that is affecting urban systems and their constituent cities in a variety of ways. Whereas advanced societies have been transformed into closely interconnected urban systems with little distinction between town and country, many Third World societies have slower rates of urbanization, more rapid urban growth and strong rural-urban differences. The challenge of large cities is being met in completely different circumstances. Countries such as India, where many of the major cities will be located, lack the capital, the technology and the organization necessary to cope with the enormous pressures of urban population growth and there are already catastrophic problems of over-concentration, poor housing and a lack of basic facilities. The former socialist planned’ economies in eastern Europe and China occupy a broad intermediate position in which pressures of urbanization exist but have been partially controlled by the absence of free movement between rural districts and the cities. Urbanization pressures in China resemble those in the Third World societies with comparatively low levels of urbanization, 26 per cent, but with strong population controls. Central planning in China aims to harmonize urbanization with industrial and agricultural development and to spread the economic transformation across the city-size spectrum and throughout all regions, but with an estimated reservoir of over 800 million potential rural migrants and evidence of loosening control, contemporary pressures may well confound the realization of these aims. Zhao and Zhang (1995) argued that the Chinese policy of controlling city-size is at odds with the natural forces of industrialization and urbanization. At the same time, in societies where there is less control the problems still exist though they may be different in kind.
