ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the implications by focusing on some of the major debates relating to settlement policy. In recent decades, there has been a growing concern, particularly in developing countries, about the growth of the largest cities. The issues underpinning this concern are of three interrelated but distinct kinds: those related to the size of the city, those related to a core-periphery conception and those related to the primacy or excessive dominance of the largest centres. The main arguments against the growth of large cities are of two kinds. One, informed by dependency theory, relates to the impact of these large cities on less developed regions and settlements. The other relates to conditions within the cities themselves. Different approaches to development have different implications for the functional and thus, usually, the size hierarchy of settlements. The most precise articulation of the general form and role of such a hierarchy in promoting development can be found in sector theory.
