ABSTRACT
Urban-industrial growth pole policies were most widely advocated and adopted in the 1960s, 'in the heyday of national development policies aimed at accelerated industrialization' (Appalraju and Safier, 1976, p. 156). In the 1970s, the approach was rejected in many Latin American countries (Conroy, 1974) and in India (Misra, Sundaram and Rao, 1974). As Appalraju and Safier show in their survey of the evolution ofgrowth centre strategies in Commonwealth countries, policies to develop small market towns as 'rural growth centres' and policies which aimed to create a 'national system ofgrowth centres', including the metropoli, intermediate cities and small towns, became more popular at that time. Moreover, in some countries, administrative decentralization and the devolution of power to regional and local levels were promoted as a means ofachieving regional and rural development (Cheema and Rondinelli, 1983).
