ABSTRACT
'Innovation', 'the management of change', and 'problem solving' emerged as ideas in good currency out of the West's post-World War II experience of technological and industrial expansion. The most notable innovation in the sphere was the 'site-and-service' idea —governments provided the infrastructure of sites, roads, and utilities; and poor urban dwellers were allocated a plot on which to build a house meeting minimal government specifications. A new problematic for urban innovation in the Third World must take account of the relation of the planning process to local political structures and processes—in particular the ways in which planning becomes a tool for the emerging upper classes rather than an instrument of general welfare. Third World cities have always faced financial constraints but they, too, were further burdened by soaring costs in the 1970s, which added to the intractable problem of squatter settlements.
