ABSTRACT
Urban growth patterns, rural-urban migration, the provision and adequacy of urban services and infrastructure, and the nature of urban employment and urban households’ livelihoods have all experienced significant change in eastern and southern African urban settlement systems since the ‘independence’ and ‘modernisation’ decade of the 1960s. In some cases the changes have been dramatic: urban poverty is much worse and the difficulties of a risky urban existence have affected net in-migration rates to large centres; the urban economy has informalised and labour force participation rates within households have increased as people struggle to maintain necesssary expenditure on their most basic needs; the urban environment has deteriorated. Globalisation has had profound effects on urban centres and urban people, and the balance of influences has generally been negative. African cities have felt the chill of the winds of globalisation, but are essentially so marginal to the current global corporate agenda that they rarely participate in any associated economic development (see Simon 1992, 1997; Satterthwaite 2002; Jauch 2002; Beall 2002; Jenkins et al. 2002).
