ABSTRACT
One of the more important messages to come out of the 1976 United Nations Habitat Conference was the need to concentrate attention on the whole settlement pattern in the developing countries. The World Bank has produced a paper which puts forward a useful typology of developing countries which shows that there is more scope for the creation of intermediate settlements in some countries than in others. The emphasis on intermediate settlements, rural development and agriculture is vital, but unfortunately has tended to be neglected in the face of the pressure on the major cities. James Osborn claims that intermediate cities have been practically ignored in the literature of urban growth because of a concentration on the largest cities in the world. It is abundantly clear that the emphasis must be on the creation of employment as a prerequisite to housing or social development.
