ABSTRACT
The proportion of people living in urban areas of the globe is increasing, and particularly in the developing world. Whilst in 1800, only 3 per cent of the total world population lived in towns and cities, it is estimated that by the year 2000, this figure will have risen to over 50 per cent (United Nations, 1989). Although a greater proportion of the population of the
developed world currently live in cities, as seen in Figure 5.1 (approximately 73 per cent or 900 million people), the total size of the urban population is larger in the developing world, at around 1,400 million people, as seen in Figure 5.2 (Devas and Rakodi, 1993). In addition 93 per cent of the predicted urban growth to the year 2020 will occur in the developing world.
