This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Richardson, H. W. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Whither National Urban Policy in Developing Countries?

State University of New York, Albany, University of Southern California, Los Angeles

Most attempts to implement national urban policies in developing countries have failed. The causes of failure have been many (infeasible goals, poor implementation, poorly designed policies) but the most difficult problem has been the isolation of national urban policy from national economic planning and from the overall context of macroeconomic and sectoral policies. National policy should not be equated with slowing down urbanization; if so, it will be ineffective in early developing countries and unnecessary in late developing and developed countries. It should not be defined largely as a primacy problem, because the issue is not whether the primate city is too big but rather how will primate city growth be managed. The resource costs of urbanization absorb a very high proportion of the available investment pool, but many of the policy implications are non-spatial (e.g. reducing standards, promoting savings) rather than spatial (e.g. changing the pattern of urbanization). Urban development should be treated as a horizontal slice cutting across almost all sectors rather than as a vertical sector in itself. This may require institutional reorganization at the central government level. Policy innovations should aim for much closer integration between urban development policy and national development planning and give less emphasis to independently conceived spatial policy.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				D. Ioannides Planning for International Tourism in Less Developed Countries: Toward Sustainability? Journal of Planning Literature, February 1, 1995; 9(3): 235 - 254. [Abstract]

				P. M. Townroe The Case for Experimental, Adaptive Restraint Policies in Developing Nation Metropolitan Areas International Regional Science Review, August 1, 1989; 12(2): 131 - 146. [Abstract] [PDF]