Cities and Development.

Urbanization and economic development are closely intertwined. While urbanization per se does not cause development, sustained economic development does not occur without urbanization. This paper starts with a “primer” on what we know about the conceptual and empirical links between development and urbanization. Empirical evidence is partly based on historical experience in developed countries such as the USA, but I try to draw also from the experience in some countries in Latin America and East Asia, which have gone through the urbanization process and proceeded towards middle income status as countries. We then turn an agenda that discusses key issues for which there is a very limited body of research and for which more research would inform the problems and policy issues facing today’s rapidly urbanizing countries: the giants of China and India, and more generally South and South-East Asian counties, as well as those in sub-Saharan Africa. In thinking about historical experience of today’s developed countries versus the current experience in developing countries, a feature that distinguishes the two is the role that national government policy plays. Today’s developing countries have either explicit national urbanization policies or policies governing resource allocation that are motivated by controlling and directing urbanization. Part of this arises because full urbanization— moving a country from a situation where 10-20% of the population is urbanized to one where 60-85% is urbanized-occurs now often in a span of about 30 years, as opposed to the more leisurely pace of urbanization in today’s developed countries which played out over 100-150 years. Rapid urbanization is traumatic, requiring massive movement of population, replacement of traditional institutional and social structures with modern ones centered in a formal legal apparatus, and massive local and inter-city infrastructure investments with the required financing mechanisms, all in a short time span of time. Having national urbanization policies is also a reflection of the worldwide increase over