Urban Growth in Developing Countries: A Review of Projections and Predictions

BECAUSE THE YEAR 2000 figures prominently in urban population projections , it is timely to assess whether the United Nations' earliest projections of urban population growth in developing countries, made in the 1970s, have been reasonably accurate, and if not, why. Despite being accompanied by advice to interpret urban population projections with caution and not as forecasts (United Nations 1980), these early projections of rapid growth fueled common perceptions of an impending " urban population explosion " in poor countries (Bairoch 1988; Schiffer 1989), while providing many governments with a pretext for concentrating economic resources and focusing population control efforts, such as restrictions on in-migration , in big cities (Badshah 1996; United Nations 1981). The recent availability of data from the 1990-round censuses makes it equally opportune to examine whether influential predictive models of urban and city growth in developing countries, published around 1980, have remained robust over time. The most prominent of these models were pessimistic in assessing the prospects for modifying rapid urban growth through direct interventions in cities and against urban in-migration. Economists concluded that pricing policies biased in favor of cities, as well as national development strategies and global economic conditions that spurred manufacturing rather than agricultural productivity, made rapid urban growth until the year 2000 likely (Kelley and Williamson 1984b: Table 6.6). Meanwhile , demographers linked city growth rates closely with national population growth rates, implying that municipal authorities and planners were virtually powerless in controlling the future sizes of their cities (United Nations 1980: 43). These empirical studies supported Lipton's (1976) thesis of " urban bias, " which contends that economic development policies of governments in low-income countries favor cities to such an extent as to un