Urbanization and Spatial Development in the Asian and Pacific Region: Trends and Issues

The spatial dimension of development became a major concern in developing countries in the mid-1960s. A combination of factors brought this about, including the acceleration of both population growth and rural-urban migration, growing employment and income distribution problems, the tendency of growth in some regions to lag behind that in others, and the phenomenon known as core-periphery polarization. Further, there has been an increasing realization that urbanization and the spatial concentration of economic activity are directly related to the distribution of the benefits of development and the satisfaction of human needs, since both people and resources have specific locations. Because of such constraints as friction of space, market segmentation, inadequate information and imperfect mobility, the access to resources and services or to the benefits of development in general continues to be patently uneven. The development experience of countries in the Asian and Pacific region and elsewhere indicates that there is no spontaneous smoothing mechanism built in the economic growth process or that if such a mechanism exists, it operates at a painfully slow pace…