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Harry W.Richardson, Chang-Hee Christine Bae and Murtaza Hatim Baxamusa
inhibited investment in transportation infrastructure. This situation has been
aggravated by rapid motorisation in recent years in many developing countries.
Again, air and water pollution is not directly the result of higher densities but the
product of weak environmental regulations and poor enforcement. Yet many
developing country cities offer a richness of street life and vitality that the developed
countries would like to emulate. It is no easy task to separate the effects of densities
from those other factors such as income differentials, institutional capacity,
investment, human resources and urban design, that distinguish cities in the
developing world from those in the developed world.
Densities and compactness
Densities in developing country cities are much higher than in developed
countries, especially in the core city. Many explanations have been given:
• Higher rates of population and urban growth explain why density gradients
have, historically, shifted upwards over time rather than flattened and shifted
downward as in developed country cities. However, this shift has been
attenuated in recent years in many cities in developing countries as
urbanisation rates have decelerated and decentralisation has begun to occur.
• Lower incomes have meant much smaller dwelling sizes and tiny lots,
especially in squatter settlements. Also, household size is much larger. Data
assembled by Malpezzi (1999) show a striking positive relationship between
GNP per capita and housing consumption indicators (such as floor area per
capita). However, the correlation between high densities and overcrowding is
quite low (in core cities in our data set, the correlation coefficient was 0.18). 2
Similarly, density and household size appear to be unrelated.
• In terms of the ‘modern’ sector in developing countries, housing preferences
have favoured high-rise apartments rather than single family housing.
• The prevalence of mixed-use structures and neighbourhoods has resulted in
residential densities becoming higher the closer they are to the city centre.
• Low densities in developed country cities, especially in the United States,
have been facilitated by automobiles. Automobiles have come to developing
country cities very late, although very fast.
• Lax planning regulations, and either the absence or the inadequacy of building
codes, have led to uncontrolled increases in densities, e.g. by subdividing
existing structures to accommodate multiple families (frequently, one family
per room). Although this occurs illegally in developed countries, its scale and
extent are much lower than in developing countries.
• There remains considerable scope for further increases in densities in lowincome
settlements. For example, a study in Malaysia suggested that land use
densities could be substantially increased (by almost 75%) by permitted
reductions in setbacks and back alleys (Bertaud and Malpezzi, 1998a). In
some cases, planning controls have resulted in high densities; for example,
Seoul’s greenbelt (in place since 1971) has reduced the supply of land
available for urban use, raised land prices and increased densities (Kim, 1994;
Bae, 1998). South Korea was certainly a developing country when its land
use regulations were introduced, if no longer. On the other hand, some
planning regulations have worked in the opposite direction (i.e. promoting
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