rural-urban dynamics_report.pdf - Khazar University

88 RURAL-URBAN DISPARITIES AND DYNAMICS GLOBAL MONITORING REPORT 2013
FIGURE 2.3
a. The simplified area economy
Rural
Urban
Source: Adapted from World Bank 2009.
Poverty is located along a rural-urban spectrum
Rural
b. And a more realistic representation
Villages
Urban
Metropolis
Towns Large city
Secondary cities
With the aid of new analytical techniques
that combine census and household survey
data, researchers have constructed “poverty–
city size gradients” that reveal interesting
insights on the relationship between poverty
and city size (Elbers, Lanjouw, and Lanjouw
2002, 2003). Recent research for a
large number of countries shows that urban
poverty is clearly lowest in the largest cities
(Ferré, Ferreira, and Lanjouw 2012). In the
1970s and 1980s, better provision of services
in urban areas of developing countries led
to the perception that governments had an
“urban bias” (Lipton 1977). In recent years,
researchers who have analyzed the poverty–
city size gradient have raised similar questions:
Is there a “metropolitan bias” in the
allocation of resources to larger cities at the
expense of smaller towns? 2
In a fairly large number of developing
countries, not only is the incidence of poverty
higher in small cities and towns than in the
large urban areas, but these smaller urban
centers also account for a larger share of the
urban poor. In such countries as Brazil and
Thailand, with well-known megacities such
as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Bangkok,
the share of the urban poor residing in smalland
medium-size towns exceeds that in the
largest cities. In Brazil, one of the most urbanized
developing countries, 83 percent of the
population is settled relatively evenly along
the urban spatial spectrum—22 percent in
megacities, 33 percent in intermediate-size
cities, and 28 percent in the smallest towns.
Brazilian poverty has a predominantly urban
face, though not in its megacities: 72 percent
of the poor live in urban areas, but surprisingly,
only 9 percent reside in the megacities
of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The rest of
the poor are concentrated in medium (17 percent)
and very small towns (39 percent). In
Thailand, the share of the urban poor is 17
percent, of which 76 percent resides in extra
small towns.
Findings from a study of eight developing
countries show that with the exception
of Mexico, the urban population was concentrated
in the largest cities but the urban
poor were dispersed along a continuum
of medium, small, and extra small towns
(table 2.3). Lower rates of poverty in large
cities are consistent with the hypotheses of
urban growth being driven by agglomeration
externalities.
Many small countries do not have a megacity,
and nearly all large countries have many
large cities of various sizes as well as one or
several megacities. Similarly, the small towns
in small countries are significantly smaller
than the small towns in large countries. In
addition, while official boundaries rarely
demarcate them as “slums,” the size of urban
cityscapes that can be considered slums is
significant. Almost by definition, slums are
home to many of the urban poor. Asia is
TABLE 2.2
Distribution of urban population by size of urban area
Number of agglomerations Population in urban areas (in 1,000s) Percentage of urban population
City size class 1975 2005 2010 1975 2005 2010 1975 2005 2010
10 million or more 3 19 23 53,185 284,943 352,465 3.5 8.9 9.9
5 to 10 million 14 33 38 109,426 229,718 266,078 7.1 7.2 7.5
1 to 5 million 144 340 388 291,663 667,652 759,919 19.0 20.9 21.4
500,000 to 1 million 224 463 513 155,770 317,166 353,802 10.1 9.9 9.9
Fewer than 500,000 — — — 927,625 1,698,055 1,826,313 60.3 53.1 51.3
Source: UN 2011.
Note: — = not available.