Michael Pacione - Urban Problems and Planning in the Developed World (Routledge Revivals)

This edited collection, first published in 1981, presents a discussion of the urban problems faced in the developed world, and addresses the plans and policies devised by governments to solve them. Using a number of city-based case studies, including New York, Tokyo and Glasgow, the authors present a thorough analysis of urban problems and planning in relation to varying economic, cultural and political conditions throughout the developed world. With a detailed general survey from Michael Pacione, this is a comprehensive and relevant guide, which will be of particular value to students and scholars of urban planning and geography.

First published 1981
by Croom Helm Ltd

This edition first published in 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

1981 Michael Pacione

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ISBN 13: 978-0-415-70573-8 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-88954-2 (ebk)

1981 Michael Pacione
Groom Helm Ltd, 210 St Johns Road, London SW11

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Urban problems and planning in the developed world.
1. City planning
I. Pacione, Michael
711.4 HT166

ISBN 0-7099-0191-7

Printed and bound in Great Britain
Redwood Burn Limited
Trowbridge and Esher

Growing concern for the future of cities and for the well-being of city dwellers, stimulated by trends in world urbanisation, the increasing number and size of cities, and the deterioration of many urban environments, has led in recent years to much emphasis being placed upon the applied or problem-solving approach to the study of the city. The importance of this viewpoint has been widely recognised. The consequent scale and pace of developments in applied urban geography and related fields have inevitably diminished the relevance and usefulness of many standard urban texts. Much of the material that is available on urban problems and planning is now outdated or is restricted in its geographical coverage. These deficiencies were highlighted during the preparation of a series of undergraduate lectures on urban geography and planning. It soon became evident that lecturers, students and others interested in urban problems and planning in the modern world must be prepared to expend considerable time and energy scouring less accessible reports and numerous academic journals across several disciplines in order to obtain satisfactory detailed information. This book together with the companion volume on Problems and Planning in Third World Cities attempts to offset some of these deficiencies by providing a collection of discussions on the problems and planning activities in a number of cities selected to reflect the differing economic, cultural and political regimes of the modern world.

Michael Pacione

Milton of Campsie

The problems of cities and the efforts directed towards their alleviation command global attention because of the increasing proportion of the worlds population being affected by such issues. Urbanisation and its consequences are world-wide phenomena and the increasing size and scale of urban settlements are characteristics of the contemporary era. Four out of every ten of the worlds population now live in an urban setting and the expectation is that by the year 2000 AD half of the worlds inhabitants will be urban dwellers.

In North America 54 per cent of the population was urban in 1925; 50 years later this proportion had increased to 77 per cent (Table I.1). Even more dramatic increases in urbanisation have been experienced in the USSR where the urban population rose from 18 per cent in 1925 to 61 per cent in 1975, and in Latin America where the corresponding figures were 25 per cent and 60 per cent. The rate of world urbanisation in general has shown no slackening since 1800 and in all regions the trend is towards increased urbanisation and city growth.

Source: United Nations (1974)

Source: United Nations (1974)

The pronounced rate of growth in the worlds total urban population over the period 192575 is clearly shown in Table I.2. While the growth rate between 1925 and 1950 was 73 per cent, this figure more than doubled over the next 25 years. In some areas the growth of urban population was even more spectacular. In Oceania the number of city dwellers trebled over the half-century from 1925 to 1975 ; in the USSR and East Asia it grew fivefold, in South Asia sixfold, and in Latin America and Africa nearly eightfold. United Nations estimates for the next 50 years call for most of these trends to continue. The distribution of the worlds population is also changing. Whereas in 1925 two-fifths was in Europe, by 1975 this proportion had fallen by half. Meanwhile, East and South Asia which together had about one-quarter of the urban population in 1925 had increased their joint share to 38 per cent by 1975. A continuation of present trends would mean that these two areas together will contain about one-half of the worlds urban population by 2025. By the same date the urban populations of both Africa and Latin America will also exceed those of Europe. These trends in urbanisation and city growth are reflected in the distribution and different growth rates of metropolitan areas (Table I.3) and million cities (Table I.4). In both cases while the number and relative importance of such cities remains greatest in the developed realm the fastest rates of growth are occurring in the developing world.

The major trends in world urbanisation and city growth seem clear but there are difficulties in predicting future levels of urban population; this is illustrated by the classic S-shaped urbanisation curve (Figure I.1).