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The Urban Poor: Disruption or Political Integration in Third World Cities?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Joan Nelson
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Extract

Most of the nations of Africa and Asia remain predominantly rural and agricultural. However, more than half the people in most Latin American countries are no longer rural, and a fifth to a third live in cities of 100,000 or more. In Asia and North Africa, Lebanon, the U.A.R., and the Philippines are also substantially urbanized, and Morocco, Syria, Turkey, South Korea, and Taiwan are not far behind. Moreover, virtually everywhere in the developing world, regardless of the extent of urbanization already achieved, cities are growing at rates of 5 to 8 percent annually. That is, they are doubling their populations every ten to fifteen years.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , April 1970 , pp. 393 - 414
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1970

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References

1 In Brazil and Mexico between 1940 and 1950, population in cities of 100,000 or more grew at average annual rates of 5 and 6.7% respectively. During the 1950's, Santo Domingo grew 7.3% yearly; Panama City expanded at a rate of 7.9%. (United Nations Compendium of Social Statistics, 1963, Series K, No. 2, Table 7.) In the 1950's and early 1960's, Bogota's population rose an average of 6.8% a year; Cali's increased at 6.3%. Schultz, Paul T., Population and Labor Force Projections for Colombia, 1964-1974, mimeo. (Santa Monica, California, RAND, July 10, 1967), 12Google Scholar. Between 1941 and 1959 Caracas averaged a 7.4% annual growth. Herrick, Bruce, Urban Migration and Economic Development in Chile (Cambridge, Mass. 1965), 31Google Scholar. In some other parts of Asia and the Near East, rapid urban growth rivals that of Latin America. Korean cities have been growing rapidly since the 1950's: Seoul added 6.6% more people each year from 1960 to 1966. Turkey's population centers of 100,000 or more grew 6.7% a year from 1955 to 1960; Ankara averaged 6.8% annually from 1960 to 1965. (Estimated from figures in the United Nations Demographic Yearbook, 1962., 1963, 1967.) In South Asia, urban growth rates are generally lower. Delhi grew 5% a year from 1951 to 1961, but greater Bombay expanded at an annual rate of 3.9% during that period, and Calcutta's rate was 1.9%, reflecting in part the immense size already reached by these two giants. Davis, Kingsley in Turner, Roy, ed., India's Urban Future (Berkeley 1962), 10Google Scholar.

2 For a more detailed discussion of the points in this section, see Nelson, Joan M., Migrants, Urban Poverty, and Instability in Developing Nations, Harvard Center for International Affairs, Occasional Paper No. 22 (Cambridge, Mass. 1969)Google Scholar.

3 Open unemployment rates of 5 to 10% appear repeatedly in surveys of major Latin American and Indian cities. Rates are higher among the unskilled, among young men seeking their first jobs, and in larger cities. Dziadek, Fred, Unemployment in the Less Developed Countries, AID Discussion Paper No. 16 (WashingtonGoogle Scholar, June Washington, June), Appendix A. Urban underemployment must greatly exceed unemployment, but it is extremely difficult to measure. A proxy indicator of the extent of underemployment is productivity in the tertiary or service sector, which drops as the sector is swollen by peddling, domestic service, and other marginal occupations. It has been calculated that in Latin America between 1950 and 1965, while productivity in agriculture grew at 1.8% a year and industry, mining, and utilities at 2.5% annually, productivity in the service sectors fell, suggesting “a level of underemployment equivalent to 10% of the national labor force.” Since services absorb much more urban than rural labor, the implied underemployment rate in the cities would far exceed ten percent. Chenery, Hollis B., Toward a More Effective Alliance for Progress, AID Discussion Paper No. 13 (Washington 1967)Google Scholar, 12.

4 See, for example, Barbara Ward, “The Uses of Prosperity,” Saturday Review, August 29, 1964, 191-92; Fannon, Franz, The Wretched of the Earth (London 1965), 103Google Scholar.

5 Peter Lupsha's interesting article, “On Theories of Urban Violence,” presented at the American Political Science Association meetings in 1968, lists many more theories of the causes of urban violence, including “conspiracy,” “riff-raff,” “teen-age rebellion,” and “police brutality.” However, the “recent migrant” and “frustration-aggression” theories discussed here are the two theories that appear most often in discussions of urban problems in the developing nations.

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10 National Advisory Commission of Civil Disorders, Report, advance edition printed by The New York Times Company, 1968, 130–31; Lupsha, 7.

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12 Herrick, 53–103.

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20 Mangin, William, “The Role of Regional Associations in the Adaption of Rural Migrants to Cities in Peru,” in Dwight Heath and Adams, Richard, eds., Contemporary Cultures and Societies of Latin America (New York, 1965), 319Google Scholar.

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28 Rao and Desai, 94–95, Tables 5–14, 5–15; Herrick, 94–95.

29 Germani, 16.

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32 For example, see Scares, Glaucio, “The Political Sociology of Uneven Development in Brazil,” in Horowitz, Irving L., ed., Revolution in Brazil (New York 1964), 192, 195Google Scholar; also Davis, Kingsley and Golden, Hilda H., “Urbanization and the Development of Pre-industrial Areas,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, iii (1954), 19–20Google Scholar.

33 Soares, 192.

34 Almond, Gabriel and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Large-scale attitudinal surveys of factory workers and control groups were conducted by Alex Inkeles and his associates in Argentina, Chile, Israel, Nigeria, India, and Pakistan, as a basis for a study of the modernizing impact of factory experience on attitudes. I a m indebted to Professor Inkeles for permission to use his data.

36 George F. Jones, “Urbanization an d Voting Behavior in Venezuela and Chile, 1958–1964,” typescript prepared at Stanford University, March 1967, 40–43, 69–72.

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40 Joan Nelson, 45–51.

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44 Gino Germani, data developed for but not presented in the study on social mobility cited in footnote 43. I am indebted to Professor Germani for permission to use his data.

45 See John Turner, Uncontrolled Urban Settlement: Problems and Policies, Working Paper No. 11 for the Inter-Regional Seminar on Development Policies and Planning in Relation to Urbanization, organized by the United Nations Bureau of Technical Assistance Operations and the Bureau of Social Affairs, October-November 1966, paper numbered 67–44032; Daniel Goldrich and others, “The Political Integration of Lower Class Urban Settlements,” mimeo., prepared for the American Political Science Association meetings, September 1966, 4; Flinn, 3–4; Mangin, William, “Latin American Squatter Settlements: A Problem and a Solution,” Latin American Research Review, ii (Summer 1967), 74–75Google Scholar.

46 Estimates place a fifth to a quarter of Lima's population in the early 1960's in squatter settlements; 16% of Rio as of 1964; 30% of Caracas in the late 1950's (despite construction of immense public housing projects absorbing an additional 18% of the city's population); and over a third of Mexico City. Morse, Richard M., “Recent Research on Latin American Urbanization,” Latin American Research Review, 1, 1965, 50Google Scholar; John Turner, 1. In Turkey, Granville Sewell estimates that squatters comprise a fifth of Istanbul, a third of Ankara, and a third of Adana. 71, 186, 193.

47 Santiago and Lima: Goldrich. Caracas: CENDES print-out. Mexican working class: data drawn from taped data of interviews conducted by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba for their study of the “Civic Culture” in Mexico and other countries.

48 Bonilla, 11; CENDES print-out; Goldrich, “Politics and the Pobladore,” Tables 1, 17, and “Demographic and Socio-economic Background, Social Mobility, and Expectations”; Germani, “Social and Political Consequences,” 389–90. Inkeles' survey data demonstrate a similar belief in the hard-working poor man's prospects. See Nelson, 61.

49 Derived from Indian Institute of Public Opinion, Public Opinion Surveys, x (March 1965), 21–32Google Scholar.

50 Weber, Adna F., The Growth of Cities (New York 1899), chap. 2Google Scholar.

51 Davis, Kingsley, “The Urbanization of the Human Population,” in Cities (New York 1966), 18–19Google Scholar.

52 Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA), “Structural Changes in Employment within the Context of Latin America's Economic Development,” Economic Bulletin for Latin America, x (October 1965), 166Google Scholar; see also Baer, Werner and Herve, Michel, “Employment and Industrialization in Developing Countries,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, LXXX (February 1966)Google Scholar.

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57 This experience is not necessarily positive. See Daniel Goldrich and others, “Political Integration,” 10–14.

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63 Ray, chap. 7.

64 New York Times, September 24, 1968.