The Poverty of Cities in Developing Regions

A LONG-STANDING BELIEF in development studies holds that, on the whole, living conditions in developing countries are superior for residents of large cities than for persons living in smaller cities, towns, and villages. The concept of big cities as " islands of privilege " (Harrison 1982: 145) is fundamental to otherwise discrepant theories of modernization, dependency, world systems of cities, and the global division of labor, each of which pos-its long-lasting disadvantages for populations outside of major urban centers. 1 It is also supported by evidence from numerous developing countries of lower child mortality rates, greater income-earning opportunities, less frequent and less severe famines, and better access to publicly conferred entitlements in big cities than in smaller areas in the era since World War II. Since the late 1980s, however, the presumed superiority of large cities in developing countries has been widely disputed. One argument, informed by evidence of rapid population growth and economic stagnation in many cities, and by perceptions of associated negative externalities imposed on city environments, asserts deteriorating or relatively unfavorable living conditions for big-city residents, on average, as compared with conditions for inhabitants of smaller cities and towns. Paul Kennedy (1993: 26) observes that " Asian, Latin American, and Central American mega-cities of 20 million inhabitants have become increasingly centers of poverty and social collapse. " 2 The International Labour Organization reports that by around 1990, most residents of Bombay, Cairo, and Lagos were living in slums (Oberai 1993: 8). Specialists on Latin America (for example, Gilbert 1993) emphasize that the impact of economic restructuring since the 1980s, including trade liberalization and economic stabilization measures , has been most severe on residents of major cities as a result of reduced public expenditure on (or subsidization of) municipal services, housing, infrastructure , and so forth. Terms used to convey the new situation— " Cities of Despair " (Kaplan 1996a), " The Giant Diseased City " (Linden 1996)—evoke