Abstract
Development and environmental issues of small cities in developing countries have largely been overlooked although these settlements are of global demographic importance and often face a “triple challenge”; that is, they have limited financial and human resources to address growing environmental problems that are related to both development (e.g., pollution) and under-development (e.g., inadequate water supply). Neoliberal policy has arguably aggravated this challenge as public investments in infrastructure generally declined while the focus shifted to the metropolitan “economic growth machines”. This paper develops a conceptual framework and agenda for the study of small cities in the global south, their environmental dynamics, governance and politics in the current neoliberal context. While small cities are governed in a neoliberal policy context, they are not central to neoliberalism, and their (environmental) governance therefore seems to differ from that of global cities. Furthermore, “actually existing” neoliberal governance of small cities is shaped by the interplay of regional and local politics and environmental situations. The approach of urban political ecology and the concept of rural-urban linkages are used to consider these socio-ecological processes. The conceptual framework and research agenda are illustrated in the case of India, where the agency of small cities in regard to environmental governance seems to remain limited despite formal political decentralization.
Highlights
Development and environmental issues of small cities in developing countries have largely been overlooked these settlements are of global demographic importance and often face a “triple challenge”; that is, they have limited financial and human resources to address growing environmental problems that are related to both development and under-development
This paper aims to contribute to nascent research on small cities in the global south, with particular emphasis on their environmental governance in a neoliberal context
It involves an attempt to develop a conceptual framework for the study of interrelations between neoliberalism, urban governance and environments that gives justice to the diversity of small cities of the global south and their urbanization process
Summary
Development research and practice have recently paid increased attention to urban issues as the world’s urban population outnumbered the rural population in the late-2000s for the first time in human history [1]. Within a classic body of literature on “third world cities”, addressing the issue of inadequate provision of services and amenities [4,5,6], there has been considerable attention to environmental issues, interpreted in a wide sense to include the built environment and environmental amenities, such as housing, clean water or sanitation [7,8,9] This literature argues that developing cities face a “double burden” as they are simultaneously affected by environmental problems related to “development”, industrialization and increased consumption (e.g., resource overuse, waste production, pollution, greenhouse gas emission) and related to “underdevelopment”, poverty and lack of infrastructure (e.g., inadequate housing, sanitation, solid waste management, hazardous work and living conditions). It involves an attempt to develop a conceptual framework for the study of interrelations between neoliberalism, urban governance and environments that gives justice to the diversity of small cities of the global south and their urbanization process After this introductory section, the term “small cities” will be defined for the purpose of this paper. The article ends with an agenda for further research on small cities, urban governance and environments in India, and elsewhere in the global south
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