Urban Growth in Developing Countries: A Review of Current Trends and a Caution Regarding Existing Forecasts

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the nature of the on-going urban transition in developing countries, the quality of the available data, and the uncertainty of existing urban forecasts. Although the recently released United Nations’ publication World Urbanization Prospects is an invaluable resource for those interested in studying urban change, the data in the report are somewhat deceptive in their apparent completeness and beyond the narrow confines of technical demography there is a great deal of misunderstanding and misreporting about what these data mean and how they should be interpreted. For example, while the scale of urban change is unprecedented and the nature and direction of urban change is more dependent on the global economy than ever before, many aspects of the traditional distinction between urban and rural are becoming redundant. This paper provides a broad overview of the available evidence on patterns and trends in urban growth in developing countries, highlighting regional differences where appropriate. The paper also examines the quality of past urban population projections and finds that there has been considerable diversity in their quality by geographic region, level of development, and size of country.