About this Book

This textbook offers an authoritative, up-to-date overview of the urban experience in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Twenty-four studies have been grouped to present six issues: development theory and policy as they pertain to urbanization, rural-urban migration, urban employment structures, forms of social integration and control, the housing question, and urban politics. The editors' introductions to the volume and to each of the six parts, put the individual studies into context to provide a comprehensive account of issues, theory, and policy. The contributors, leading experts across the social sciences, offer multiple perspectives on the cities of the developingworld. Sociologists and anthropologists predominate, but architects, economists, geographers, and political scientists are included as well. The urban transition now affecting Africa, Asia, and Latin America, rapid urban growth without precedence in history, and the largest mega-cities in the world have attracted the attention of scholars and policy-makers alike. This volume will be of interest to professional planners, scholars, andstudents in the social sciences who are concerned with the myriad issues presented by the cities of the 'South'.