Jo Beall, Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis and Ravi Kainbur(Eds): Urbanization and Development:Multidisciplinary PerspectivesOxford University Press, 2010, 327 pp,ISBN 978-0-19-959014-8 (hbk)

Gustav Visser

Published online: 5 March 2011# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

In the social sciences, cities have been the focus of considerable research over thepast decade, with world cities, global cities and ordinary cities, to name a few,presented at every turn. Whilst city managers are ceaselessly clamouring for atoehold and recognition in these schema and rankings, urbanization as a process hasbeen taking place unabated across the globe, not least in developing world countries.It is generally accepted that we have entered an “urban era”; we have reached a“tipping point” in the distribution of the world population. As a consequence, thediscourses focused on development will unavoidably become more urban “and thebalance between rural and urban development, always an important issue indevelopment theory and policy debate, will emerge in a sharper and more urbanform” (Beall et al., 2010: v).

Urbanization and Development draws on papers presented at an interdisciplinaryUNU-WIDER conference which addressed four broad questions:

What is so special about the urban context?Why are urbanization and urban growth important for development at the present

conjuncture?What are the limitations of our current state of knowledge about urbanization and

development policy?What is the additional value added of a multidisciplinary perspective on the urban

context for development research and policy?These questions are answered through the efforts of no fewer than 29 authors in

17 chapters which are divided into seven parts, of which the first and the last providecontextualisation of the investigation at hand and a thought provoking epilogue. Thefirst part of the book shows how urbanization and development discourses and livedrealities are now irrevocably linked. In Part II, a sophisticated set of papers deals

Urban Forum (2011) 22:199–201DOI 10.1007/s12132-011-9112-2

G. Visser (*)Department of Geography, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, Free State, South Africae-mail: visserge.sci@ufs.ac.za

with the measurement of urban change in relation to development and urbanization.Part III provides insight into the economic benefits of urbanization, and Part IVexplains the prevalence of slums in developing countries, squatter settlements andthe gendered nature of asset accumulation. Part V investigates various forms ofurban violence and Part VI the urban planning and governance challenges that citiesin the developing world context experience.

The editors draw the various contributions together in a very strong concludingchapter. The contribution in the collection that most related to me must be the final“Epilogue”. Very often collections of this nature can leave the reader with the viewthat some sort of concluding statement might aid a synthesis of the assembled work.In this respect, the Epilogue of the book is, in my view, most revealing, and thefollowing highlighting some of the central themes explored:

First, many chapters in the collection consider a dichotomous world partitionedinto “urban” or “rural” space, without the many gradations of “urban-ness” and“rural-ness” in between. As is suggested, “the traditional urban/rural dichotomy isbecoming increasingly inadequate”. By placing less stress on the diversity andtransitions under way along the rural–urban continuum and indeed within cities andrural areas themselves, we miss out on many key dynamic issues and policyimplications (2010:306). Relatedly, we are reminded that there is a need to analysethe relational and systemic interaction between rural and urban areas. Since urbanworkers require food and raw materials from rural areas, and rural workers requiremachinery, fuel and clothing from urban factories, rural and urban economies mustinteract. Persons across the developing world would agree that people maintain linksacross the rural–urban divide, bringing not only remittances but also ideas andvalues from the cities to the countryside. In addition, it is suggested that spatialanalysis of these interactions—and of the secondary cities that often mediate theseexchanges—is an important area for future research. As goods and people flowacross different spaces, there are fewer sharp boundaries between the rural and theurban.

As a geographer, the book’s second theme for future research is particularlyappealing. Having said that, I would imagine that the more “critical”, “culturallyturned” geographers might be at variance with such excitement—but I would argueat their own peril. The authors argue that they wish to emphasize the usefulness of afocus on spatial issues more generally. Once a geographers “playpen”, spatialanalysis is now common across a range of disciplines and has been advanced bytechnological advances and techniques such as geographical information systems.Although, this might come as a shock to some cultural and social geographers, theever increasing body of geographic information system (GIS) information on spatialdispersion is, in the view of the editors, central to the analysis of urbanization. Athird set of issues requiring investigation relates to definitional vagaries andshortcomings in statistical data. Again, some geographers and urban studies scholarsmight struggle with this notion, but the editors make a convincing case for buildinggeo-referenced data using remote sensing and other techniques and propose a fewindices that are free from the vagaries of the data systems of several UN and BrettenWoods agencies and institutions. To address issues of non-comparability in datasets,indices based on physical parameters like population, density, proximity measuredthrough distance, connectivity and technologies for interaction are suggested to open

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up new avenues for comparative urban research facilitating, especially cross-countrystudies.

Finally, a key theme of this book is that urbanization is a complex,multidimensional process and therefore no one discipline can understand, explainand address it adequately. In part, different disciplines address different issues. I didfind the idea that possibly the new GIS tools can provide the glue that enablesdifferent disciplines to explore spatial interactions among the political, social andeconomic dimensions of urbanization, most interesting.

As a whole, the contributions to this volume show the enormous value of differentdisciplines in analysing urban development. Standard economist approaches arepresented side by side with the broader social science approaches on ethnicity, urbanwaste and urban governance. Information is generated by longstanding engagementwith specific urban areas, while others provide antidotes to the uncritical use ofstandard “comparable” national-level data. Some use theories of economicgeography to develop an agglomeration index, and some analyse the effect ofinfrastructure on competitiveness and econometric techniques to study theeconomics of informal settlements.

Reflecting on this collection, it is difficult to see how a multidisciplinaryperspective could not be used in the discourse on urbanization and development. Acritical observation is certainly that no discipline can, by itself, adequately explainthe urban condition. It is important for each discipline to understand and appreciatethe value of other disciplinary approaches. Multidisciplinarity—the respectfuljuxtaposition and absorption of the analysis of different disciplines—is a first stepto an interdisciplinary approach. This volume provides a vehicle for illustrating thevalue of such multidisciplinarity in understanding urbanization and development.

This collection of essay will appeal to any scholar or policy analyst within thedevelopment community and urban studies. It will also find an eager readership in arange of postgraduate teaching programmes. Urbanization and Development ishighly recommended reading.

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