Squeezed off the land and then squeezed again in the city, the future does not look bright for the swelling ranks of urban poor. The growth of the South's major cities is now slowing. The frightening projections of the United Nations in the early 1980s proved exaggerated. By the year 2000, Bombay will not reach 19 million and Mexico City will not become a mega-city of 25 million. This does not mean the problem has ended.
Urbanisation continues, and is quickening.
But as the biggest conurbations become saturated, smaller cities have taken over as engines of urban development. Pune, Surat and Bangalore in India are all growing faster than Calcutta, Bombay or Madras. As important as the growth of cities is our reaction to them. In the first explosion of Third World cities in the 1960s, after former colonies gained independence, governments kept a wary eye on urban populations, ensuring they were well-fed, at the expense of rural people, who were less likely to riot if hungry. The urban poor inserted themselves, often with great ingenuity, into the city economy.