Models of Urban Growth in the Global South

Red: Identifiable Ramshackle Settlements, Yellow: Identifiable "planned" Development

The diagrams above illustrate four different urban centers which are representative of two common typologies of metropolitan development in the Global South. The models are designated according to the urban fabric that characterizes them in satellite images and according to supplementary photographs of corresponding street conditions, and are meant to visually suggest the range of social situations and physical environments common in the regions. While the top two models (Soweto on the top and Nairobi below), have recognizable city centers, they do not follow "traditional" models of nucleated metropolitan growth. Both are stippled by ramshackle settlements along with rigidly planned neighborhoods that appear to have grown up in reciprocal fashion on the northern and southern edges of the city-proper. In the lower two models (Delhi second from the bottom and Buenos Aires last), the cities are designed around radial cores and peripheral growth occurs in a concentric or processual fashion.

The relationship between material quality, density and proximity to "formal" centers of urban activity is often paradoxical in understanding the impelling developmental calculus of Third World cities. Some of the poorest developments, materially speaking, are often the most effective socially, while many of the "higher quality" or "planned" developments are often found to be socially oppressive. The marked distinction between these two forms of settlements is illustrated in the satellite images shown to the right of each map. Note that in each image, areas of rigidly designed housing blocks seem to disintegrate into less "formal" areas of ramshackle development. These two seemingly opposite patterns of growth represent both the economic failures of mandated, policy-based development solutions, and the "need" for user directed models of development.

In fact, the provisional or informal structures of ramshackle zones are often a more appropriate social and economic solution to sheltering the burgeoning populations in the cities of the Global South. Being rent-free and close to employment centers, these materially poor structures can actually maximize the occupants' opportunities for betterment. The modern standard of peri-urban development on the other hand, while usually of comparatively high material quality, often isolates the occupants from their sources of livelihood and demands a sizable percentage of the occupants' incomes, thus ultimately minimizing the inhabitants' chances for socio-economic betterment.