The name is absent

Policy issues in the urban South¹

MANIE GEYER*

Urban and Regional Planning,

University of Potchefstroom,

Potchefstroom, RSA

Keywords: Globalization, Urbanization, economic development, sustainable
development, formal/informal sector

ABSTRACT

The process of globalisation has gone through different phases of evolution since
the 1960s and has affected different parts of the South differently during each phase.
This paper starts with characteristics of the current phase of global regionalization and
how it impacts economically on different parts of the developing world. It explains
what advantages and disadvantages the neo-liberal economic development approach
hold for the South and how different parts of the South are responding to them. It
shows what challenges the lagging South face in its quest to reconnect to the global
economy. The paper then moves on to the concept of sustainable urban development
and how the market could be made more accessible to large parts of the lagging urban
South within the framework of sustainable development. It analyses the current
structure of the informal urban economic sector and demonstrates how vertical
integration could be achieved between the formal and informal urban economic
sectors in the urban South. Finally it looks at different models of sustainable urban
development and what consequences each holds for economic development in the
urban South.

¹ This paper is partially drawn from a paper that was presented at a conference on globalisation that was held by the
University of Southern California at the Rockefeller Foundation International Conference Centre, Bellagio, Italy on
August 21, 2002.

1   2   3   4   >>

More intriguing information