Urbanization and Rural-Urban Migration - ECONDEV

Urban Giantism

is a condition wherein first cities are congested or overpopulated as a result of urban bias and other capital incentives of living in larger cities.

Urbanization: Trends and Living Conditions

An increase in the percentage and in the number of people living in urban settlements.

Urban Informal Sector

That part of an urban economy that lies outside the formal economy, consisting of economic activities that are unregistered and legally unregulated.

Migration and Development

Interrelationship between migration patterns and economic growth.

Todaro Model

A theory that explains rural-urban migration as an economically rational process despite high urban unemployment. Migrants calculate urban expected income and move if this exceeds average rural income

Five Policy Implications

Reduction of urban bias, imbalances in expected income opportunities is crucial, indiscriminate educational expansion fosters increased migration and unemployment, wage subsidies and scarcity factor pricing can be counterproductive, and programs of integrated rural development should be encouraged.

Agglomeration Economies

(syn. external economies) The savings to an individual enterprise derived for locational association with a cluster of other similar economic activities, such as other factories or retail stores.

Localization Economies

The cost savings for individual industries as a result of grouping together in a certain location

Urbanization Economies

Agglomeration effects associated with the general growth of a concentrated geographic region.

Urbanization Costs

"congestion costs"

Effective Urban Scale

found where average costs for industries are lowest.

Urban Giantism Problem

May be General Urban Bias;