Book review: Kala S. Sridhar and George Mavrotas,eds. 2022. Urbanization in the Global South: Perspectives and Challenges

This book is a carefully curated collection of research articles on urbanization in the Global South with an insightful introduction by the editors, Kala S. Sridhar and George Mavrotas, beautifully dovetailing all the subsequent chapters. The editors, themselves co-authors of several research papers included in this book, have attempted to cover key aspects of urbanization such as its status, progress, impacts, advantages, and challenges, specifically in the context of the Global South. The book covers many developing countries from the continents of Asia, Africa, and Latin America that constitute the global south, with a keen focus on India. The book provides a single-source solution to everyone looking for reliable, relevant and well-rounded research on urbanization in the Global South.

The process of urbanization in the developed world has evolved very differently as compared to that in the developing world. While it is useful to learn from the experiences of the former, the challenges facing the developing countries in the Global South are unique and require first-hand study. The literature on urbanization is replete with studies based on the developed Western countries as they have come far in their journey of urbanization. However, in the developing world, specifically the Global South, most countries, including India, are still far from even the half-way mark in the urbanization process. Through its first-hand account of urban perspectives and challenges, this book is a welcome contribution to these gaps in the literature on urbanization in the developing world.

The book is divided into four parts covering a total of 17 chapters or research articles. Each part covers a somewhat distinct important aspect of urbanization. The first part, comprising Chapters 2–4, focuses on the relationship between urbanization, economic growth, poverty, food, and livelihood security. We see that urbanization plays a significant role in economic growth of developing countries. Urbanization is also found to have a positive effect on per capita food expenditure, and nutritional diversity while it reduces stunting and increases height-for-age z-scores (HAZ). Finally, the conversion of irrigation tanks for urbanization purposes is found to have a negative impact on livelihood security for farmers who were reliant on these tanks for agriculture.

The second part (Chapters 5–10) of the book deals with the issues of finances in urbanization, public infrastructure and urban services, and urban service delivery. Key urban services include water supply, sewerage, waste management, roads, and drainage. We see that major Indian cities are facing a financial crunch as local city governments face shortage and lack of control over the financial resources needed to keep pace with rapid urbanization. Further, through a study of the status of urban services in the Indian megacity of Bengaluru, the book exhibits the process of sub-urbanization in the city with central areas having much better access to urban services as compared to peripheral areas and an overall unsatisfactory state of urban services in the city. Not only the provision of urban services but the benchmarks and norms used for measuring quality of these services also needs to be modified to correctly gauge the status of these services. Special emphasis is given to water supply in cities as the book identifies gaps in water management using system dynamics tools and recommends judicious use of the scarce resource based on discounted cash flow calculations. A case is also made for the treatment and reuse of water for which policy thrust and stringent implementation are necessary. This part of the book is concluded with a chapter on sanitation services, hygiene behaviour and health implications in the slums of Bengaluru, India. Given the already unhygienic living conditions of slum-residents, the authors argue for improvement in sanitation infrastructure, promoting good hygiene practices and policy changes to nudge people to make healthier sanitation choices.

In the third part (Chapters 11–13), the book delves into the negative externalities or unintended ill-effects of urbanization. Taking the case of a small town in Nepal, the authors show how collaboration among public and private entities, and local communities, helped restore and preserve open public spaces such as parks and the air quality of the town. The book also talks about Delhi, India’s capital city, known for having extremely polluted air, being charged with erroneous problem-framing and ignoring the most vulnerable in policies to combat air-pollution. A holistic view of the problem is important for designing effective solutions. Finally, a chapter on Kolkata, a city in eastern India, shows how indiscriminate urbanization by demolition of wetlands is jeopardizing the lives and livelihoods of women who are employed in vegetable farms on these lands. There are also serious ecological repercussions of disappearance of these green lands.

The fourth and final part of the book (Chapters 14–17) deals with governance issues in urbanization. Much like any other advancement, urbanization needs to be balanced such that development does not come at the cost of societal equity. The negative externalities of urbanization need to be cautiously checked by the local, state, and national governments. In fact, the very problems related with urbanization discussed in earlier chapters of this book could be traced, at least partially, to poor governance. A primary study from Bengaluru, India, finds that areas with the active presence of Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) have better access to urban services such as water supply and maintenance of public spaces while the sub-urban residents of the city have most complaints about the state of these services in their areas. Drawing a parallel between Indian and Chinese cities, a study on challenges of citizen participation in urban redevelopment in Shanghai, China, finds that citizen participation in housing requisition was ineffective. A potential reason cited was the role of participation schemes as mere procedural formality. In another study on challenges facing the urban poor in the context of health finds that urban immunization programmes face hurdles in the form of language barriers, illegal settlements, cultural diversity, implementation, and monitoring. These issues can be resolved through effective governance measures. This part is concluded by a chapter on the role of public policies in enhancing benefits of urbanization in the context of Latin American megacities. Policies on urban planning should focus on the coordinated and organized expansion of cities and on bridging the development gap between central areas and peripheral areas of the city. Indian megacities face a similar problem of uncoordinated development, which makes us lose out on many potential benefits of agglomeration economies offered by well-planned urbanization.

The book succinctly links some UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with various urbanization themes covered in the volume while acknowledging the inability to cover few SDGs. Broadly, the SDGs that are directly affected by urbanization and that are covered in this book are the ones on sustainable cities and communities, poverty, hunger, clean water and sanitation, decent work and economic growth, responsible production and consumption, climate action, peace, justice and strong institutions, and partnerships for accomplishing these goals. The volume also makes an indirect, yet meaningful, reference to SDGs on education and gender. Given the global importance attached to achieving these goals, the book really puts urbanization into perspective vis-à-vis the envisaged future of society.

Some chapters in the book make use of statistical and econometric techniques such as linear regressions, Granger causality, and time series analysis to derive meaningful conclusions from data. For the purposes of cost analysis, the authors also use techniques such as discounted cash flows and system dynamics for understanding various systems and sub-systems in urban services. We also come across authors creating indices and using mathematical modelling techniques for measuring resource scarcity. Finally, some chapters focus on primary surveys and presentation of administrative statistics to draw conclusions regarding the state and consequences of urbanization in a geography. While it is reassuring to read conclusions based on sound econometric analysis, there are more advanced and improved econometric techniques that often challenge the results drawn from a linear regression analysis and results from these modern techniques would be more robust. Notwithstanding the econometric rigour, the research questions raised in the book are fundamental to urbanization in developing countries, and the conclusions drawn from various studies should attract the attention of academics, governments, and policymakers.

From a management perspective, the issues of governance in urbanization discussed in this book are important to be addressed not just by local or state governments but also by individual residents and companies that are using urban infrastructure and services for their own benefit, pecuniary and otherwise. The book offers opportunities for management practitioners to partner with public authorities in urban planning and development, and management of urban services efficiently by highlighting the problem areas in governance of urban cities.

At its core, the book serves as a single-point source of research-backed knowledge on the most crucial issues in urbanization in the Global South for policymakers, students of urban economics, and even urban solutions designers who can get a good understanding of the state, progress, and challenges of urbanization that need to be kept in mind while creating holistic solutions that serve the society well. To solve a problem, it is important to understand what exactly is that problem and how far we have to go in solving it. This book very clearly and concisely explains the issues facing urbanization in the Global South, thereby setting the stage for finding solutions to these issues.