A quarter of the world’s population, 1.5 billion people, live in small urban centres of fewer than half a million inhabitants. Several hundred million more live in ‘large villages’ that could also be called urban centres. Together they will absorb much of the growth in the world’s population up to 2025 and beyond.

A discussion paper from International Institute for Environment and Development, UK, draws on recent census data for 70 countries to examine the proportions of national populations living in ‘large villages’ and small urban centres.

Urban centres like these have considerable economic, social and political importance. They contain a significant proportion of all economic activities and include almost all the service and local government centres for rural populations and for agriculture.

It is not easy to establish at what point a growing rural settlement should be classified as urban. Many settlements of 1,000 to 2,000 people have concentrations of shops, services and manufacturing that would normally be associated with urban economies. There are many larger settlements with several thousand inhabitants that have few shops and services and most people are engaged in farming. These look like rural settlements.

Findings:

• In most nations, at least a quarter of the people live in settlements that can be categorised as ‘urban’ or ‘rural’, or as ‘large villages’ or ‘small urban centres’.
• The size of any nation’s urban population is much influenced by the proportion of people living in small urban centres and large villages: they could be classified as either urban or rural.
• There are forms of urban settlement for which boundaries are not easily drawn, for example where ‘urban’ activities are clustered along each side of a road for considerable distances.
• Inertia in government systems can often mean official boundaries are much smaller than the built-up area.
• There are also many urban centres whose boundaries encompass large tracts of rural land and significant numbers of farmers.

This is not a purely technical issue. One of the main debates in development over the last forty years has been on the relative importance of ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ development. However, the debate rarely acknowledges that a significant proportion of people live in settlements that could be termed either small urban centres or large (rural) villages. Most small urban centres in low and middle-income countries exhibit a mix of urban and rural characteristics.

Many poor and non-poor rural households rely on urban income sources through remittances from family members, commuting for work, or from producing goods for urban markets. Many urban households in low-income nations rely on rural resources and reciprocal relationships with rural households

Conclusions:

• There is no clear line between ‘rural’ and ‘small urban’ settlements and less importance should be given to this rural-urban divide.
• The importance of small urban centres should not be overlooked. They often provide markets and services for rural producers, and can be linked to mining, tourism, border posts, education centres, agricultural processing, and centres for the armed forces.

Source(s):
‘Outside the large cities: the demographic importance of small urban centres and large villages in Africa, Asia and Latin America’, Human Settlement Discussion Paper Series. Urban Change 3, IIED: London, by David Satterthwaite, 2006. Full document.

Funded by: United Nations Human Settlements Programme

id21 Research Highlight: 08 November 2006

Further Information:
David Satterthwaite
International Institute for Environment and Development
3 Endsleigh Street
London WC1H 0DD
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 207 388 2117
Fax: +44 (0)207 388 2826
Contact the contributor: david@iied.org

International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), UK

Other related links:
'Affordable water and sanitation technologies in small towns'

'Creating opportunities beyond farms: experience from rural India'

'Overcoming the rural-urban divide in China and India'

Beyond Rural Urban: Keeping up with Changing Realities

Critical review of the role of small and intermediate urban centres in national, regional and local economies of developing countries