Urban Growth in Developing Countries: A Review of Current Trends and a Caution Regarding Existing Forecasts

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the nature of the on-going urban transition in
developing countries, the quality of the available data, and the uncertainty of existing urban
forecasts. Although the recently released United Nations’ publication World Urbanization
Prospects is an invaluable resource for those interested in studying urban change, the data in the
report are somewhat deceptive in their apparent completeness and beyond the narrow con?nes of
technical demography there is a great deal of misunderstanding and misreporting about what these
data mean and how they should be interpreted. For example, while the scale of urban change is
unprecedented and the nature and direction of urban change is more dependent on the global
economy than ever before, many aspects of the traditional distinction between urban and rural are
becoming redundant. This paper provides a broad overview of the available evidence on patterns
and trends in urban growth in developing countries, highlighting regional di?erences where
appropriate. The paper also examines the quality of past urban population projections and ?nds
that there has been considerable diversity in their quality by geographic region, level of
development, and size of country.