RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES: AN EMERGING POLICY PRIORITY

UNDP
Bureau for Development Policy
September, 2000

(Not to be quoted or used without UNDP’s permission)

For more information please contact
Jonas.rabinovitch@undp.org
 Acknowledgements

Writing this publication was an accomplishment of a host of people who contributed

to varying degrees and brought this task to completion. The overall preparation of the paper
was co-ordinated by Mr. Jonas Rabinovitch, Senior Urban Development Advisor, Bureau for
Development Policy (BDP) under the guidance of Mr. G. Shabbir Cheema, Director,
Management Development and Governance Division/ BDP. The Bureau for Development
Policy is directed by Ms. Eimi Watanabe.

The BDP appreciates the comprehensive inputs received from the consultants
involved in producing this work. We are grateful to Dr. Michael Douglass, Professor,
Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Hawaii who was instrumental in
composing, editing the publication and helping us in the formulation of an overall framework
for policy action. We are also grateful to Ms. Simone Mangal and Ms. Uzma Nomani for
contributing to research, drafting and finishing this work.

The publication represents the joint efforts of all participants who presented their
papers at the Workshop on Rural-Urban Linkages held in Curitiba, Brazil in March 1998,
organized by UNDP in co-operation with the Government of the State of Parana, in Brazil.
We are grateful to the support provided by Governor Jaime Lerner and his enthusiastic team.
The knowledge and experience of Dr. Michael Douglass, Dr. Alfredo Apey, Dr. Somrudee
Nicro, Ms. Francois Navez-Bouchanine, Mr. Youssef Hiasat, Mr. Hartmut Schmetzer, and
Mr. Chris Ikporukpo was incorporated into the publication. The text also used and benefited
from the case studies and comments of Dr. lai Olurode, Mr. Paul Munro-Faure, Dr. Kawik
Sugiana, Mr. Ali Pirzadeh, Mr. Jac Smit, Dr. Won Bae Kim, Dr. Peter M. Ngau, and Mr.
Alain Durand-Lasserve.

Finally, we would like to thank Mr. Rafael Dely who directs the Rural Villages
Programme in Parana, Brazil and Mr. Osni Tadeu de Oliveira, Chief Protocol, Rural
Education Programme, Parana, Brazil. We are also grateful to the Nepal Rural-Urban
Partnership Programme (RUPP) of UNDP, the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements
(UNCHS), the Poverty Alleviation Programme through Rural-Urban Linkages (PARUL),
Indonesia of UNDP, and United Nations Centre for Regional Development Africa Office for
providing us with several of the case studies.

UNDP
Bureau for Development Policy
New York
October 2000
 FOREWORD

This UNDP policy discussion paper is an attempt to contribute to the policy debate by
identifying key forces driving rural-urban linkages along with several key emerging issues
that need to be addressed. It is evident that the solutions to many urban problems lie outside
of urban areas while solutions to many rural problems can be found in urban areas. The
challenge to policy makers is to broaden the focus of policies so that resources are more
efficiently applied to solve development problems and to ensure that solutions for urban-
related problems do not result in rural-related problems and vice versa. Therefore, the
overarching policy issue is how to manage processes linking rural and urban areas in a
complimentary manner that benefits both rural and urban populations and promotes
sustainable human development.

This paper explores both the conceptual and practical reasons for limited success in
promoting balanced rural and urban development. It emphasises lessons learned from
current approaches to rural-urban development planning and combines these with the
experience of innovative approaches to managing rural-urban linkages in order to sketch a
way forward in rural-urban policy making and management.

BACKGROUND

UNDP and its Urban Development Co-operation have been actively involved in
promoting exchange of experience and promising initiatives on urban and rural governance
and linkages. This discussion paper has grown out of emerging interest among policy makers
in rethinking traditional positions on rural-urban linkages. It is the product of ongoing efforts
of UNDP to promote the exchange of ideas and disseminate information to support the
development of sound policies to manage the rural-urban transformation underway in
developing countries. The paper is developed primarily from the critical issues raised at the
International Workshop on Rural Urban Linkages, which was held in Curitiba in March
1998. This workshop, which was sponsored by the UNDP and State of Parana Brazil,
brought together a range of NGOs, governments, researchers and policy makers to discuss
the emerging issues in rural and urban relations in developing countries. The main ideas that
emerged and case studies presented at the conference are incorporated with published
literature and empirical studies on rural and urban linkages to produce this much needed and
timely discussion on rural-urban policy making and management.

The issues raised in this policy discussion are not a comprehensive treatment of rural-
urban linkages or a description of rural-urban linkages in all developing countries.
Obviously, a range of rural-urban characteristics is found across the developing world.
Rather, this paper is an entry point into identifying predominant patterns, understanding the
key driving forces, and identifying areas for further policy development. Instead of offering
prescriptions, this discussion is intended to point in the general direction of solutions and to
stimulate a broader discussion by integrating the experience of the UNDP with the wider
knowledge on rural-urban linkages emerging among civil society and researchers. The
discussion concludes with some frameworks needed to both account for the sources of stress
being placed on rural regions and capture the opportunities reaching from local to global
scales for rural regional and rural-urban development. The paper expects that subsequent
discussions will lead to the development of policies that can be used to guide UNDP Country
Offices and prepare governments to manage the complex transformations underway in
developing countries.
 Preface

“UNDP, at the request of governments and in support of its areas of focus, assists in
building capacity for good governance, popular participation, private and public sector
development, and growth with equity. It stresses that national plans and priorities constitute
the only viable frame of reference for national programming of operational activities for
development within the United Nations system”.
UNDP Mission Statement

The primary purpose of this policy discussion paper is to disseminate UNDP’s support to
the issue of rural-urban linkages by discussing key issues in this (re) emerging policy arena.
This discussion integrates the main ideas and case studies that were presented at the
International workshop on Rural and Urban Linkages that was held in Curitiba in 1998, with
recent published information on this topic.

This publication is intended for United Nations Development Programme colleagues and
all our partners inside and outside the U.N. system, including policy-makers at all levels and
all those trying to make policy happen.

The document is organised into five main chapters. Section 1 addresses the question of
why there is a need for a rural-urban focus in development policy. In Section 2, the main
concepts of rural and urban linkages are introduced along with a brief review of how rural
and urban relationships have been regarded in contemporary policy approaches. Several
contemporary approaches that have been applied in developing countries to address rural-
urban problems and overcome the challenges to rural-urban policy implementation are
featured in Section 3. The key linkages that are emerging in developing countries and
countries in transition are presented in Section 4 along with an analysis of the driving forces,
policy implications, and major challenges to overcome to implement responsive policy. The
difficulties encountered in these approaches are discussed along with the relevant policy
implications. Finally, in Section 5 the key policy implications are considered to propose a
way forward in continuing the dialogue on rural-urban linkages and developing rural-urban
policy.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................................II

FOREWARD ..................................................................................................................................................... III

PREFACE…..……………………………………………………………………………………………………V

TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………………………………..…..VI

1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................7
OVERVIEW..........................................................................................................................................................7
2. WHAT ARE RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES, WHY DO WE EVEN CARE ABOUT
THEM?……………............................................................................................................................................12
DEMOGRAPHIC FLOWS: MIGRATING FROM RURAL INTO URBAN POVERTY .....................................................13
Migration Trends ........................................................................................................................................13
Migration and Gender ................................................................................................................................19
Core Driving Forces ...................................................................................................................................20
DEPLETUION OF RESOURCES: THE FLOW OF RAW MATERIALS, AND GOODS ...................................................25
WEALTH AND POVERTY: THE FLOW OF CAPITAL………..……………………………………………………37
ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY: NATURAL RESOURCE USE AND FLOWS OF WASTE ..................................33
THE FLOW OF INFORMATION ............................................................................................................................37
3. CONTEMPORARY RURAL-URBAN POLICY APPROACHES: LESSONS LEARNED ...................37
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW ...................................................................................................................................40
PROMOTING BALANCED DEVELOPMENT..…………………………………………………………………….42
GROWTH POLES AND SERVICE CENTRES ..........................................................................................................42
RURAL INDUSTRIALISATION PROGRAMMES....................................................................................................451
INTEGRATED RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS …………………………………………...………………. 46
SUMMARY REAOSONS FOR LIMITED SUCCESS OF CONTEMPORARY POLICIES TO CURB RURAL REGION
DEVELOPMENT .................................................................................................................................................46
4. THE VALUE-ADDED OF A RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES PERSPECTIVE IN POLICY..................48
1. BREAKING RURAL-URBAN POVERTY SYNDROMES ......................................................................................50
2. GENERATING POSITIVE RURAL-URBAN SYNERGIES ....................................................................................51
3. ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH AN EXPLICIT RURAL-URBAN FOCUS ................................512
4. STRUCTURING GOVERNANCE TO LOCAL SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC REALITIES AND
POTENTIALS…………..523
5. SUCCESSFUL RURAL-URBAN POLICIES: SYNTHESIS AND THE TASK AHEAD......................51
POLICY INITIATIVES: GENERATING RURAL-URBAN SYNERGIES FOR POVERTY REDUCTION AND SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT.………..………………………...…………………………………………………...…….…79
CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………………………. 82
6. REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………………………84
 1. Introduction

OVERVIEW

Development policy and systems of governance continue to treat rural and urban
development as independent, largely unconnected sectors. Governments divide planning into
separate rural and urban bureaux, and once settlements reach the status of municipality they
are administratively separated from their rural hinterlands. In a globalizing world that is
rapidly urbanizing, the need to overcome these dichotomies by including rural-urban linkages
into policy and planning is becoming increasingly self-evident. Among the key rural-urban
relationships that underlie this need are:
• Economic Interdependence. Just as cities cannot be sustained without dependable
supplies of food, natural resources, and industrial crops, rural economic expansion
depends on urban markets, central place services, and urban networks connecting
rural production to more distant national and international markets and information.
Whether the focus is on rural or urban development, in a highly integrated world
economy the limits of one are the limits on the other. There is thus a need to begin to
promote the synergies between rural and urban development rather than to continue to
treat them as autonomous sectors in policy and planning

• National economic resilience. Patterns of development throughout the developing

world show high levels of polarisation of economic growth in one or a few urban
regions, which often account for more than half of national GDP. Large shares of the
national territorial space are now playing a secondary role at best, with many rural
regions lagging far behind metropolitan areas. In an increasing number of countries
absolute rural depopulation resulting from combinations of declining fertility rates
and out-migration related to spatial inequalities in income, the impacts of war and
social unrest, and worsening environmental conditions is leading to a rapid shrinking
and aging of farm populations with a commensurate absolute decline in local urban
populations, functions and transportation services. The resulting effect of putting
economic eggs into a few metropolitan baskets is leaving nations with limited
territorial sources to diversify and stabilise their economies in what is recognized as
an increasingly turbulent world economy. To create a more resilient foundation for
national development, mutually beneficial rural-urban linkages need to be promoted
across national space -- in rural as well as metropolitan regions.

• Environmental Sustainability. Urban and rural activities have manifold unintended

environmental impacts on each other. Urban-industrial demand for natural resources
has had dire environmental consequences on ecological integrity of rural areas.
Similarly, chemical run-off from modern agricultural practices pollutes the water of
urban regions, many of the largest of which occupy lowland areas that are dependent
on major waterways originating in rural regions. There is thus a need to anticipate the
 impacts of developments in one area on the other if the concept of sustainable
development is to have meaning.

• Governance and citizen participation. Democratisation is one of the most salient

transformations now occurring around the world. To be effective, efforts toward the
inclusion of civil society in political processes that affect people's everyday lives
requires decentralisation of power and local as well as national political reform and
capacity building. In many countries decentralisation of administrative authority is
well underway, though local autonomy and local accountability of governments is
less well established. Typically, in the process of decentralizing cities are given
higher levels of authority than are rural districts, creating situations in which
municipal governments are empowered but separated from rural areas, with the latter
having weak political endowments. Given the interdependencies of rural and urban
development, there is a need to overcome the imbalances and separation of rural and
urban development at the local level.
• Poverty alleviation and economic opportunity. With development in most countries
highly polarised in large urban regions, opportunities to improve life chances are also highly
concentrated and unevenly distributed over space. Migration and remittances from migrants
have become the major means by which the rural poor gain access to higher economic
opportunities. Yet even though migration might assist in maintaining and even improving
household incomes, the rural-urban flows of migrants do not necessarily create the basis for
long-term rural or urban development. Remittances to rural households do not readily find
their way into investments in infrastructure, markets or other forms of economic overhead
needed for rural development. At the same time, migration to metropolitan centers, while
making a positive contribution to the urban economy, also contributes to the expansion of
slum and squatter settlements and to a process of expansion of labor supply that often
suppresses wages and incomes to levels at or below subsistence.

In focusing on the later issue of poverty alleviation, this policy discussion paper
acknowledges that in the longer term, poverty cannot be reduced without attention to each of
the other dimensions of rural-urban linkages summarised above. Without achieving
sustainable economic development that can minimise negative impacts of rural and urban
development on each other and can also spread development opportunities more widely over
national territorial space, attempts to alleviate poverty will be palliative but will lack the
rural-urban synergies needed to economically empower people to lift themselves out of
poverty. However, without a focus on the specific conditions of poverty and ways to directly
enable poor households to expand economic, social and political capacities, rural-urban
linkage strategies cannot be expected by itself to eradicate poverty. The wider spatial
dimensions of rural-urban linkages and more direct forms of empowerment need to be
simultaneously pursued.

Rural poverty and unprecedented rates of urbanisation are profoundly affecting the
societies, economics, and environment of developing countries. Three decades of polices
that were devised to develop rural areas to alleviate poverty and deflect or prevent the
migration of rural people to large urban centres have not effectively stemmed the pace of
urbanisation. Hunger, low-income, poverty, overspecialisation in a few commodities, rural
environmental deterioration, loss of traditional land-use management systems, chronic out-
migration of the young and able at the national and international levels, and decreasing urban
functions and declining public transportation services in regional towns persist and typify
rural regions in developing countries. Without the resources to cover the expenses of
migration and job search, the poorest of the poor tend to remain in rural areas. They face an
acute shortage of rural labour, as capacity to pass farms to younger generations declines, they
still continue to live and earn in the rural regions.

Poverty in towns and cities mirrors that of rural areas. Urbanisation in developing
countries has been accelerated by migration of people into urban centres in search of jobs.
The pace of migration outstrips the growth in employment with incomes above poverty
levels, the provision of low-cost housing, and the ability of urban municipalities to provide
social and environmental infrastructure and services. While natural urban population
increase has overtaken migration in contributing to urban growth in many countries, as much
as 40 percent or more of the urban population increase continues to be due to migrants
arriving from rural areas and small towns in most developing regions of the world (UNCHS,
1999). Between 1950 and 1995 the proportion of the global population living in urban areas
increased from 29 percent to 43 percent, by 2005 more than half of the world’s population
will be living in urban areas (UNDP, 1996a).

The sheer numbers of people that arrive every year to some cities – hundreds of
thousands, approaching one million per year in some Asian cities -- signify the massive rural-
urban changes that are underway in developing countries. Accompanying these problems is
also in question the future sufficiency of world food production. Since, urban dwellers are
captive to rising prices, because they do not grow their own food, the problems of poverty,
social discontent, and political instability will become pronounced. This has led policy
makers to concur that urbanisation is a complex phenomena that cannot be simply curbed by
policy-making (UNDP, 1998a).

History shows urbanisation to be an irreversible process. It is, at the same time, a

highly uneven process over space that is typically manifested in the growth of a few very
large urban regions paralleled by slow growth or stagnation of rural towns and regions.
Expected trickle-down mechanisms from metropolitan to rural regions and their urban
centres have not occurred, resulting in a failure of the urbanisation process to stimulate rural
development or slow down rural-urban migration. Yet the stability of cities have intimately
depended upon the vitality of agriculture and the regional conditions needed to support it.
The challenge is to make the agriculture and regional conditions sustainable not only because
they are vital for the sustainability of the cities, but also for the sake of people who live in the
rural regions. Rural regions have towns and cities within them, and the opportunities for
creating mutually beneficial rural-urban linkages to raise levels of development in these
regions have not yet been fully explored. The traditional policy emphasis has been on
economic output, not on human development.

Policies that treat "rural" and "urban" as separate sectors and do not go beyond
technological or infrastructural forms of linking rural with urban areas will continue to fall
short of effectively reaching the underlying causes of poverty which include lack of access to
resources, weak organizational capacities and centralised planning that is too distant from
local needs. In a more positive manner, by directly incorporating into development strategies
the key dimensions of rural-urban linkages -- flows of people, resources, information,
commodities, inputs into production, decision-making power -- the negative impacts of the
urbanisation process now underway can be better anticipated and potentially mitigated in
both the city and the countryside. Stagnation of the growth of rural towns is affecting the
life and employment opportunities of rural as well as urban people in every rural region.
Access to better life chances by uncovering the missed opportunities of promoting mutually
beneficial rural-urban linkages within rural regions can be a major factor in alleviating
poverty .

In drawing from Asian and other experiences, the missing elements from
development are threefold: (1) a rural-led or agriculture component of the regional economy
and (2) a more endogenous source of industrial and service sector growth. Endogenous
sources would look toward food security and economic diversity in a manner that matches
land resource endowments, diversifies production and risks, and facilitates capturing of
processing and production processes within the region (Douglass, 1999), and (3) education,
cultural and social amenities, and higher-order infrastructure and services that would not only
improve the quality of life but would also offer economic and social alternatives to migrating
to metropolitan centers or abroad for income and improvement in life chances (For details,
please see pg. 79). Without these components, the region can be expected to encounter
severe difficulties in deepening and sustaining its economy over the long term. Non-farm
employment opportunities, such as diversification of rural production through research and
development, developing higher value added production linkages, providing social services,
public infrastructure, and support for private entrepreneurial activities to rural people, need to
be provided within the rural region. Most of these activities can be most efficiently and
conveniently located in rural towns and cities (For details, please see pg. 25). Through what
can be called a localisation of urbanisation. or in situ urbanisation, the linkages and
opportunities are brought to the daily spheres of interaction of rural people to benefit where
they live rather than having to migrate to a distant city or regions to better their conditions.

The rural-urban transition now underway poses daunting challenges to municipalities

everywhere to provide access to housing, education, jobs, and a healthy environment and
intensifies the ongoing challenge to governments to make rural regions, including their
urban centres, places where people want to, and can live and work. Whereas metropolitan
regions must cope with high rates of population growth, other cities and towns suffer from
inadequate financial resources, personnel and planning capacities.

Trade liberalisation and globalisation being pursued through public policy and
international agreements has further tended to accentuate income inequalities between
metropolitan and rural regions and between the rich and the poor (UNDP 1996). This pattern
is also perpetuated at the international level with world inequality rising steadily. Currently,
the assets of the two hundred richest people in the world are more than the combined income
of 41 percent of the world’s population (UNDP, 1999). The social polarisation is also
reflected locally in urban space, with haves and have-nots segregated into communities by
land use policies and market prices. The environmental consequences of social and
economic inequalities of these magnitudes are profound and are taking the form of degraded
rural regions whose resources are used for urban industry, high-rise buildings and new towns
for the elite that stand in contrast with the growing urban slum and squatter settlements.

How can these inequalities be reduced? How can poor and marginalised populations
be given greater access to the opportunities promised by global economic expansion as it
touches down on nations and local areas? Of the many dimensions of these questions, one
that is emerging as a policy priority is rural-urban linkages. The impacts of urban and rural
transformations on each other is self-evident. Yet a strong rural and urban dichotomy in
contemporary policy approaches has limited the search for opportunities to create policies
that lead to mutually supportive rural and urban development. Policy debates have instead
tended to be divided between an urban versus rural view, which persists today and
substantially influences national human settlements policy.

From the perspective of a poor household the rural–urban divide is artificial. As the
world becomes more spatially integrated, low-income rural households draw upon rural-
urban linkages in the real world to devise poverty management and alleviation strategies by
making their own connections with towns, cities and international destinations through
migration, remittances, information exchanges, and a host of other linkages that are routinely
ignored in both rural and urban policy formulation. Consequently, many common causes and
consequences of rural and urban problems, as well as the unintended impacts of policies
outside of the ‘rural’ or ‘urban’ area in which they are implemented, have remained invisible
to key policy makers or difficult to situate in the policy process. Policies to alleviate poverty
need to be both more aware of the failure of rural development that ultimately result in
growing rural destitution and urban slum expansion. Although policies to address these
linkages between rural and urban problems have yet to fully emerge, many examples of
positive initiatives are taking place in every region of the world (UNDP 1998a). While they
remain only partially documented and are still outside of mainstream policy circles, they are
touchstones that offer important insights and reveal the importance of bringing rural-urban
linkages more fully into national and local development thinking.

The publication has documented cases that address linkages between rural and urban
problems. These cases do not revolve around any specific theme; rather they reflect a host of
dimensions important to the explanations of why urbanisation is not doing well in rural
regions or advancing rural regional development, why policies from time to time have not
been able to spur growth in urban centres in rural regions, and what interventions are most
likely to strengthen local rural-urban linkages in a positive manner and reduce the
imperatives for longer distance migration, as an income maintenance and survival strategy, to
capital cities nationally and to urban and rural areas internationally. The cases also help
explain what is needed to reinvigorate life in rural regions, which is directly related to the
sustenance of metropolitan cities, to make the rural areas livable for those who choose to
remain there. The case studies are presented as a descriptive summary followed by a
summary of the main implications for understanding of rural-urban linkages.

This paper is an entry point into identifying predominant patterns, understanding the
key driving forces, and identifying areas for further policy development. Instead of offering
formulae, this discussion is intended to point in the general direction of solutions and to
stimulate a broader discussion by integrating the experience of the UNDP with the wider
knowledge on rural-urban linkages emerging among civil society and researches. The
discussion concludes with some frameworks needed to both account for the sources of stress
being placed on rural regions and capture the opportunities reaching from local to global
scales for rural regional and rural-urban development. The paper expects that subsequent
discussions will lead to the development of policies that can be used to guide UNDP country
offices and prepare governments to manage the complex transformations underway in
developing countries.

2. What are Rural-Urban Linkages, Why do we even care about them?

As elaborated in Section
1, more explicit attention given
to rural-urban linkages can make
several important contributions
to development policy. Most
generally, insights about the
nature of and opportunities to
build upon rural-urban linkages
can assist efforts to spread
opportunities for livelihood and
well-being more evenly over
space, create more resilient
regional economies, and thereby
robust and stable national
economies so that town and
countryside progress in a
reciprocal manner. They can
also help to create a higher level
of spatial scanning to mitigate
unintended impacts on the
environment and longer-term
sustainability of development in
both rural and urban areas. In
addition, including rural-urban
linkages in questions of
democratisation and citizen
participation can help to steer
issues of governance toward a
more inclusive and spatially
accessible pattern of
decentralised, participatory
decision-making. Each of these
Text Box 2
What does ‘Cities’, ‘Urban’, and ‘Rural’ mean?
‘Rural’ and ‘urban’ areas are often conceptualised in
opposing terms to each other. Population density and economic
activity are the predominant criteria that have been used to define
‘urban’ versus ‘rural’ areas. However, related criteria such as
administrative functions and infrastructure development are also
used. Rural areas are generally regarded as places of low
population densities with predominantly agricultural economies
whereas “urban” areas are regarded as places with high
population densities distinguished by a service economy. Hence
small towns with even a minimum of ‘urban’ characteristics are
regarded as urban.
The term urban is typically used as a synonym for city,
however the two are not the same, all cities are urban areas but
not all urban areas are cities. “Urban” is a statistically variable
concept. It is defined differently by different governments and
there is significant variability between countries in the official
classification of urban areas. For example, in the Philippines,
urban areas are defined by the national census as all settlements
with a population density of at least 500 persons per square
kilometre, or having the following infrastructure: a parallel or
right angled street pattern, at least six commercial, manufacturing
or similar establishments, and at least three of the following: a
town hall; a church or chapel; a public plaza, park or cemetery; a
market place or a building where trading activities is carried out
at least once a week; and a public building such as a school,
library or hospital. In Benin a population of 10,000 inhabitants;
and at least four of the following infrastructure qualifies a
settlement as urban: a post office, a tax office, a public treasury, a
bank, running water supplies, electricity, health care, and a
secondary school. Characteristics such as infrastructure,
population density and administrative function are often used in
demarcating urban boundaries.
SOURCE: World Resources Institute/UNDP/UNEP/World Bank “World
Resources Report” 1996/97 and Cecilia Tacoli, 1998
dimensions can contribute to more targeted initiatives for poverty alleviation by them into a
real world spatial framework of rural-urban linkages that are already so vital to the welfare of
the rural and urban poor.

‘Rural’ and ‘urban’ areas are but parts of a continuous regional, national, and
international landscape and are interrelated through complex economic, social, political and
environmental forces. Rural development is increasingly taking place within a global urban
matrix. Cities, through revolutionary advances in transportation and communications are
also changing in form and make-up. These new forms are no longer represented by the
image of the metropolis as a single urban node surrounded by the countryside, but rather by a
more decentralised and vastly more complex system of rural-urban linkages. Rather than
considering the rural and urban as a dichotomy, they are more accurately part of emerging
networks of rural-urban linkages within which flows of people, finance, production inputs,
consumer goods, waste materials, technology, information, and decision-making array in
constellations over space (Douglass, 1998).

In this publication the distinction between cities and smaller urban centres is made in
order to be clear about the different areas for policy intervention in the rural urban spatial
network within a region (Text Box 2). The key interest in rural-urban policy formation is to
understand the nature and direction of these flows and to identify the key driving forces in
order to find areas in which current policies can be improved to promote mutually supportive
rural and urban development. The flows between rural and urban areas are important to the
welfare and economy of rural households / regions. They affect the nature and distribution of
benefits and rural regional development. The section below discusses the various types of
flows in detail. The examples given are not intended as a comprehensive treatment of rural-
urban linkages, but rather as illustrative and representative of a number of key areas for
rural-urban policy formulation.

DEMOGRAPHIC FLOWS: MIGRATING FROM RURAL INTO URBAN POVERTY

Migration Trends

Rural to urban migration is a central characteristic of urbanisation in developing

countries. Migration is one of the few avenues open to poor households to increase incomes
and combat increasing impoverishment. The dominant trend is for members of a rural
household to migrate to urban areas to sell their labour and remit their income to their rural
household members. Rural to urban migration is of particular importance in urban growth in
lesser-developed nations in Africa, in Emerging Economies and in other countries that, prior
to the opening up of their economies, restricted internal migration (McGurn, 1997; Sjoberg,
1994; Wong, 1994; Liu, 1991). Migration also has observable gender biases depending upon
the type of jobs available in rural and urban areas and social environment of the rural place in
terms of facilitating or hindering male / female migration. While in many countries men
have traditionally dominated migrant streams, in the newly-industrialising countries with
economies expanding around labour-intensive transnational assembly-line operations,
women comprise the majority of migrants to industrialising metropolitan regions. In either
situation, migration is a highly selective process within households and among rural as well
as urban places of origin and destination.

Demographic flows are increasingly globalised as well. A significant portion of rural

to urban migration and rural to rural migration occurs at the international level as
exemplified by the millions of rural Indonesians migrating to fill rural and urban jobs in
Malaysia (Douglass, 1998). As in the case of internal migration, international migration is
another avenue open to low-income households to capture income opportunities. In
countries that have become major global suppliers of migrant workers, rural regions have, in
effect, been turned into international labour reserves. Yet despite of globalisation and
liberalisation trends, which are allowing for greater movement of goods, resources, and
capital across borders, restrictions on international migration continue to be high and are
increasing in many countries. These are, however, becoming less effective as employers in
host countries face chronic labour shortages in low-wage sectors, international income
disparities grow, and migrant recruiters and support groups are able to circumvent migration
controls. Thus despite the tight legal restrictions on cross-border movement, as of 1996, it
was estimated that about 125 million persons -- approximately two percent of the world’s
population –– were living outside their country of citizenship. This ‘nation of migrants’ is
equivalent in size to the world’s eighth most populous nation, Japan, and is growing faster
than world population growth (Douglass and Roberts, 2000).

Studies consistently reveal that migration is not a one-time, one-way movement of

people, but rather, it is part of a dynamically adaptive strategy that allows poor households to
tap into resources available in both sending and receiving urban and rural areas in order to
cope with conditions of poverty and to try to build better lives for future generations. Many
migrants in the urban areas in Nigeria (Case Study 1, Nigeria), as a survival strategy, are
going into farming to augment their earnings from the urban employment (Gefu, 1992 and
Andrea, 1992). This type of situation has also been experienced in Romania where, due to
price hikes of staple food, many people have found returning to rural areas where they could
cultivate and survive to be more economically beneficial (Case, Study 2, Romania).

CASE STUDY 1
RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES AS A STRATEGY OF POVERTY ALLEVIATION IN NIGERIA

Introduction
The maintenance of rural-urban ties is in the interest of even and balanced development within and
between countries. These ties are better served when they are reciprocal and rather than when they are uni-
directional. The first few decades after political independence witnessed a somewhat closer link between the
rural and the urban in Nigeria. The first generation of educated elites managed to forge some ties with their
places of origin. In recent times, economic difficulties and particularly inadequacy of urban wages created
impediments to the second generation of migrants to sustain the ties with their rural communities. However, the
central finding of the study is that rural-urban linkages persist not merely because of incomplete modernisation
of the entire social formation nor because of the inadequacy of urban formal sector wages, but because the
linkage, being the non-material aspect of culture, is deep-seated in the local value system.
Factors Endangering Rural-Urban Linkages
Nigeria had tremendous difficulties managing the affluence that followed the sudden upsurge in oil
wealth in the post civil war period following the rise in price of oil in 1973. The general salary and wage
increases created their own secondary linkages in that the beneficiaries invested in rural farming, rural housing
and rural cottage industries. The multiplier effects somehow reached the rural areas. This also marked the
period of neglect of agriculture by government as oil became the dominant sector of economy (Olurode, 1991).
The naira became stronger against the dollar.

The improved financial status made Nigeria’s political structure more elaborate. By 1976, more
administrative structures had been put in place through the creation of more local governments and states. This
redistributed population from previous local and state headquarters to the newly created ones. The settlements,
which earlier were rural, had become the new urban centres.

The windfall from oil created an insatiable desire for imported goods -- food, electronics and building
materials. More imports came in and rural areas were opened up. Rural agriculture production became more
unprofitable and rural-urban migration was heightened. There was serious lack of farm workers. Other official
policies also made agriculture to be unprofitable. However, now because of improved transportation network
and increased income, people were able to visit the rural home communities and meet the material needs of
their relatives better than was hitherto the case.

In 1982, the civilian government forced some austerity measures. By December 1983 the country sank
into economic crises. In 1986 the military government took power and adopted the Structural Adjustment
Programme. This cut down public spending especially in the area of social services and workers emoluments.
The naira further devalued. Marketing Boards for cash crops were scrapped and this meant that rural
productions could access the market price for their export crops. A few of the urban-based elite returned to the
rural areas to take advantage of these changes. Some engaged in actual cultivation of export of crops
particularly cocoa whereas others simply engaged in merchandising the good and yet others only provided
finance capital to the middlemen to buy the crops for speculative purposes.

With the Structural Adjustments came the decline in the value of naira against other currencies, which
stimulated an international brain drain. The effects of the brain drain can be said to be contradictory. On one
hand, through massive income remittances that it has made possible, brain drain is making investments in rural
and urban housing, education, employment and social welfare, but, on the other hand, it is simultaneously
depriving rural areas of the much needed professionals in the area of health care and medicine. The
professionals who are left behind prefer employment in urban areas. It was in response to the lucrative aspect
of the brain drain issue that some Nigerian banks now offer special services in handling income remittances by
Nigerians abroad for relatives in Nigeria. New houses in some rural communities or those renovated or
undergoing re-construction may likely belong to these recent international migrants. Income remittances are
used to fund community recreation centres, create employment opportunities in the rural areas, finance the
education of the rural folks and farm and off farm investments as well as in providing basic amenities in the
rural areas and in boosting capacity utilisation in the urban-based industrial sector. Hence, maintenance of
linkages is a major source of local investment.

The instability of the Nigerian State has led to several problems as well. There were sanctions, budget
reductions, and lack of investment in rural improvement projects. Due to sanctions, funds were not sufficient for
oil refineries that badly needed maintenance. Frequent fuel scarcity is creating problems for urban and rural
producers to access the market. Infrastructure facilities have also broken down, thus, weakening the strong ties
between the rural and urban areas. Because of the debts, a sizeable part of the national income is used in debt
servicing. The defence sector also takes a big chunk of the budgetary allocations. Seven percent of the budget
was allocated to defence in comparison to the health sector, which received 3.2 percent. Inter-communal
rivalries chased away urban investment in housing and cottage industries. Policy discontinuity abandoned many
of the projects that were to benefit rural areas.
Persistence of Rural-Urban Linkages and its Features in the case o f Nigeria
In spite of all the profound social change migrants remained committed to their hometown. Some
studies allude to the incomplete process of capitalist transformation, which was underscored by inadequacy of
urban wages. State policies are also said to have supported in maintaining the linkage. In South Africa the state
does not allow most African migrants to take their wives to the city where they worked. They, thus, returned
home either weekly or monthly. Also those who aspired to join political offices were requested to go back to
their root. They were expected to start from the grassroots.

Some authors opine that “home ties must be kept alive in order to claim housing or land rights if the
individual wishes to return (Barnes, 1979).” Although migrants also settle down permanently in urban areas,
studies show that small towns (largely hometowns) are becoming retirement centres for migrants (Peil 1995).
Some wanted to augment their earnings, which make them depend on the farming experience of their relatives.
The rich and the poor equally demonstrated this attachment. Rich often finance the agricultural activities. Even
if less successful in the city, by associating with social development, the migrants command a measure of
respect as their profile and rating is enhanced in the eyes of other rural residents.

The rural-urban linkage cuts across socio-economic and political groups indicating that it is deeper
than material needs. The practice seems to have strong cultural dimension to it. The material aspect of culture is
more open to change than is the non-material aspect. And rural-urban linkage belongs to the non-material aspect
of culture. Even, the farming folks have their houses in the town and look upon their farms, which are in many
cases situated at great distances from the town, merely as places of work and temporary residence.

There are regional differences in rural-urban linkages in Nigeria. The linkages are stronger in the
south-west and the eastern region than in the northern region. Differentials in physical development can be
partly traced to this unequal rural-urban linkage between parts of the north and the south. Community based
organisations are stronger in the south-west and eastern Nigeria than in the North where people exert
tremendous leverage on the machinery of government and government is thereby expected to provide all the
people’s needs. In the south-west and the east women have stronger market and trade associations. They lend
support to local rural development. Overall, more males than females are involved in the linkage, because more
males are exposed to western education and also there are several barriers placed on the path of women as
independent migrants (Olurode 1995). Regions that had stronger rural-urban linkages lower poverty level as
compared to the areas, which had weaker linkages. This was supported by the fact that south-west and most of
the eastern region had fewer poor people than the northern part. The linkage that is common is most part of the
north is the seasonal type. City migrants return to farm or harvest their crops as the season demands.

Deterioration of economic and political situations in Nigeria affected rural-urban linkages. The
linkages become difficult to maintain in the presence of hurdles in the movement of people. Several police
check points and the bribes that are collected may discourage people’s movement The political situations
endangered social existence especially with the rising phenomenon of brain drain. Insecurity and life and
property discourage transfer of resources to the rural areas. Night travel is hazardous in Nigeria. Provision of
services, roads in rural areas can encourage urban dwellers to go home. Roads would also save food wastage
from lack of storage and preservation facilities in the rural areas.

Though there are evident threats in Nigeria to rural-urban linkages, what with the deteriorating
conditions of the road network and the prohibitive costs of motor vehicles spare parts, the linkages persist and
had weathered hard storm. The international financial institution, however, constitute an obstacle to these
linkages. The separation of the rural from the urban is only in a physical sense and an event only in the mind of
planners and scholars. For most people, it is just one continuous inseparable social existence. Migration is not
an end in itself, but merely a means and indeed an ordeal that is necessary for the attainment of values
associated with the hometown. The quotation “Whatever you do, you must touch the base (Ifionu, 1991)”
represents the view of many migrants to the city in Nigeria who have concern for their home towns.

REFERENCE:
Adepoju, A. (1978) ‘Migration and Rural Development in Tropical Africa, African Urban Studies No. 2, fall.
Aina. T. A. (1995) ‘Internal Non-Metropolitan Migration and the Development Process in Africa,’ Jonathan
Banker and trade Akin Aina (eds.). The Migration Experience in Africa (Nordiska Aficainstituet).
Andrea, G (1992) ‘Urban Workers as Famresw:Agro-lins of Nigerian Textiel Wrokers in the crisis of ht e1980’s
Jonathon Baker and P.Ove Pedersen (eds.) ‘The Rural-Urban Interface in Africa (Seminar Proceedings NO. 27,
The Scandinavian institute o f Africa Studies).
Aronson D.R. (1978) The City is Our Farm (Cambridge, Schenkman Publishing Co.) Barnes, S.T. (1979).
Barned, M. (1976)’ Migration and Land acquisition: the new landlords of Lagos (Mimeo).
Fadipe, N.A. (1970) The Sociology of theYoruba (Ibandan University Press).
Gefu, J.O. (1992)’Part-Time Farming as an Urban Survival Strategy: a Nigerian Case Study,’ Joanthan Baker
and P.Ove Pedersen (eds.) The Rural-Urabn Interface in Africa (Seminal Proceeding No. 27, The Scandinavian
Institute of African Studies).
Olurode, Lai (1991) ‘From Cocoa to Petroleum: Constraints on th eTransformation of Pre-Capitalist Relations:
S. Tomori (ed) Oil and Gas Sector in the Nigerian Economy (Lagos: University of Lagos Press).
Olurode, Lai (1995) ‘Women in Rural-Urban Migration, Iwo, Nigeria, Jonathan Baker and Trade Akin Aina
(eds.) The Dynamics of Non-Metropolitan Migration and linkage in Africa (Uppsala Nordiska Afrikainstituet).
Peil,M (1995) ‘The small town as a Retirement Centre,’ Jonathan Baker and Trade Akin Aina (eds.) The
Migration Experience in Africa (Uppsala, Nordika Afrikaninstitutuet).
Trager, L. (1998) ‘Rural Urban linkages: The role of small Urban centres in Nigeria’ African Studies Review,
Vol.31, No. 3.
Trager L. (1995) “women Migrants and Rural Urban linkages in South Western Nigeria’ Jonathan Baker and
Tade Akin Aina (eds.) The Migration Experience in Africa (Uppsala Nordiska Afrikainstituet).

SOURCE:
Adapted from: Olurode, Lai. 1998 ‘Rural-Urban Linakges as a Strategy of Poverty Alleviation in Nigeria.
Paper presented at the International Workshop on Rural-Urban Linkages, Curitiba, Brazil, 10-13 March 1998.

LESSONS LEARNED

The study shows that despite the ups and downs in the economy of Nigeria, migrants from rural origins
remain in touch to their rural roots, which are instrumental in maintaining rural-urban linkages. There is
something other than the material aspect of culture to be considered in developing the linkages. The study
suggests that policies need to consider that rural and urban areas are not two separate entities, but rather they are
linked with each other and are hence, affected by each other’s policies.

With foreign items in the market, local producers are at disadvantage. Imported products make
agriculture productivity unprofitable. With this job opportunities within the rural region go away. As rural
migration heightens, shortages of rural farm workers are experienced. Rural-urban linkages improve as more
networks of roads are created and people visit their homes and fulfil the material needs of their relatives. Often
times government policies related to migration support the maintenance of linkages. For example, in Nigeria
the Africans in most cases were not allowed to take their wives to the city where they worked. This prevented
the migrants from permanently settling in urban centres. Also those who aspired to join political offices were
requested to go back to their roots and start from there.

Migration to cities does not bring to an end the link with the home; rather it helps in managing the life
in the settlement of origin. Migrant remittances are a source of investment in rural areas of developing
countries. Migration takes place at the international level as well. Remittances from the national and
international migrants support social services, agricultural and industrial activities in rural regions. Providing
safe and secure environment for traveling of migrants and transfer and investment of money is vital to retaining
the benefits accruing through migrant remittances.

Rural-urban linkages are affected by economic situation and budget cutbacks. Rural funds are
withdrawn and projects underway come to a halt due to economic crises. But it has also been observed that
inflation following the economic hardships in urban areas sometimes helps in retaining linkages with the rural
areas as urbanites augment their urban income through cultivation in their rural villages, thus bringing them in
further contact with their rural kith and kin. This implies that rural migration is circular as the inhabitants of a
region follow the opportunities wherever they exist. The division between the rural and urban regions does not
exist in the minds of migrants; hence policies implemented in one region do affect the life chances of people in
the other region.

Linkages vary by region and gender. Where women have strong market and trade associations,
community organisations are also strong. There is more physical development and less poverty as well. Lack
of exposure to education and barriers placed in the path of women as independent migrants result in more men
being directly involved in rural-urban linkages. In order for the capacity of all individuals in the society to be
utilised, policies should facilitate the role of women in bringing about change in home regions and over space.

CASE STUDY 2
RURAL-URBAN MIGRATION: REVERSING TREND IN ROMANIA

The rural-urban relationship in the Romanian economy, as it shifts from barter to cash, is experiencing
a reverse trend in rural-urban migration owing to a steady decline in the real urban wages and a rapid rise in the
price of staple foods. Government policies, as a reaction to the pre and post transition periods, varied across the
spectrum from limiting rural-urban migration to effectively encouraging urban-rural migration. In the former
period there was restriction on mobility to limit migration within and between the eight regions of the country.
The government regulated the national labour market and secured a permanent job for individuals through
worker identification cards identifying the person’s place of residence with the place of employment. The
immediate post transition period was marked by restructuring programmes that emphasized reforms in
microeconomic and macroeconomic policies and institutions of the economy to enhance the efficiency of
resource use. This, however, led to a reverse trend of urban influx from the rural regions, as the real national
average wage declined and food prices soared.

Conventional microeconomic tools---the Slutsky income compensation notion and the Laspeyres price
index approximation -- are used to illustrate price fluctuation and depict the pattern of migration. The analysis
is divided between pre-transition period or base period (1989) and post-transition period (1999). Two variables,
diet and income are considered to estimate the change in the population food consumption pattern / inflation.
The two major components of the Romanian diet, namely bread and potatoes, are selected as proxies. Since the
wage is the main source of income and wage earners are the dominant category within the Romanian labour
force, the average nominal wage is selected as the budget constraint for consumption.

The Laspeyres price index approximation estimates that the national average income must rise by
1583.35 percent (proportional to inflation) during the post-transition period if wage earners were to consume the
same quantity of staple food they consumed prior to the transition. Hence if base income were 3000 lei then the
increase would mean 4,749,999.9 lei. However, the base period income of 3000 lei increased by 212.2 times to
636,821.4 lei (approximately equivalent to US $35) and fell short by 4,113,178.5 lei (approximately equivalent
to US $ 228) each month. People in the post transition period had monthly deficit seven times of their monthly
income. Consequently, leaving urban cash economy for a rural barter economy where growing their own staple
food became a more attractive option.

SOURCE:
Adapted from: Pirzadeh, Ali, 1999. “Rural-Urban Migration: Reversing Trend in Romania ”

LESSONS LEARNED

The study implies that people make use of rural-urban differentials in opportunities to sustain their life
irrespective of where they live and where the opportunities exist. Before the economic transition period the
government restricted migration within and between the eight regions of the country. Later the people in urban
areas by choice returned to rural areas so that they could cultivate land and produce their staple food, as
inflation and high price of staple food in the urban areas made it difficult to meet the two ends. Such
experiences are similar to those of the Asian economic crisis beginning in 1997 when millions of low-wage
workers in cities who were suddenly without employment tried to return to the countryside to live with relatives
and friends who could raise crops and otherwise tide them over economically (Douglass, 2000c). Both the
Romanian and Asian crisis experience reveal how rural areas are often called upon to buffer the impacts of
urban economic downturns and thus play a vital role in national economic resilience.

While the patterns of migration vary in different regions and countries according to
development experiences, it is widely recognised among NGOs, the research community, and
leading development organisations that migration is a pervasive and dynamic process of
poverty management and alleviation. Migrant remittances to rural households play an
important and often under-appreciated role in alleviating rural poverty. Remittances are
often used at the household level to pay for health care for the elderly, school fees, taxes, to
purchase input for farming and to purchase consumer items. While in some instances
remittances may be channelled only into household use, in some countries, especially in
Africa, remittances by urban-based migrants are invested directly into the development of
rural farming enterprises and directly promote rural economic development (Case Study 1,
Nigeria). The migrants also make investment in social welfare, education and housing in the
rural areas and at times out of gaining social respect.

Similarly, international remittances are a crucial and often under-appreciated source

of capital flows from developed to developing countries. For example, workers’ remittances
from abroad to India in 1996 was U.S. $9,326 million, this was approximately three times the
amount of Foreign Direct Investment in that country for the same period (U.S.$ 3,264
million), and about 2.5 times Portfolio and other flows which totalled U.S.$3,817 million
(UNDP, 1999). Policy makers need to be aware that the massive amounts of transfers of
income from urbanised to rural regions is a significant factor in poverty alleviation and be on
the alert for policies that facilitate this process and for those policies that increase the
hardships faced by migrants.

At the same, it must be stressed that rural areas play a vital role in supporting
migrants moving to cities and abroad. Cultural continuity, psychological support and filial
affection transcend rural-urban distances to give stability and comfort to migrants. Rural
villages and towns are also called upon to take care of and educate children of migrants, to
accept migrants back home and take care of them when urban endeavours are not faring well,
and even to provide money and other resources to migrants when they start out for the city.
In other words, both, neither the rural nor the urban alone suffice to sustain the incomes and
welfare of the poor. Rather, it is the rural-urban linkages and choices made among those
linkages that do so.

Migration and Gender

The causes, nature and outcomes of urbanisation are found to be highly gendered.
Gender-selective migration reflects a range of social and economic imperatives and
constraints surrounding men’s and women’s activities, power, and status in rural
communities. It also induces new patterns of behaviour, access to resources and social
organisation (UNDP, 1996b). Rural-urban migration in Latin America and South East Asia
has tended to be female dominated. However, in most of sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa,
South Asia and the Middle East, men have traditionally comprised a larger part of the
migrant stream (UNDP, 1996b). The greater possibility to earn an income in urban areas is
also one factor that contributes to gendered migration. Hence migration tends to be male
dominated in Africa where women’s chances of finding a job in urban areas are considerably
lower than livelihood possibilities in rural areas, whereas in Latin America and South East
Asia women have been able to access low paying jobs following the massive influx of
foreign investment in low-wage assembly operations in light industry that has led national
economic growth over the past few decades (UNDP, 1996b). Considering that female
migration is highest in the regions that have experienced higher rates of urban-industrial
growth – Asia and South America -- migrant women form a significant constituent of the
urban poor.

With income being the important motive for migration, it is recognised that women
may not move to urban areas under their own volition, but at the behest or through pressure
from their rural families (UNDP1996b). This is especially the case with young unmarried
women. In Southeast Asia for example, single teen and adult daughters are pressured to
repay their parents for raising them. In some countries, such as Taiwan and the Philippines,
parents prefer young daughters to migrate as their sense of duty and piety make them more
likely to send money back home than sons. Women are also more likely to migrate because
they feel a sense of responsibility for their family and in some instances the degrees of
freedom associated with urban life may be an appealing alternative to constricted rural lives.
Gender may also influence the nature of the location of economic activities, as many
multinational factories tend to be attracted to peri-urban and even more distant rural areas
where they are able to capitalise on the low wage costs involved in hiring impoverished
young women (UNDP, 1996b).

Whatever the case in different places or the different reasons for migration, gender
plays an important role in mobility patterns and the nature of rural and urban relationships.
The gender dimension of rural and urban migration is thus significant in devising policies for
poverty alleviation. For example, in regions where migration is female led, urban areas tend
to have settlements and worker housing that are largely composed of young women, and
there is also a high incidence of female-led households among the urban poor. In contrast, in
areas where migration tends to be male-dominant, such as in Africa, the rural female-headed
households tends to constitute a greater portion of the rural poor. Policy makers need to be
aware of this gender rural-urban segregation when devising policies for both rural and urban
poverty alleviation.

Core Driving Forces of Migration

A thorough understanding of migrants and the factors that govern their decisions to
migrate is needed. Empirical studies and historical trends indicate that migration has been
primarily driven by differences in expected income over space, which in the extreme is
manifested in the inability of households to earn - incomes to sustain their existence. -
Several factors contribute to both income inequalities over space and the fall below levels of
subsistence in particular regions:

1. Structural reordering of economies

2. Environmental degradation of rural resources
3. Conflict and instability

1. Structural Economic Change and Supporting Economic Policies

Economic policies such as free market strategies, trade liberalisation, and the degree
of government intervention in the economy greatly influence what will be produced and
consumed and in turn profoundly affect rural-urban migration. They affect the structure of
rural production and the availability of jobs to both the rural and urban poor. Migrants are
rational decision-makers that respond to income opportunities and resource availability,
whether dictated by market forces or government policy interventions (Tacoli, 1998). The
empirical basis for this is well established thorough research on the effects of
macroeconomic policies such as Import Substitution and, more recently, studies on Structural
Adjustment and migration in developing countries (Tacoli, 1998). As a large number of
developing countries are undergoing Structural Adjustment, the effects of these policies on
rural and urban migration need to be well understood in order to devise policy options to
support poverty alleviation during structural alignment.

While Structural Adjustment policies to promote export agriculture and remove

government subsidies have had positive impacts on the balance of trade of many countries,
they have had unforeseen adverse outcomes on small-scale rural farmers. For instance, in the
absence of government subsidies and other support small-scale farmers found it difficult to
overcome high transportation costs to market their goods. Unlike large-scale farmers, they
were unable to buy and sell in bulk to overcome these costs. They also could not afford to
hold on to their produce and sell only at the most favorable market prices. They were more
vulnerable to price squeeze as the cost of inputs and consumer goods rose much faster than
the prices they fetched for primary commodities. These factors pushed those small-farming
households already at the margin below the poverty line, deepened social differentiation in
many rural regions, and led to greater landlessness and land concentration as productive
large farms expanded (Emmerji 1996). Rural out-migration therefore was not quelled by the
macroeconomic policy designed at a time when planners were deeply concerned about
promoting balanced rural and urban development.

The significance of economic policy on migration is further illustrated by the

diversification of rural-urban migratory patterns in Africa. Decreased government
involvement in the market and the removal of subsidies for basic goods profoundly affects
the welfare of the urban poor and has triggered a diversification in migration patterns (Cornia
et. al. 1987; Jamal and Weeks 1988; Redcliff 1995). Retrenchment of public service jobs,
lower real income levels, and the rising cost of living in cities has resulted in considerable
migration out of large urban centers (Potts 1995; Tacoli 1998). For example, in Tanzania
(Text Box 3), smaller towns where migrants could grow their own food were the major
attractions for migrants leaving urban areas in the 1980s (Baker, 1995). Romania (Case
Study 2), as its economy shifts from barter to cash, is experiencing a reverse trend in rural-
urban migration owing to a steady decline in the real wages and a rapid rise in the prices of
staple food. Moving to rural areas where the migrants are able to cultivate land and produce
staple food has become a more attractive option.

Empirical evidence shows that movements were not necessarily intended to be

permanent. Circular and seasonal migration also increased as migrants try to capture the
economic benefits of both rural and urban areas (Hugo, 1996). The African experience
illustrates that macroeconomic policy is a powerful driver of human mobility and fiscal
polices need to provide a supportive context for promoting sustainable human settlements.
Policy makers need to be aware of causative role of restructuring in driving rural to urban
migration. This is of particular relevance to countries in transition where the macroeconomic
restructuring of economies is beginning to unleash a wave of rural to urban migration and
international migration. The fall of the naira against dollar and implementation of Structural
Adjustment Programme in 1986 in Nigeria (Case Study 1, Nigeria) was followed by brain
drain. The phenomenon is depriving rural people of the services of the professionals in the
area of health care and medicine. Those professionals in those areas prefer employment in
the urban areas where opportunities abound for extra income earnings.

The power of macroeconomic policies in controlling the pattern of rural and urban
migration is further illustrated by the impact of free trade zones and private capital
investment on migration in selected centres in the developing world. For example,
government efforts to control the growth of Bangkok’s Extended Metropolitan Region have
met with limited success. Instead it has been transnational firms allied with local industries
who have exerted greater control over the shape and character of urbanisation in Thailand
(Parnwell and Wongsuphasawat, 1997). The empirical evidence strongly indicates that both
macroeconomic policies and smaller direct capital investments trump national spatial
development polices in controlling migration patterns. This has tremendous implications for
devising policies for poverty alleviation in human settlements.

TEXT BOX 3
REGIONAL PLANNING AND MACROECONOMIC POLICIES

Empirical studies and historical trends in migration indicate that Structural Adjustment, as it’s
predecessor industrial growth-led macroeconomic policy, is a powerful driver of migration (Tacoli, 1998).
Not only do the conditions created in rural areas favour rural out-migration, decreased government
involvement in the market and the removal of subsidies for basic goods also profoundly affects the welfare
of the urban poor and trigger a diversification in migration patterns (Cornia et. al., 1987; Jamal and Weeks,
1988; Redcliff, 1995). Retrenchment from public service jobs, lower real income levels, and the rising cost
of living in cities, have resulted in considerable migration out of large urban centres (Potts, 1995; Tacoli,
1998). For example, in Tanzania, smaller towns where migrants could grow their own food were the major
attractions for migrants leaving urban areas in the 1980s (Baker 1995). Empirical evidence shows that
movements were not necessarily intended to be permanent. Circular and seasonal migration also increased as
migrants tried to capture the economic benefits of both rural and urban areas (Hugo 1996).

SOURCE: Cecilia Tacoli, 1998

 2. Lack of Access to Environmental Resources

It is increasingly being recognised that a significant driving force behind rural to

urban migration is the lack of access by poor households to environmental resources.
Empirical studies clearly demonstrate that there is a strong economic relationship between
direct access to environmental resources and the alleviation of poverty between rural and
urban areas. Poor households depend directly on environmental resources to meet their
minimum needs – for example, by harvesting forest material for shelter or gathering fruits
and nuts from forests – in addition to the money earned through cash crop production and
off-farm employment. Therefore, to the rural household income is part of a portfolio of
economic earnings each of which contributes only in part to the total household ‘earnings’ –
which are both subsistence and income. In fact, environmental resources make a significant
contribution to average rural well being. It has been estimated that on average direct use of
environmental resources contributes at least 40 percent total rural ‘income’ in Zimbabwe
(Cavendish, 1999). Further, studies indicate that ‘direct environmental income’ is strongly
and significantly equalising, bringing about roughly 30 percent reduction in measured
inequality in rural communities. So access to commons resources has a substantial impact on
poverty and inequality even if they do not alleviate the poverty trap (Cavendish, 1999).

Government policies that restrict access to resources such as ‘government forests,’ the
over development and degradation of rural resources, conservation policies which ‘protect’
rural environmental resources by restricting local communities from accessing subsistence
resources, and changes in land tenure associated with certain types of rural development and
conservation investments prevent access to environmental resources and inadvertently create
poverty, which stimulates migration (Maloney,1990-1991; The Ecologist, 1993; Sage, 1996;
Guha, 1997). These factors represent a significant point of entry for policy makers. The role
of direct environmental subsidies need to be appropriately incorporated in rural environment
and development policy in order to ensure that policies do not result in unintended adverse
outcomes and that all measures are taken to avert the growth of ‘subsistence’ poverty in rural
areas.

The link between urban environmental problems associated with slum development
and rural environmental problems that result from resource degradation is often under-
appreciated. There is a tendency to view the flow of people from rural to urban centers as a
direct result of a lack of development in rural areas still pervades popular views of rural-
urban linkages today. Indeed, the lack of economic opportunities in rural areas is a major
factor in rural out-migration. However, the lack of economic opportunities does not only
result from the lack of development, it also results from a lack of environmental resources or
access to these resources, even in the presence of development (Dove, 1993; Wood, 1995).
Migration studies have tended to focus on the role of government development schemes,
ethnic conflicts, and income inequity as ‘push’ factors’ in rural to urban migration.
However, the role of gradual environmental change in rural areas in connection to these
factors is relatively under represented (Brown, 1991, Suhrke, 1992). Several empirical
studies suggest that the impacts of environmentally influenced migration, or “Eco-
migration”, on national and regional economies are grossly underestimated (e.g. Homer-
Dixon, 1994; Myers and Kent, 1995).
 Eco-migration is broad and pervasive phenomena in which eco-migrants move
voluntarily, to new areas when the resources they depend on are destroyed or degraded.
Even though they arrive into poor environmental conditions, the prospects in rural areas are
grimmer where widespread environmental decline such as soil degradation, depletion of
aquifers, flooded farmland, and desertification damage the resource base (Wood, 1995).
Eco-migrants have played a significant and historical role in the growth of Third World cities
as migrants are pulled into urban areas by perceived greater economic opportunities (Wood,
1995).
Eco-migration is a complex process that can only be understood when it is placed in
the context of social, economic, cultural, and political forces operating between the places of
origins and destinations of migrants. Suffice to say that rural to urban migration does not
only link urban environmental problems to the lack of rural development, it also links it to
rural environmental problems.

3. Conflict and Instability

The increasing globalisation of the development process means that socio-economic

and political change even in the remotest regions of the world has repercussions elsewhere.
For example, the instability of the state may make it difficult for it to guarantee the
conditions for social reproduction and material production as well. This may induce famine
and migration outside regional and state boundaries. Conflict and instability spur migratory
patterns that do not disappear in post-conflict situations. The destruction of natural resources
and property make returning home difficult and impoverishes people that remain there as
conflict often destroys rural resources and discourage investments in communities (Case
Study 1, Nigeria). The military rule in Nigeria cultivated inter-community rivalries and
clashes, which scared offthe urban-based elites from investing in housing and cottage
industries in the rural area, is a case in point.

The impediments to move around unmolested also affect migration and rural-urban
linkages. Police hindrances in the form of checkpoints and the bribes that are collected may
discourage migrants coming back to their villages and rural towns. Night travel is hazardous
in Nigeria and many other countries. As a consequence, people who want to visit their
hometowns are scared to bring their goods and money with them. The deterioration of
political and economic situations endangers social existence, and the invisible investments
coming from a variety of sources are discouraged and siphoned off before reaching rural
areas as much needed resources to lessen rural poverty.

Migration trends to bring into limelight the fact that policies that view rural and urban
areas with spatially immobile populations fall short of their expectations of lowering poverty
in rural areas and combating mushrooming problems in urban areas. The poor work across
the rural-urban and even the international border divide to make their ends meet and bring
some degree of vitality and vigour to their lives. Focusing on root causes of migration and
tracing the dominant patterns will help determine the policy pressure points to reduce the
causes and not just effects of poverty.
 DEPLETION OF RESOURCES: THE FLOW OF RAW MATERIALS AND GOODS

Raw materials derived from the extraction of natural resources in rural areas tend to
flow towards urban centres where industrial transformation and manufacturing are based. In
situations of rapid urbanisation, creating the built environment of cities also draws enormous
amounts of natural resources into urban centres. Policy makers have promoted rural
development with the expectation that linkages to urban centres and access to urban markets
would promote the purchase of key inputs for rural agriculture from adjacent urban areas,
and that this would spur the productivity in rural areas and increase rural incomes, which
could then be used to purchase goods that are manufactured in urban areas (Case Study 3,
Eastern and Southern Africa). However, the flow of goods from urban to rural areas, which
was expected by development planners to close the virtuous cycle of development, is not
meeting expectations. Instead, rural resources are often depleted in the process of urban-
industrial expansion, which not only undermines the ecological basis for rural development,
but also depletes the resource base for rural production and fails to generate local economic
linkages or multipliers beyond the extractive process. In such situations, rural and urban
regions in developing countries do not appear to be building on the synergies that have been
expected of them. The very reasons for which rural migration occurs -- opportunities to
improve life conditions -- could be localised within the rural regions by linking rural towns
and cities with rural production in a more positive way.

While resources are depleted, in many countries, the marketing of rural production of
foodstuffs and other commodities to surrounding urban areas appears hampered by a number
of structural and institutional difficulties (Evans, 1997). Rather than supporting rural
markets, the large cities that are the consumer centres of the country are often found to be
importing basic goods – including fresh and packaged food -- from abroad. As perhaps an
extreme example, a UNDP study in Kathmandu found that rather than buying essential
foodstuff from the surrounding areas, most of the tourist-based industries were importing 75
percent of these items from abroad (UNDP, 1998c, Case Study 4, Nepal).

Even where domestic food supplies are consumed in cities, only a few peri-
metropolitan and well-connected rural regions tend to be favoured, with most rural areas
being unable to participate in growing urban middle-class demands for higher value-added
food products due to poor collection, storage and transportation services as well as to
institutional factors such as lack of credit to consistently produce at sufficient scales needed
to supply urban markets or the practices of middlemen and chain store management that
discriminate against or ignore the potential of smaller, more distant producers. Where
access to urban markets is controlled by a few buyers, spatial monopolies and monopsonies
over rural producers dampen economic returns to farmers and inhibit further processing of
resources and crops with the region (Douglass, 1998)

This high incidence of urban populations opting for imported goods rather than
domestically produced rural products is facilitated by the repatriation of cash and goods by
migrants to their rural homelands. There is also increased flow of information on modern
lifestyles by the movement of people between these areas and the greater reach of
telecommunications. For example, remittances from workers in the United States to Latin
America which amounted to an estimated $4 billion dollars in 1990, were not only used to
meet essential income for families, but were utilised primarily to purchase American exports
(TTRPI, 1997). It was estimated, for instance, that without remittances, the purchase of
American products in El Salvador would drop drastically (TTRPI, 1997).

This trend of importing goods rather than domestically producing them also exists
because rural areas are over specialised in one or two primary exports and the basic sector
has little or no forward and backward linkages (For details, please see pg. 10, 25, 26, and 33).
Even minor swings in international commodity prices have a volatile impact on the local
economy. Dependence on a narrow resource base leads to over-exploitation and
environmental degradation. Low incomes and poverty persists. In Indonesia, even where an
enormously profitable mining or other extractive activities, such as forestry, exists, it does
not articulate in a positive way with the rural regions in which they are operating. These
may be composed of small-scale societies that are unwilling or unable to fill the new labour
demands. The extractive industries remain largely enclave activities more linked to
international rather than local markets (Douglass, 1998).

Since rural can no longer be equated with agriculture alone, but are instead part of
more encompassing industrial processes that are transforming nature into commodities and
allied services, scanning for local opportunities to diversify rural economies within and
beyond agriculture
should be the overall
strategy. For example TEXT BOX 4
(Text Box 4), a village CREATING MARKET NICHE
near Yogyakarta city in
Indonesia has created a A village near Yogyakarta, Indonesia, specialises in pottery. The
owner of one of the principal shops in 1970s because of the lack of a local
market niche in pottery. market for his wares in the region used to load his pottery on his bicycle,
The village has no had it put on a truck and transported to big cities such as Surabaya where
special clay resources he could cycle to sell his products. In the 1980s he decided to stop selling
that distinguish it from and open a shop in his village. He is proud that he now exports not only to
others in the region, but it other destinations in Indonesia, but even to cities in Australia. Other
pottery shops have prospered in the village as well, which is now well
seems that the known as a pottery village.
entrepreneurial efforts of
village residents SOURCE: Mike Douglass, 1998
combined with the
growing prosperity of urban residents in the education-driven economy of Yogyakarta have
benefited from improvements in connectivity with cities in Central Java. Such cases seem to
be the exception rather than the rule. A study by the UNCRD Africa office shows, for
example, that the economies of regional urban centres in Eastern and South Africa are largely
based on agriculture, administration and the provision of service and that production and
manufacturing activities are limited in scale and scope (Case Study 3, Eastern and Southern
Africa)

Rural-urban linkages are no longer limited by national boundaries. Rather, they

have increasingly taken on global proportions with urban-based interests appropriating rural
and natural resources from around the world. Flows of resources from rural areas will
continue unless the policy makers become aware that rural development at the sub-national
level is, in reality, part of the global circulation of resources, which require vastly improved
management toward conservation and renewal rather than constant, environmentally ruinous
depletion. . At the same time, strengthening rural-urban linkages without a capacity of rural
areas to capture the upstream (providing inputs) and downstream (processing and marketing)
activities associated with natural resource extraction and flows will only perpetuate low rural
incomes.

Unless rural regions are able to establish their own local networks of prudent resource
uses linked to more remunerative economic activities, they will be relegated to the lowest
value added, lowest wage link along the commodity chain. For example (Text Box 5), the
rural regions off Java have very low levels of linkages between village level production and
the rest of the economy
(Douglass, 1998). TEXT BOX 5
ABSENCE OF DOWNSTREAM LINKAGES AND
RESULTING LOW VALUE PRODUCTION
Just more exploitation
of natural resources or more Lombok, an island in East Indonesia has tobacco as the
specialised cash crop widely grown cash crop. Almost none of the tobacco is dried or
production does not provide for processed either at the village level or even on Lombok, but it is
instead shipped directly to Surabaya (Java) for processing and further
either long-term economic
marketing. As such very little of the total value added of tobacco is
viability nor the alleviation of captured on Lombok, leaving the potential for high levels of
poverty in rural regions. The reinvestment and economic diversification limited. Farmers say they
fate of rural regions would double their income from tobacco if they were allowed to dry
everywhere will greatly depend it before selling, but apparent collusion among buyers prevents this.
on their capacities to reverse SOURCE: Mike Douglass, 1998
trends of rapid resource
depletion and inability to
generate more diversified, higher value-added economies from their agricultural and rural
base.

CASE STUDY 3
RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES AND THE ROLE OF SMALL URBAN CENTRES IN EASTERN AND
SOUTHERN AFRICA (ESA): RESEARCH FINDINGS FROM THE UNCRD AFRICA OFFICE

Sub Saharan Africa is predominantly rural and is one of the world’s least urbanised regions, with only
30 percent of its population currently living in urban areas. However, it is experiencing extremely high rates of
urban growth, making it a late comer but fast tracker in urbanisation. Although there are small urban centres as
well, the majority of rural to urban population flows goes to a few large cities whose share of total urban
population ranges from 30 to 50 percent. The majority of rural to urban population flows goes to a few large
cities whose share of total urban population ranges from 30 to 50 percent, though there are many small urban
centres as well. In ESA the agricultural base is variable from subsistence to commercial production. Wealth
generation and overall productivity is generally low, the low levels of income and lack of land tenure are
serious constraints on family well being and development.

Small urban centres have long been thought to play a beneficial function in rural development by
strengthening local linkages between rural and urban areas. They have the potential to support industrial
development, encourage private sector investment, and enhance the quality of services and commercial
activities in rural areas. Development planners had hoped to stimulate balanced rural and urban development
by supporting small urban centres that would support rural development by providing goods and services from
urban markets while acting as a point of sale for agricultural outputs. However, these potentials have not
realised in many countries.

The United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD) Africa office initiated research to
gather empirical information into the type and extent of linkages between urban centres and surrounding rural
hinterlands and the role that small urban centres play in the development of rural areas.

Significant Findings on Small Towns:

In general, the structure of small towns in Southern Africa differs from that of East Africa. The
difference is based partly on the later incidence of independence and the dominance of colonist-owned large
scale business sector. However, there were several highly significant findings that are relevant for policy
making in ESA and in other developing countries as well:
1. Many small towns with efficient services do play a functional role in enhancing agricultural
productivity by acting as providers of urban goods and services, non-farm employment distribution centres for
commodities, and processing of local goods with local or extra local inputs. People tended to go to market
centres closest to their places of residence, provided the markets are not significantly differentiated in terms of
services and good that they provide.

2. The nature and structure of rural agricultural production is the most significant factor that determines
the character of small towns and the role of the town as a provider of goods, services and employment. This, for
example, is well illustrated in areas of nomadic pastoralism where small urban centres are dependent on their
role as delivery of small consumer items like sugar, salt, soap, and textile and as administration centres for tax
collection and security maintenance. These centres tend to be weak and small in size with very poor linkages
with rural hinterlands. The influence of the rural production structure on the development of small towns is a
significant finding. Past policy approaches have expected to influence the nature of rural agriculture production
by promoting certain predetermined functions in towns. One of the reasons these approaches have met with
limited success is that the nature of agriculture production in rural areas has a greater influence on the nature of
the small towns than the towns have on agriculture.

3. Small urban centres in general have very weak financial base and cannot support their own physical,
economic and social development. Structural Adjustment programmes are further eroding small urban centres.
Adjustment has had a positive impact on the rural economy in terms of deregulation and trade liberalisation, but
it has had a profound immediate impacts of falling real income, rising prices and declining services in urban
centres. Small urban centres have received a greater brunt of these impacts, because the provision of public
funds declines first in the small urban centres where the effects of such steps are assumed to be more limited in
scope than would be the case in large urban centres.

The Functional Structure of Regional Urban Centres:

The economies of regional urban centres are largely based on agriculture, administration and the
provision of service. Production and manufacturing activities are limited in scope and scale, and local
enterprises tend to be under-financed and lacking access to credits. Employment and income generating
activities tend to be low, and infrastructure is weak and poorly serviced. Declining expenditure on essential
services and basic infrastructure under Structural Adjustment and the poor capacity of administrators to manage
the problems worsens this situation.

Type and Extent of Regional Rural-Urban Linkages:

There is a clear interdependency between the development of small urban centres and the economic
development in the rural hinterland. However, the economic linkages between regional and small urban centres
and rural areas appear to be poorly developed. Several key overarching factors affect rural and urban linkages:
1. The conventional dominance of sectoral planning and financing emphasises the relationship
between rural areas and the capital cities rather than local and inter-sectoral linkages between regional
urban centres, small towns and their intermediate hinterland.
2. The nature of rural production also profoundly impacts rural and urban linkages. Small holder
agriculture supports the growth of small urban centres whereas large farms do not. In the case of large-
scale, labour intensive farms, small urban centres may grow if the agricultural labour force concentrates in
the centre as in, for example, Naivasha town in Kenya. However policies which favour large-scale
enterprises, monopolisation and concentration of industry and services in large towns are detrimental to
small towns development and limit the positive roles they play in rural and urban linkages.

3. The growth and decline in small urban centres usually affect the performance of the rural economy
in the hinterland and the strength of rural and urban linkages. For example, Molo town in Kenya developed
positively before 1992 as a result of agricultural development in the hinterland. However, the breakdown
of the urban processing industry in the town during the 1992 ethnic clashes has had strong negative
repercussions on agriculture productivity in the hinterland.

SOURCE:
Adapted from: Ngau, Peter. 1998. “Policy framework for Strengthening Rural-Urban Linkages in Eastern and
Southern Africa.” Paper presented at The International Workshop on Rural-Urban Linkages. Curitiba, Brazil,
10-13 March 1998.

LESSONS LEARNED

The case of Eastern and Southern Africa illustrates that rural people depend upon small towns in the
rural regions for agricultural productivity, rural goods and services, distribution centres for commodities, and
processing of local goods. Among the most important findings is that urban growth in rural regions depends on
both the productivity and the organizational basis – small versus large producers -- of rural production. Towns
in regions of high rural productivity and many small-scale producers seem to experience better growth and
economic health prospects than do towns in regions where large producers dominate or agricultural productivity
is low. The reasons for these differences are straightforward: the prosperity of rural towns depends on a wide
sharing among the rural population of income generated by agricultural and rural production. Neither low rural
productivity nor a few rich rural consumers can sustain local urban growth.

At the same time, towns are needed to perform many functions that address the needs of the their rural
hinterland. However, policies and practices in town building and servicing tend to neglect the specific needs of
rural producers and households, offering instead standardized functions for all towns Small towns also suffer
from a weak financial base for physical, economic and social development. Without specific industrial linkages
to agriculture, they tend to have limited production and manufacturing activities, which constrain employment
and income generating options. Infrastructure is inadequate and is poorly maintained. The linkages are further
affected by political instability in rural towns as well as in the countryside. As needed higher order functions
fail to be performed in the town, agricultural productivity in the rural hinterland consequently suffers.

Rural and urban linkages and the development of secondary urban centres are very sensitive to policy
changes. Policies can weaken rural-urban linkages when local and inter-sectoral linkages between regional
urban centres, small towns and their rural hinterland are not supported or are countered by more powerful
macroeconomic and sectoral policies implicitly favoring metropolitan regions. Small holder agriculture
depends on regional networking and help support the growth of rural towns and cities, whereas large farms tend
to link directly to metropolitan centers and port cities without bringing into play local rural towns and cities.
Linkages become more imbalanced in periods of centralising government policies, while they tend to extend
more evenly in periods of more decentralized economic decisionmaking. Even under liberal and decentralized
approaches there are many areas in which policy intervention is needed to ensure that the structure of rural
agriculture supports the growth of small towns. These include support in building administrative capacities,
infrastructure and financial sustainability of small towns; instituting mechanisms for cross-sector and
supportive of rural and urban linkages; and curtailing poverty alleviation by addressing such major issues and
land tenure.
CASE STUDY 4
UNDP AND THE GOVERNMENT OF NEPAL’S RURAL-URBAN PARTNERSHIP PROGRAMME

The Nepal Rural-Urban Partnership Programme (RUPP) has been developed in response to the
growing awareness that rural-urban linkages have yet to be systematically explored and exploited in many
developing countries, including Nepal. In particular, existing aid programmes and past policies for regional and
national development, which have been based on growth pole and growth corridor theories, have been
conceptually very weak at addressing the linkages between the rural and urban economies.
Many donor programmes in Nepal concentrate strictly on rural or urban development problems and existing
rural development schemes have been operating without any significant linkages with municipalities and urban
areas.

The State of Rural-Urban Linkages Policy in Nepal

An assessment of past and current approaches to rural and urban development planning in Nepal found
that the current government and donor approach has adversely affected the capacities of government agencies to
deliver goods and services. In particular, several significant findings were made about the current and past
policies.

The policies encouraged an institutional culture largely associated with a sectoral approach to local
development and this significantly hampers the proper flow of information and co-ordination between all
stakeholders, both rural and urban. Institutions created, largely for rural development, do not address issues
related to urban markets and small market centres. Efforts for co-operation amongst the district, municipal and
VDC level authorities to make maximum economic benefits from strengthening rural-urban linkages are weak.

Information systems so far developed do not adequately provide information on opportunities existing
in the rural sector that the urban sector could exploit, and opportunities in the urban sector for rural sector to
take advantage of. Most efforts made in promoting urban development or market centres have been towards
physical development and are supply-oriented. Hence, despite both rural and urban production systems having
the capabilities to respond effectively and efficiently to the consumption needs existing in each sector, the
hoped for rural-urban synergy has not materialised in Nepal. Instead, Nepal’s urban economies largely perform
the role of transit points deriving only transaction benefits from the flow of rural capital and labour into external
markets. Urban centres in Nepal, especially high tourist areas, import most about 75percent of basic goods,
such as potatoes and fruits, which can be provided by local rural markets. The net result of this type of rural-
urban interaction has been increasing gaps between rich and the poor and between rural people and urban
people.

Features of the Rural-Urban Linkages Programme in Nepal

The Rural-Urban Partnership Programme is intended to address the widening gap between the rich and
the poor by making use of the internal potentials of rural-urban social and economic linkages and increasing
access to resources by integrating social mobilisation into programme elements. It avoids the pitfall of
assuming that increased investment in rural production will by itself lead to the desired rural-urban market
linkage. Instead, it is based on demand assessment in specific urban centres and assessment of the existence of
production in the rural centres. Thus it works by identifying the urban areas to which the rural region is to be
linked.
This UNDP Programme is executed by UNCHS and counts on the support of the international
community. It identifies the existing business, business opportunities, and local capabilities based on the
established database. It disseminates the information to the community members through ‘social mobilisation.’
The community members who are interested and willing to harness such business opportunities are then
mobilised to form group to derive strength from group formation. The group develops into a cohesive
institution, then the programme supports to enable them to undertake the proposed business activities. The
support components included are enterprise management training and skills and technology transfer initiatives.
Training is given in procedures of conducting meetings, writing minutes of the meeting, bookkeeping,
registering groups, and operating bank account. The group is then awarded a ‘maturity certificate’ as a
recognition by the community for them to undertake the proposed business enterprise. Then only the credit
support is provided to the group. In the case of the banana business project the group did not need any of the
support component since they were already skilled and experienced. The RUPP supported the new businesses
based on market opportunities.
The family members also voluntarily pooled their labour. The programme matched the demand for
products with the supply potentially available in order to ensure that:
ƒ Urban market centres do not merely perform functions as commercial transaction centres for the flow
of externally produced goods and service.
ƒ Rural development builds upon and maximally capitalises on meeting urban consumption needs for
rural products.

The establishment of information system and data collection was prerequisite for the implementation
of the programme. The programme established database in all of its 12 partner municipalities and 24 rural
market centres for data collection and information system on existing opportunities and potentials in both the
rural and urban sectors. All stakeholders across, sectors, rural and urban areas, and civil society were identified
and involved. The following measures were carried out to this end:
ƒ Organising skilled labour and disadvantaged groups to link labour skills and intermediary products to
existing manufacturers and / or industrial system.
ƒ Organising micro enterprises into group enter prises, co-operatives, companies and others to arrange
for the markets and marketing of goods, produce / provide goods and services, and increase income
level and raise living standards of the rural and urban poor.
ƒ Enabling municipalities to adopt participatory urban development planning and monitoring process for
strengthening urban governance. And at the same time supporting them to incorporate the Rural-
Urban Linkage programme as an important strategy for municipality urban development.
ƒ Supporting Municipalities for adopting and implementing the rural-urban linkage programme by
themselves when UNDP supports are terminated or phased out.
ƒ Supporting the institutional and managerial capability of the municipalities.
ƒ Supporting the establishment of a market development fund (MDF) within each municipality for the
sustenance of the programme. All the 12 partner municipalities created MDF and the Programme will
operate through this fund. Besides, it provides an institutional base within the municipality to mobilise
resources from different donors, bilateral and multi-lateral agencies to continue the implementation of
Rural-Urban Linkages programme in the country

Municipalities and rural market centres (VDCs) manage and facilitate urban infrastructures and
services required to help the flow and marketing of goods and provided urban services to the rural areas and
vice versa.

Hitkari Banana group: A UNDP project under Nepal’s RUPP

The Hitkari banana group is one example of a project under the Nepal RUPP programme. This
enterprise has been supporting the local banana farmers by supporting the mechanism for buying their products,
and has been serving urban customers. The project works with five persons that previously grew bananas that
were sold at the local bus stop at Ghansikuwa on an individual basis. The RUPP program was introduced
through a project community-mobilizer that convinced the individual traders about the benefits and strength of
group formation and group work. They were trained in procedures of marketing. After training, the individual
traders were motivated to work in groups to market bananas between rural and urban markets. They were also
informed about the assistance package of RUPP and accordingly applied for assistance.

The group consists of five members from the same locality where it is established. They buy bananas
from the local communities like Ranigaun, Barahkhola, and adjacent villages, process the bananas, and sell to
retailers and even export to Pokhara and Dumre. Three members of the group also sell at the bus stop at Prithvi
highway as retailers. The scheme is partly financed by credit; the rest of the funding comes from the group
members in addition to cash in kind, labour contribution from their families.

The enterprise is regarded as a model enterprise in the locality. The scheme has a profit margin of 25
percent. In terms of spill over effects, 40 banana growers, the locality and approximately 20 people from the
adjacent VDC derive income from the project. The monthly income of the group has increased by
approximately 50 percent and members of the group are now able to improve their economic base as they can
pay off household loans and biogas charges.

While the enterprise has been largely successful, there are still a few problems in this banana trading
that have to be worked out. The main problem is the product itself, which experiences variable demand and is
prone to disease. The other major problem is related to transportation between rural and urban areas. The
future challenge is for the group to diversify the portfolio of trade and reduce its dependency on bananas and to
find ways to overcome high cost of transportation owning to poorly developed networks. They plan to expand
by obtaining their own processing space and to use credits from commercial banks to become the major fruits
and banana traders in the areas.

SOURCE:
Nepal Rural-Urban Partnership Programme (RUPP). UNDP, UNCHS, NPC. NEP/96/003. August 1999.

LESSONS LEARNED

When rural development schemes are not linked with municipalities and urban areas and are promoted
in isolation of rural-urban linkages, results are typically poor or even negative in terms of costs and benefits.
Sectoral approaches to local development do not facilitate the flow of information and coordination of
stakeholders across rural and urban space. Positive rural-urban linkages can be developed through the
collaboration of civil society and government.

The sectoral approach of development planning can be overcome by identifying and involving all
actors in rural and urban sectors and reforming incompatible institutional arrangements by linking labour skills
with manufacturing, providing urban facilities and services, and setting up micro-economic enterprises / co-
operatives explicitly designed to link rural producers with urban markets and services.

Weak linkages have the following features: There is a weak information system, issues and
opportunities across the rural-urban divide remain partially detected, policies are inclined more toward physical
development and are supply oriented to promote urban development or market centres. The policies also lack
attention toward managerial, financial and economic capacities, and the rural production system capacity is not
fully used to respond to urban needs, thus missing economic diversification and employment opportunities.

Rural-urban partnership flourishes when policies use the existing potentials of rural-urban economic
and social linkages. For this data collection system is important. If based on urban consumption demand, rural
production capitalises on urban needs and encourages the urban centres to transact locally produced goods as
well. Observing and getting information to identify other potential industries for which there is a potential but
not yet existing market is needed in addition to paying attention to the existing businesses. This way the efforts
will be directed toward diversifying the output of the region.

WEALTH AND POVERTY: THE FLOW OF CAPITAL

While there are diverse capital flows such as remittances to rural areas, and urban
based investments in rural areas, the dominant pattern is such that capital generated from the
processing of rural resources generally concentrates in a few prosperous metropolitan areas
nationally and internationally. An integral part of this rural to urban transfer is the
concentration of the world’s resources in the hands of already wealthy and powerful sectors
of society. This trend is clearly signified by the growing inequality and income gap between
developed and developing countries, between the rich and the poor, and between urban and
rural dwellers (UNDP, 1998).

Gaps are widening within countries with income inequality growing markedly in such
industrializing regions as South-East Asia countries while the economies of Eastern Europe
and CIS are also experiencing the fastest rise in inequality ever recorded. For example, in
Russia, the income share of the richest 20 percent is already 11 times that of the poorest 20
percent (UNDP, 1999). The net flow of the world’s resources from rural to urban areas,
from poor to wealthy places, and from poor to wealthy people, is closely intertwined with
growing rural poverty and the rapid expansion of urban slums as increasing numbers of the
rural poor turn into the urban poor.

Conventional policies seem to link rural areas directly to national and international
capital metropolitan centres and not to local and regional urban centres, small towns and their
immediate hinterlands (Case Study 3, Eastern and Southern Africa). The missing element
from this flow of capital is capturing of investment in the rural area itself, retaining it and
deepening it through multiplier effects. A sustainable economic growth could be attained
only if the economic base generates “spin off” industries that overtime could become the new
base of the region as the first one runs its course and eventually declines (Douglass, 1998).
For the development of such linkages there is shortage of financial resources as well.
Individuals do not have access to low-cost credit, and local existing enterprises are under-
financed.

Most decisions about the fate of rural areas are made between government and
businesses in metropolitan centres with little interest in the question of long-term local
multiplier effects and the means of livelihood in rural areas. To develop rural regions, it
would seem imperative to balance support to global enterprises with a view to supporting the
development and strengthening of local production capacity in terms of labour, research and
development in technology, credit for start-up upstream and downstream linkages. Quite
often, rural regions become highly specialised in a few crops and have no alternative sectors
to turn to when international prices drop. Longer-term policies should generate sustainable
cycles of production and local reinvestment that creates employment and improved income
and living conditions in the region.

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY: NATURAL RESOURCE USE AND FLOW OF WASTE

The flow of wastes between rural and urban areas is closely related to both the flows
of raw materials derived from natural resources, and the creation of capital from the
processing of these materials. Rural areas are the source of raw materials for almost all
manufacturing and processing industries, and are inadvertently the base for the generation of
capital. As a general breakdown, rural agriculture, besides providing part of the basic urban
food supply, also serves as a source of raw materials for a good share of all manufacturing
and processing industries (UNDP, 1994). Urban areas are also dependent on the mining of
resources in rural areasfor materials to build cities and a wide range of forestry products
(Atkinson and Allen, 1998). Both urban inhabitants and business enterprises depend on rural
natural processes and natural resources for breaking down and diluting their waste (OECD,
1998). For example, carbon dioxide pollution generated mostly by vehicular traffic in cities
is mitigated by forests, and significant amounts of other wastes are discharged into bodies of
water for dilution (OECD, 1998).

The dominant rural-urban pattern of natural resource use and waste is such that
natural resources in rural areas are developed and channelled to urban centres where they are
consumed and the wastes are returned to rural areas. This has been described by ecological
theorists as the “ecological footprint” of cities (Rees, 1992; Wackernagel and Rees, 1996).
These flows do not only occur between cities and the surrounding hinterland. Shipments of
resources and waste is an international phenomenon linking cities from all over the world
with distant rural hinterlands (Case Study 5, Food / Agriculture Systems).

The pattern and magnitude of flows in resources and waste is at the core of several problems
that are identified by the international community as global environmental problems, such as
shrinking biodiversity and forest loss, associated with global warming. Urban production
and consumption is a significant driving force for rural resource degradation. Both
production and consumption are fed by the exploitation of forestry resources, agricultural
land, and geologic resources (Dove, 1998). Without fundamental progress in natural and
rural resource stewardship, as globalisation and trade liberalisation accelerate levels of
production and consumption, the depletion of rural resources and the pollution will also
increase. For example, due to forest loss, the consumption of carbon dioxide by foliage has
also decreased, exacerbating the problem of global warming. The pace and scale of
development a decade ago was recognised to be at a point where the sustainability of the
planet is in doubt (WCED, 1987). Today, with the rapid acceleration of production and
consumption patterns it is widely accepted that humankind is catapulting towards
environmental breakdown. Making patterns of urban consumption and production more
sustainable is a major challenge to policy makers (OECD, 1998; UNDP, 1996).

The links between rural and urban environmental problems are circular, and of global
consequence. The cyclical nature of rural-urban environmental linkages is illustrated by the
relationship between unsustainable livelihoods in rural areas of many parts of the developing
world and unsustainable lifestyles in urban centers throughout the world. Unsustainable
levels of demand that tends to be concentrated in urban centers encourage inappropriate
development and the degradation of rural environments.

CASE STUDY 5
FOOD / AGRICULTURE SYSTEMS INTEGRATING THE WORLD’S RURAL AND URBAN AREAS:

The largest component of rural to urban goods shipments from most rural regions is food, both crops
and animal products. It is the largest single contributor to urban to rural transfers of waste and pollution. Food
is largest in volume, money and environmental impact. For instance, the World Bank found in the late 80s that
over 50 percent of all goods movements into Port au Prince, Haiti were food and the Indian census found that
over 50 percent of all family expenditures in Bombay were for food. It may be prudent to emphasize the urban
food/agriculture system in devising ways to reshape urban-rural linkages.
 Three 19-century inventions were major contributors to a change in urban food systems as regard the
linkage between urban and rural areas:
a) Rail transport [steam & electric]
b) Piped sewerage [reinvention] and
c) Chemical fertilizer.
Rail transport allowed perishable foods to be produced and processed further from the urban market,
piped sewerage and treatment reduced the availability of urban waste as an agriculture input to urban/suburban
agriculture], and chemical fertilizer reduced the need for urban waste inputs into food production.

Over the period from the 1850s to the 1970s urban market-oriented agriculture in North America,
Europe, and developing countries with a colonial influence moved further and further away from places of
dense human settlements. Perhaps, we can conclude that:
a) Half the world, for over a century, moved towards a rural-urban linkage pattern of longer and longer food
access lines.
b) Half the world, by intention and despite intention, maintained the previous urban food system balance of
some crops being produced within and near the city and others being produced in distant rural areas.
c) This division was neither exclusively North-South nor East-West.

The Emerging Urban Food-System

After more than a century of increasing distance between food producers and urban consumers in the
more advanced countries, the trend was partially reversed in the 1970s. This trend was most notably identified
by the UNU "Food-Energy Nexus" study of the early to middle 1980s and was carried forward by some 80
studies by IDRC of Canada, in the past 20 years.

In New York City the number of community gardens increased from 100 to 1,000 from 1970 to 1990.
At the same time the farmers in Greater Moscow increased five times, from one million to five million and
farmers of Dar-es-Salaam increased from 160 thousand to 1.6 million [ten times]. This trend to urban/peri-
urban small-scale agriculture is particularly important to rural-urban links in low-income countries where half
of the total economy is food related. However, in the context of global food production, this trend remains
modest and is outside of mainstream government policies and the growth in international agribusiness.

Negative Impacts of the Urban Food/Agriculture System

As the food access line increases, negative consequences on the environment also increase. Now a loaf
of bread in Lagos is likely to be baked from Kansas wheat. A shrimp in Paris is likely to be have been farmed
in Chittagong [12,500 miles]. In UK from 1979 to 1994 the average distance food traveled increased by more
than 50 percent, even as the amount of food shipped remained the same [local production increases more or less
equaled increased demand]. Included in this stretch of food travel was an increase in air shipments that
consumes 37 times more fuel per kilo than ground travel. Pollutant impact of air shipment is not only 37 times
ground transport but also has a higher net impact on stratospheric ozone pollution.

Recent studies by IIED and ICCET find that the negative impacts of urban air pollution on peri-urban
and rural agriculture are much greater in developing countries than in Europe and North America. For instance
in peri-urban Punjab wheat yields were reduced 46 and 34 percent for two cultivators (1993). Loses to beans in
Mexico were 40 percent and radishes in Egypt 30 percent. Ozone was found to be the most pervasive pollutant
over wide reaches from urban sources and has greater impacts on non-grain crops. Projections warn us that
ozone damage zones in 2025 will include the majority of cultivated areas in India, China, Egypt, and South
Africa.

The 21st Century:

Looking forward to the 21st century it may be forecast that the trend towards increased urban
nutritional self-reliance will continue to grow. This forecast is reasonable- in light of several factors :
a) Internet farmer-to-farmer communications, by farmers producing for the urban market, regardless of
their home base or lifestyle
b) More land per person being available in the emerging low-density 'Network City'
c) New technologies in aquaculture, greenhouses, multi-layered production
d) New waste reuse systems, and lastly
e) A growing shortage in rural areas of both irrigation water and fertile land

Conceptually all nations and continents in the future could well be divided into bioregions / eco-
regions. Within each bioregion all human civilization activities will be allocated their most efficient [eco-
efficient] sites. There will be no urban-rural divide. Current rural areas will incorporate what we now know as
urban activities and current urban areas will incorporate some formerly rural activities, as the industrial city
form is opened-up to the possibilities of human and environmental development.

Food production is our civilization's single largest land use and has the largest environmental impact of
any industry. It may be appropriate therefore to initiate a transformation of rural-urban linkages by erasing the
arbitrary boundary of rural and urban/suburban agriculture by promoting urban, peri-urban and rural agriculture
equally.

Said another way; 'Network City' will be the dominant human settlement pattern of the 21st century.
And the well-designed Network City can be based on the principles of nutritional self-reliance and closed-loop
nutrient systems. Parts of this solution to the late 20th century rural-urban linkage problem are available from
diverse sources: modern Japan, China, Italy, the USA, and Sweden; ancient civilizations [Aztec, Inca, and
Indus]; medieval towns, and modern environmental research including GIS and GPI systems.

The logical next step will be a search for 'success stories' as an input to a research proposal. The prime
policy consideration of this food/agriculture industry revolution is the need for the public sector to guide and
oversee the closing of settlement nutrient loops. This will be aided and abetted by the emergence of
participatory democracy replacing representative democracy and therefore a greater citizenry concern with eco-
development. Urban agriculture will be a major tool in this revolution. The key participants in this policy
change will be rural, urban and regional planners; environmental planners and engineers; public health and
nutrition professionals, and all levels of government in many departments.

SOURCE:
Jac Smit. 1998. The Future of the Food-Ecology and Rural-Urban Linkages on Earth. International Workshop
on Rural and Urban Linkages, Curitiba, Brazil. March 1998.

LESSONS LEARNED

The study looks into the food consumption pattern as it evolved in history and the current patterns that
are in practice. The study implies that as cities for their food consumption look farther afield beyond their
immediate hinterlands to distant rural regions, stress on the environment increases. Food processing is the
biggest source of pollution, which increases with the increase in distance between supply and consumption
point and the mode of shipment. Shortening the food access line can ensure world food production sufficiency.
Some trends are observed where community gardens have been developed in cities in the developed as well as
in the developing world. Small urban agriculture is beneficial to rural-urban linkages in low-income countries
where half of the total economy is food related. The study emphasises on participatory democratic
governments, which will help develop more concern for eco-development and urban nutritional self-reliance by
involving various agents of change.

The degradation of rural environments diminishes the resource base from which the
people and economies of the present and future generations of both rural and urban
settlements must sustain themselves. Therefore, environmental problems that are present in
rural areas, such as the degradation and loss of forests and desertification, have tremendous
repercussions for the existence and sustainability of cities themselves. Hence, these ‘rural
environmental problems’ are also critical urban environmental problems. When rural-urban
environmental linkages are scrutinized from the perspective of sustainability, it is apparent
that traditional ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ problems of resource management are not just linked, but
are shared. They are shared in space, in terms of the ability of particular rural areas being
able to sustain themselves and urban demand at a particular time, and in time as the failing
environmental integrity of rural areas may not be able to sustain future generations of both
rural and urban settlements.

The flow of pollutants between rural and urban places within a particular developing
country illustrates how linkages between rural and urban environmental problems, though
often contextual, are bi-directional. Cities in developing countries are widely known for the
tremendous quantities of air, solid waste, and water pollution they generate. However, the
problems of pollution are often shared in both consequence and cause by urban, peri-urban,
and rural areas. For instance, municipal solid waste that is improperly disposed into
waterways, inappropriately designed landfills, and open dumps can contaminate water
supplies for adjacent cities, peri-urban, and rural areas. Whereas inappropriate agricultural
practices in rural and peri-urban areas can cause soil erosion and siltation that choke water
supplies that are shared by rural, peri-urban, and urban areas (Grover, 1998). For example, in
the mountainous island of Jamaica, land degradation due to inappropriate farming on the
slopes leads to severe land erosion, which endangers the water supply of the lowland city-
capital Kingston (Barker 1989). These bi-directional links are examples of rural and urban
linkages where an environmental problem in one place whether rural or urban, has a direct
environmental impact on the other place.

The environmental and ecological implications of extending rural-urban linkages

seem to be poorly understood or integrated into urban and regional planning. Environmental
resource management requires changing the trend of over exploitation of resources from
distant urban centres and the expansion of cities into rural peripheries. Loss of
environmental resources and rural environmental degradation is part of a global urban
transition that will ultimately limit the sustainability of cities as well as the countryside.
Nationally, increasing the potential for economic diversity through establishing production
linkages in rural regions could, however, contribute to efforts to move away from
dependency on over-exploitation of the natural resource base, and gradually developing a
new economic base while sustaining local development. Rural environmental integrity will
increasingly require international agreements and will not be solely in the domain of national
government acting alone. Agreements on setting international environmental standards will
also prevent cities to bend and bow and take high risks to lure in hyper mobile capital.

THE FLOW OF INFORMATION

The information flow between rural and urban areas falls in four categories. One, the
information flow on resources from the rural areas, two, information about markets and
prices for agricultural and rural commodities, three, the often one way flow of decision-
making power as manifested through political or corporate decision-making, and four,
information on opportunities and techniques. At a macro level the quantum leaps in
information technologies and global electronic integration is promising to accelerate
polarisation in developing countries by linking source areas (rural places) directly with
distant markets. While this may be an advantage in stimulating production in rural areas, it
does not allow for the benefits to reach small urban centres. The resources are transferred in
their crudest form bypassing the towns in the rural regions which could have benefited had
the resource been processed as well.

The flows of information between rural and urban places also have a core function in
governance and effective development planning. Decision about the flow of materials,
resources, and capital flow to the rural areas with pronounced urban bias, while the ability for
especially poor rural voices to be heard in national development remains limited and is
related to a number of institutional and political factors which favour the interest of the more
powerful segments of societies (Navez-Bouchanine, 1998). Rural-urban linkages are part of
political economy of relations subject to policy interventions. They cannot be left alone to
the invisible hands of the market which will itself create an equitable environment without
guidance or interventions. The result is the poor flow of important information from rural to
urban areas and from people to policy makers. Hence the continued poor human
development of rural areas is, in part, because decisions about their economies and welfare
flow from higher levels of administration that might ignore information about local
conditions.

When seen on the ground, it becomes quite obvious that rural people are typically
kept out of all types of information loops. Forests are cut down and carried away by
outsiders who give no notice to villagers. The same for mining and other extractive
industries, many of which are at such a large scale that they are run through government
concessions on public land. Knowledge about market prices for crops is concealed by buyers
who either collide or divide territories into spatial monopolies. Information about tenancy
laws and other legal matters is also difficult to obtain in distant rural areas, particularly for
the poor.

Information gathering and decision making power both continue to be highly

centralised and metropolitan-oriented/biased. Research in eight villages in Java, Indonesia,
over a 25-year period from early 1970s shows that communications had become
inernationalised, with TVs accessible to many village households. While national and
international information about political, economic and consumer affairs and opportunities
has become accessible, there is little local content, such as agriculture prices or other local
producer information to enhance the knowledge and bargaining position of especially smaller
rural producers (Douglass, 1998). Moreover, information that was available about local
areas was largely produced by government through central bureaucracies – not by farmers or
other rural producers.

Information systems do not adequately provide information on opportunities existing

in the rural sector, which the urban sector could exploit, and opportunities in the urban sector
for rural sector to take advantage of. Information about consumption level of rural product in
the cities, for example, could boost up rural production and also the urban need of processed
products could generate multipliers in rural towns (Case Study 4, Nepal). Some of the
positive efforts in improving the flow of information are shown in Text Box 6. The
Government of Egypt is installing a geographical information network to collect information
in rural and urban areas throughout the country. It is hoped that the system will:

1. Deal with urbanisation and squatter development through a well-informed prioritisation

plan that is based on sound information about these processes rather than working from a
hypothetical perspective or having to rely only on aggregate data.
2. Achieve more active interaction between national and local decision-makers and planning
agencies to develop concepts and elements of a national and regional strategy.

1. TEXT BOX 6
2. OVERCOMING THE CHALLENGE OF POOR DATA: EGYPT’S STRATEGIC REGIONAL
3. INFORMATION NETWORK
4.
5. The Egyptian government has been installing a national geographic information network to collect
data in rural and urban communities throughout the country which can be used to feed the policy making
process. This system is a critical step in the direction of addressing three fundamental problems with
managing rapid population flows and urbanisation:
ƒ Rural-urban policy formulation and the success of development strategies are significantly hampered by
insufficient data on conditions in rural and urban settlements and the concrete flows between these places.
Most regional polices rely on aggregate data about conditions in the country and regions as a whole,
which do not accurately reflect local variation and can lead to a misfit between regional policies and the
problems of local communities.
ƒ Policy making and monitoring of outcomes is further hampered by the poor flows of information –
feedback mechanisms - between governments at local, regional and national levels and government
agencies responsible managing rural and urban areas. Often, even when information on a particular
problem exists it is isolated in one or two sectors and inaccessible to key decision-makers.
ƒ The rippling effects of polices are difficult to detect without a consistent information source. Many
policy makers remain deeply unaware of the impacts of the polices outside their area of jurisdiction, the
connections between their problems and problems in adjacent and distant areas, and of the potential
opportunities to collaborate to address mutual problems.

This project establishes a firm foundation of relevant data from which to develop concrete general
policies to deal with the complexity of the population dilemma and urbanisation issues. The GIS system is
intended to collect data on population distribution and characteristics, natural resources, land use,
development potentials, and economic sectors. This information will be made accessible to all levels of
government - local, regional and national - so that decision making is better informed and governments at all
levels are less isolated from each other.

A national system of data collection and monitoring is critical to accurately identifying major issues and
points for policy intervention in order to achieve demand driven development. This approach to collecting
6.and using data for the policy making process is critical for effective management everywhere. A further
7.refinement on this system with regard to specific rural-urban policy formulation would be to determine a
particular suite of rural-urban indicators – indicators of rural-urban flows – and explicitly incorporate these
into the national data system.

SOURCE: UNCHS 1998b

3. Provide ongoing information for policy evaluation and analysis, and supply indicator data
for upgrading administrative capacities.
4. Help in the long run to integrate different project impacts on local and regional level and
to remove inconsistencies in policies at different levels.
 The decision of the content of information rests with the capital cities. Unidirectional
and metropolitan oriented flow of information from the centre to the rural areas and limited
data and data gathering capability of the existing potentials and opportunities hamper the
development of beneficial linkages between the rural and the urban regions. Of great
significance in this regard is new technological capacities allowing for wireless
communications, which have the potential for a vastly decentralized network of
communications with entry points even at the level of low-income households. The recent
program by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which was set up to assist very poor rural
women and is organized into very small mutual responsibility groups, to provide cellular
phones to poor people in villages is a revealing experience. By giving a loan to a poor
woman to pay for monthly cellular phone fees, the woman was subsequently able to move
out of poverty by earning money from giving other poor people a low fee access to calling
their children in such far away places as Saudi Arabia where they had migrated for work and
were sending remittances back home. Having control over the direction and content of even
international information is liberating and empowering these households. The Grameen
Bank has already sponsored more than 1,000 of these cellular phone services in rural areas.

3. Contemporary Rural-Urban Policy Approaches: Lessons Learned

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Since decolonisation beginning after World War II, and earlier in much of Latin
America, development policy has been concerned with the role of rural versus urban places
in promoting national economic growth and the transition to the urban-industrial type of
modern economy that emerged with the industrial revolution in northern countries (Singer,
1964; Lewis, 1954). Even though the contexts have changed considerably in the past five
decades, national policies have consistently been based on the premise that increasing the
linkages between rural and urban economies will lead to the development of rural areas.
Hence, policies have actively promoted the conversion of rural subsistence production and
lifestyles into production for regional and international markets and a greater reliance on
market interactions to meet rural household needs (Lipton, 1977, 1984; Bates, 1981; Unwin,
1989; Cowan, 1994).

Despite modest levels of support to increase agricultural production, mainstream

models of national economic development viewed agriculture as a limited source of national
economic growth that lacked the potential of urban industry to drive development, with rural
life implicitly seen as a passing phase in human history. And while the green revolution
brought miraculous gains in grain production in many regions of the world, its purpose was
principally to provide food for cities rather than to meet the needs of rural producers for
diversified and high value-added agriculture with manifold local upstream and downstream
linkages.
 In the early decades of development, policies explicitly promoted the transfer of rural
resources, capital and the migration of people from rural to urban centres to support
industrial growth in urban centres (Bates, 1981; Unwin, 1989). Many countries relied on
official development assistance to promote mechanised, commercial agriculture in rural
areas, which in many cases only contributed to increase rural migration. Despite the
significant investments in this industrial led growth policy, before long it was evident that the
urbanisation and national development process was not fully going down the path that was
expected (Cowan, 1994). This vicious circle was reinforced when many developed nations
focused their international cooperation on rural development. Cities in most developing
countries expanded rapidly around services and low-productivity commercial activities, with
more and more people migrating from rural to urban areas into slums where income was
related to low-income petty
commodity production and trade TEXT BOX 7
activities (UNCHS, 1996). RURAL MIGRATION: BANE OR BOON

Rural people entangled in rural poverty and

Some development theorists enamoured by urban prosperity find hope in migration to
were concerned that there was a Beijing. They pick up the profession of garbage pickers /
strong ‘urban bias’ in development sorters and find Beijing a place of great opportunities. Sifting
policy in which rural production through the rubble for torn plastic bags, scraps of cardboard
was organised to serve urban and metal, and the soles of worn-out shoes, Mr. Du’s earning
of $4 a month, as a teacher in Bazhong county, rose to $70 a
interest. It was argued that month after he migrated to Beijing. Now he has a registered
increasing linkages between rural company and signed an official contract for picking rights at
and urban areas was not raising but about 40 of the city’s 762 neighbourhood garbage collection
was, to the contrary, actually stations. As in most rural-urban migration cases, which work
lowering the potential for rural through connections, Mr. Du and another pioneer from the
same county have been able to draw and employ some 40, 000
areas to develop (Lipton, 1977, people from Bazhong. The contribution of some 82,000
1984). However, the position that migrants to economy and environment is immense. They
gained wider support was that this reduce the Beijing’s costly garbage burden by one –fourth and
decline of rural areas or ‘backwash’ contribute informally to the economy.
effects was only short term and was
There are several negative externalities of migration
part of the ‘early’ stages in boon. The Profession is looked down upon; there is a constant
development (Douglass, 1998). fear of police harassment, caprious detentions and deportation
The rapid migration of the poor to to the former home irrespective of the official status of the
urban centres was considered the migrant in the city. The migrants also live in environmentally
result of insufficient development derelict areas on unserviced lands.
in rural areas (UNCHS, 1995). Services rendered by migrant-run-private enterprises
Therefore, a number of policies could yield further benefits and reduce the hardships that the
were developed to accelerate the migrants encounter by taking cognizant of their informal role
development of rural areas in order and contribution to the formal economy and thus,
to control the rapid pace of rural to transforming rural poverty into urban prosperity.
urban migration (UNDP, 1991). SOURCE: Adapted from “Amid Garbage and Disdain, China Migrants Find a
These included general growth pole Living,” by Eckholm Erik, The New York Times, February 11, 2000
and service centres strategies, which promoted urban functions in rural regions in order to
stimulate development and also promoted the development of secondary cities to attract
migrants away from large cities. Other strategies included rural “villagisation” schemes that
were implemented in India in Tanzania, other direct population redistribution measures,
regulatory controls on migration, and targeted rural development programmes such as
Integrated Rural development (UNDP, 1991; UNDP, 1998a,b; UNCHS, 1999).

Despite the accelerated attempts to promote rural development, by the 1970s it was
apparent that the trickle down of economic benefits to rural areas was still not occurring.
Rural to urban migration continued at a rapid pace and capital, labour and resources became
increasingly concentrated in only one or two large cities (Douglass, 1998, Tacoli, 1998).
‘Rural poverty’ increasingly became ‘urban poverty’ as more and more of the rural poor
joined the erratically expanding urban squatter settlements where levels of unemployment
and under-employment were extremely high and environmental conditions were increasingly
deteriorating (Tacoli, 1998). Despite degraded urban conditions, migrants widely claim that
living in the city is better than remaining in the countryside. As illustrated in Text Box 7,
rural migration may even turn out to be a boon in monetary terms as it has for rural people
who migrate from Bazhong county to Beijing in search of livelihood. Even though they live
amidst garbage, they consider it better than living in rural areas where they earned almost
nothing.

To try to retain population within the rural regions, national polices became focussed
around addressing the unbalanced growth pattern that was developing. As mentioned before,
this led to a number of widely supported polices to promote balanced rural and urban growth,
namely growth pole and service centres, which were intended to diffuse urbanisation and
spur rural development, rural industrialisation schemes, and movement of people from one to
another area (UNDP, 1991). At the same time, three decades of borrowing to finance
national development left many countries heavily indebted to international banks and lending
institutions. As national budgets became plagued by high deficits, governments became
faced not only with the challenge of addressing the growing social, economic and
environmental deterioration accompanying unbalanced rural and urban development, but also
servicing the massive debt that had been accumulating to international banks. Therefore,
many of these development policies were deployed at a time when macroeconomic planners
began to implement a series of measures to adjust the national balance of payments and
service the growing debt to international banks. The policies then oriented toward export to
earn as much of foreign exchange as possible (Text Box 6). With the possible exception of
green revolution programs, government removed agricultural subsidies, which made it harder
for small-scale producers to produce economically. This also encouraged rural migration.

TRYING TO PROMOTE BALANCED DEVELOPMENT

Various sets of policies addressing rural and urban development have been broadly
disseminated and funded by development agencies in the past decades. As an illustration, the
paper will briefly discuss a few of them: growth poles and service centres, rural
industrialization programmes and integrated rural development programmes.
a. Growth Poles and Service Centres

Regional development policies have been significantly influenced by concerns about

rapid rates of rural to urban migration and have focussed on promoting ‘balanced’ rural and
urban development and reducing the growth of large mega-cities (UNCHS, 1996, UNDP,
1991). The most widely implemented policies have to do with attempts to redistribute
population and to manage urbanisation through growth pole and service centres policies.
Although most growth pole approaches are geared toward decentralising manufacturing and
large-scale assembly operations, two variations of growth pole and service centres policies
included the urban functions in rural development approach to promoting rural development
and efforts to promote secondary cities. Both of these strategies aimed at deflecting
migration from rural to urban areas by achieving selective decentralisation of investments to
create a more balanced distribution urban settlements that would more effectively serve there
rural hinterlands as market, consumer and production centres. Ultimately, these approaches
were based on the same premise as ‘urban bias’ models, namely that rural areas would be
developed by increasing access to urban services and by promoting urban characteristics –
such as production for the market versus subsistence production or modernity. They tended
to be developed with an urban-centric perspective by urban-based planners who tended to
plan for rural areas with an urban perspective rather than a rural perspective (UNDP 1998b).

1. URBAN FUNCTIONS IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Urban Functions in Rural Development (UFRD) is based on the concept that rural
towns could mediate between the big ‘parasitic’ cities and agricultural areas and facilitate the
commercialisation of agriculture (Johnson, 1970). The UFRD approach promoted a more
balanced spatial urban hierarchy of towns in developing countries in order achieve selective
decentralisation of productive investments to foster rural development (Rondinelli and
Ruddle, 1978; Rondinelli,1979; Rondinelli, 1985; Belsky and Karaska, 1990). The towns in
this network have been expected to serve as centres for information and knowledge,
infrastructure, and as central places for marketing production and purchasing supplies, and
non-agricultural employment for rural labour.

This approach was applied in a selected number of developing countries but has
shown limited success in promoting rural development and stemming rural to urban
migration (Douglass, 1998). Empirical studies have highlighted three very instructional
conceptual and practical limitations with this approach:

i. The economic activities and needs of rural areas are not prescribed by the nature of
rural towns. Rather, it is the other way around - the characteristics and functions of
rural towns vary with the types of economic activities in a rural area (Mathur, 1982;
Maude, 1983; Kammeier, 1984). Therefore, attempts to promote desirable rural
benefits by establishing a hierarchy of towns with predetermined functions generally
fail. It is necessary to carefully determine the existing systems of production
functions of rural towns and specific rural and urban linkages, and not assume that the
 benefits of the network strategy will always be relevant and beneficial (Douglass
1998).

ii. Consumption by rural people is not limited by lack of access to goods. It is limited by
access to incomes (Hardoy and Satterwaite, 1986; Simon, 1992; Pedersen, 1997).
Improved access to infrastructure and greater efficiency of product and input
exchange could not by themselves improve the economic base of rural communities.
Despite improvements in infrastructure to facilitate market flows of inputs and
products, in the absence of viable capital injections, many towns in developing
countries have not become dynamic ‘service centres’.

iii. Interaction in rural towns and diffused urban centres does not usually include the poorest
of the rural poor. They often lack the necessary resource to move extensively over
space and to access the advantages, such as non-farm employment, of towns.
Therefore, even if the UFRD approach were fully successful in all other respects, it
would not address rural poverty without more specific attention to the rural economy
and needs of the poor (Douglass, 1998).

2. PROMOTING SECONDARY CITIES

Many governments tried to avoid the development of mega-slums by diffusing the

growth of large cities through providing incentives to companies to locate in smaller cities
(UNDP, 1990). These strategies have shown mixed success. For example, the Thai
government was not very successful in influencing the pattern of industrialisation in order to
take migrant pressure off of the Bangkok’s extended metropolitan region (Tacoli, 1998).
Despite government attempts to bolster infrastructure in secondary cities, they found that the
flow of capital, often vested in transnational firms allied with local industry, was more
powerful in dictating population flows and the pattern of urban settlements. If cities could
not attract this investment they were unable to attract migrants (Parnwell and
Wongsuphasawat, 1997).

However, in Brazil, secondary cities with improved transportation and

communications infrastructure were successful in attracting corporations and deflecting
migrants away from São Paulo (UNCHS, 1996a). Free trade zones have also succeeded in
attracting new investments and people away from big cities (Tacoli, 1998). The successful
experiences reveal that corporations rely on a suite of services, administrative capacity, and
infrastructure of towns. If these needs are not met in secondary cities, corporations will not
respond to government incentives to locate away from major cities (UNDP, 1990). Further,
the linkages of this type of branch manufacturing plant decentralization with rural
development has been weak. In economies experiencing rapid structural change, such as
those in East and Southeast Asia, the regional life-span of branch plant production has been
short, with raising land and other costs seeing it move to other, low-income countries
(Douglass, 1999).

The overall limited success of growth pole and service centres approach to promoting
balanced spatial development and stemming the flow of migrants from rural to urban areas is
strongly related to the divorce between macroeconomic growth policies and objectives of
regional planning and the poor financial support for regional development polices. Regional
planning in many developing countries tended to focus on technical parameters such as
infrastructure in isolation of broader market forces operating in developing countries. It
tended to be defeated from the outset, as it could not counteract the structural and spatial
inequalities that sectoral policies produced. In addition, several key issues such as social as
land tenure patterns were not incorporated into growth pole and service centre policies
(UNDP, 1998b). Regional planning also suffered because there were no significant financial
allocations or authority to cover cost and coordinate the implementation of policies. Indeed
very little effort was made in countries to incorporate these policies into the national budget
process (UNCHS, 1999).

b. Rural Industrialisation Programmes

Some countries have tried to curb rural out-migration by encouraging rural

industrialisation . This has shown mixed results. For example, Taiwan is noted to have had
considerable success in preventing rural out-migration with these programs (Tacoli, 1998).
In China, the rural enterprise sector has shown that it can compete strongly with state and
urban enterprises for both product markets and as markets for raw materials. These highly
labour intensive rural enterprises that were established by local governments and peasant
communities have grown twice as fast as the rest of the economy since 1984 (Xiaohe, 1995).
However, the rural enterprise boom was sustained by population policies that restricted
mobility within China. This has significantly distorted the price of goods and contained a
pool of labour in rural areas (Xiaohe, 1995). As migration restrictions become less stringent,
it is difficult to say whether these enterprises will continue to be dynamic. Moreover, most
successful cases are those near rapidly growing coastal cities rather than dispersed
throughout China’s vast rural regions.

Rural industrialisation was not very successful at curbing migration in many

countries. For example, in Korea rural industrialisation was attractive mainly to small and
medium sized industries that wanted to exploit cheap labour. These businesses found it
difficult to hire young, inexpensive labour because the young population in rural areas was
not satisfied with the wages. Since wages did not match those in urban centres, migrants,
who tend to be young people, continued to leave rural areas (Kim 1998). The Korean
experience indicates the presence of rural industries will not by themselves curb migration.
Rural industrialisation programs that are geared to reduce migration need to be based on a
thorough understanding of migrants and the factors that govern their decisions to migrate.
Rural industrialisation programs are likely to provide an additional source of income in rural
areas, but they will not be successful at curbing migration if they are unable to match the
added economic advantage that attracts migrants to urban centres.

While properly planned rural industrialisation schemes could derive environmental

benefits from reduced rural to urban migration, rural industrialisation can present a
contradiction in rural-urban environmental problem solving. Rural industries can be very
polluting and can consume high-grade agricultural land if they are not carefully planned. For
example, in Hong Kong the government is currently trying to halt and prevent further
unplanned and disorderly expansion of small industries, which are degrading rural areas and
diminishing the quality of reserve farmland (Jim, 1997). The net effect of rural
industrialisation on addressing environmental problems cannot be generalised. Governments
need to carefully balance rural industrialisation with other environment and development
priorities to achieve the desired benefits, often this requires national rural urban agenda
which incorporates rural-urban environmental as well as development linkages.

c. Integrated Rural Development Programmes (IRD)

Integrated Rural Development (IRD) programs tended to err in the opposite manner
as ‘urban bias’ programs. During the 1960’s and early 1970’s the idea of IRD was put forth
as a strategy to generate a series of qualitative and quantitative changes within rural
population through improved living conditions, creation of social infrastructure necessary to
increase production. The central idea of IRD was that rural development required a host of
coordinated and integrated complementary actions cutting across many sectors. Programmes
and activities included provision of electricity, clean potable water, decent housing,
marketing and storage facilities appear farm products, improvement of networks of feeder
and access roads, and the organisation and reorganisation of human settlements. Many of
these programs were widely adopted through donor agencies working in Africa.
(UNDP 1998a)

While IRD helped to promote some non-agriculture activities in rural areas, their
focus was primarily on planning in the rural agriculture sector, and projects usually did not
consider potential linkages with urban policy (Douglass, 1998; Escobar, 1995). In the end,
these programs were not very successful in promoting rural development. At the
International Workshop on Rural-Urban Linkages in Curitiba 1998, several reasons were
identified for their limited success:
ƒ Many of these programs were typically implemented by central government or foreign
donor agencies that were unable to overcome severe problems of inter-agency co-
ordination.
ƒ Programs were unable to draw on local knowledge and participation in assessing rural
conditions.
ƒ There was a lack of sustained central government or foreign donor (ODA) commitment
to key programs and projects.
ƒ Planners tended to assume that technical solutions could address deeply entrenched
socio-economic sources of poverty associated with land tenure issues, hierarchies of
status and power, and racial, gender and ethnic discrimination.
 SUMMARY OF REASONS FOR LIMITED SUCCESS OF CONTEMPORARY POLICIES TO
PROMOTE RURAL REGION DEVELOPMENT

Some key reasons for the limited success of contemporary policies in promoting a
more dispersed and balanced pattern of spatial development are:
i. The lack of a broad spatial focus under perspectives that tended to focus on
rural or urban places (UNDP, 1998b) and did not take them as interdependent
elements of regional and national development.
ii. The way in which polices were implemented – top down, centralised, non-
participatory, with an over emphasis on technical solutions, and urban-centric.
(UNDP, 1998b).
iii. Insufficient consideration of the overarching power of sectoral / fiscal
policies that did not adequately account for the social and economic impacts
they generated over space and among social classes. Both import substitution
and structural adjustment were vastly more powerful at (re) organising the
space-economy of production, employment and how environmental resources
were used than were explicit regional development programs. This in turn has
had profound effects on the nature of poverty, the location of poverty,
depletion of natural resources, and the quality of rural and urban environments
(Tacoli, 1998).
iv. Insufficient grounding of policies in relevant empirical information, which left
policies to work from generalised assumptions about the expected usefulness
and impacts of policy implementation. These generalisations are increasingly
being challenged by the diverse rural-urban interactions that are emerging in
developing countries (Tacoli, 1998; UNDP, 1998b; Douglass, 1998, 1999).
v. Priority given to the relationship between rural areas and the capital cities
rather than to local and inter-sectoral linkages between regional urban centres,
small towns and their intermediate hinterland.
vi. Underappreciation of the nature of rural poverty as both income poverty as
well as subsistence poverty (Dove, 1998). The livelihoods of many rural
communities consist of a portfolio of both market (income oriented) and non-
market (subsistence) pursuits. Many rural communities rely on income as a
supplement to a range of subsistence activities such as gathering food and
fodder from forests (Dove, 1998). For example, studies of small rubber
producers in Indonesia reveal that, contrary to market expectations, rural
groups such as the Kantu produce rubber to, first and foremost meet specific
demands of the household and not necessarily the demands of the market.
Hence they may increase production when market prices are very low if they
need cash for certain purposes such as paying taxes or children’s school fees;
and, they may not increase production at times when they can fetch a high
price for rubber (Dove, 1993). Like the Kantu, many rural households have
an economic portfolio that is firmly grounded in subsistence activities.
Production for the market is but a part of the portfolio. Overconcentration on
market expansion can undercut the land, ecological and social basis for such
 vital elements of an economic portfolio as common property regimes and
social forestry.
vii. Over-reliance on just making markets work to alleviate poverty. Policy
interventions need to address social and cultural aspects as well (Case Study
10, Finland) and should be gender sensitive to be able to reach the poor and,
especially, the poorest.

4. THE VALUE-ADDED OF A RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES PERSPECTIVE IN

POLICY

The purpose of a rural regional component in national development policy

that contains positive local rural-urban linkages is not only for the sake of preventing rural-
urban migration per se. Rather, it is to provide people wherever they live with access to
income, well-being, personal skills and rural as well as urban amenities to enable them to
make choices instead of feeling compelled to migrate just to stay even. In too many rural
areas of the world life chances are actually diminishing under strengthening rural-urban
linkages that transfer wealth and talent to metropolitan regions, degrade rural environments,
and appropriate potential multipliers from rural production. Urbanisation as a more general
process of social and economic change will continue everywhere; policies to reverse this
process will be ineffectual and wrong-minded. At the same time, urbanisation will always
depend on agricultural production, natural resources and thus the health of rural economies.

One question, then, is where the future urban populations will be – in a few large
cities or dispersed across the national territory. While many policymakers would agree in
principle that a more dispersed pattern would be desirable, neither sectoral development
policies, nor weakly endowed rural and regional development policies have had substantial
successes in this direction. One reason is that this question is itself insufficient because it
does not directly consider the needs or potentials of rural economies in linking up with towns
and provincial cities.

Yet as the case studies reported here show, many useful insights and promising
initiatives are being realised in many countries. Though they mostly remain at the level of
one-off experiments or pilot projects, they hold a promise of more fruitful understandings of
the benefits and opportunities found in explicitly incorporating rural-urban linkages into
policy perspectives. These benefits, or value-added, in rural-urban linkage perspectives are
manifold and include:

(1) Breaking rural-urban poverty syndromes. While evidence shows that migrants
are generally better off in urban destinations than in locations of rural origin,
improvements are often marginal and involve new forms of impoverishment
related to severely degraded slum environments, marginalization in employment,
and continuing below poverty line incomes. As such, poverty in rural areas has a
clear relation to poverty in the city and is largely determined by the human capital
that migrants bring with them to the city. Where rural economies are unable to
diversify and provide off-farm employment or are highly unequal in their
 distribution of economic rewards, where high shares of the population, particularly
women, are not given access to schools, and where health services are inadequate,
migrants to cities are more likely to remain in poverty even in fast growing urban
economies.

Breaking this syndrome of rural-urban poverty cannot be accomplished either by

slum improvement programs in the city alone or agricultural policies in the rural
areas. Rather, the value added in rural-urban linkages will be found through
policies that bring elements of the rural and the urban together to synergise local
economies and to reverse the growth of poverty where it arises. Recognizing at the
same time that many of the sources of slow rural economic growth originate in the
city and not simply in the countryside, awareness of the economic impacts of
sectoral and macroeconomic policies that favour large cities over provincial towns
and rural areas would also provide for more enlightened understandings of the
urban as well as rural causes and solutions of poverty.

(2) Generating positive rural-urban synergies. Much of development planning is

undertaken as a zero-sum game as rural planning and urban planning bureaus vie
with each other for resources while being otherwise institutionally unable to
combine forces for mutually beneficial and more socially as well as economically
efficient forms of cooperation. In both concept and in the case studies presented in
this paper, the potential for turning rural-urban dichotomies into rural-urban
synergies is great. The promise from harnessing those synergies is a more vital,
resilient and sustainable process of national economic growth and human
betterment.

(3) Environmental Sustainability. The symbiosis between urban and rural

environments that historically occurred before modern industrial processes, non-
biodegradable packaging and waste materials, and the high use of chemicals in
agriculture has broken down. Yet just as rural or urban environmental impacts
cross over to the other, the long-term environmental health of any society depends
on sustaining the environment everywhere and at all spatial scales. By
understanding how rural-urban linkages become sources of environmental
problems beyond the domain of sectoral agencies or separate rural and urban
policy units, the rural-urban environmental interdependency of environmental
management issues can also be better incorporated into policies, bringing policy
and management capacities closer to the goal of an environmentally sustainable
development.

(4) Governance structures appropriate to spatial realities. With democratisation

and decentralisation now the watchword of political reform throughout the world,
there is a risk that conventional approaches that focus on reifying urban and
municipal levels of government that are administratively cut off from their rural
hinterlands will perpetuate the rural-urban divide that has left rural districts with
low levels of political authority under often weak and overly extended provincial
levels of governance. There is thus a need to create more horizontal interfacing
and sharing of power at local rural and urban levels in the process of
 decentralisation. The value added from ensuring that rural-urban linkages are
allowed to be routinely considered in local as well as national governance
structures is found in the other goals of development: breaking rural-urban poverty
syndromes, creating rural-urban synergies and more resilient national and local
economies, and anticipating and mitigating rural-urban environmental impacts.

1. BREAKING THE RURAL-URBAN POVERTY SYNDROME

Poverty is not a separate and independent ‘rural’ or ‘urban’ phenomenon. Empirical

studies show that neither is rural-urban migration simply a one-way, one-time-only
permanent relocation of people from rural to urban regions. Rather, it is often a temporary or
circular dynamic movement in which some members of a household migrate - not simply in
pursuit of the ‘bright lights’ of cities or in search of their individual fortune - but to gain
access to resources to support the rural homestead and family members.

Conventional policies that use the immediate rural or urban area as the highest unit of
planning tend to work from the premise that migration is a permanent move. A rural-urban
policy approach can bring the broader spatial reach into the calculus for policy intervention
and complement current urban- or rural-based efforts. It can help policy makers to better
identify the priorities of the poor, to see hidden opportunities for poverty alleviation, and help
prioritise the use of scare resources for poverty alleviation. Under appropriate conditions,
migrant remittances can be a source of investment in rural regions. Measures that facilitate
the movement of capital can help in increasing rural household income needs and may help
in the development of social services and community needs.

Poverty reduction measures are also addressed by taking into account what
communities themselves emphasize as priorities. For instance, many well-meaning urban
poverty policies have promoted the security of tenure as a fundamental step towards the
poverty reduction in Kenya. However, recent research by the United Nations Centre for
Human Settlements in Nairobi has found that security of tenure is not a priority among
migrants to that city. Given the option many migrants prefer to rent accommodation. They
place a much higher priority on problems such as personal safety, education and health which
affects their ability to earn money – the primary reason why they came to the city (UNCHS,
1999). In other countries and cities, security of land occupation may be a very high priority.
The point to be made is that a more contextual rural-urban approach would broaden the
horizons of poverty alleviation policies to look for other areas where the greatest returns can
be had for scare resources. It broadens the effect of policies to not only meet the immediate
needs of individuals in the particular ‘rural’ or ‘urban’ area but also the overall needs of
households that straddle the rural-urban divide.

Crucial to the task of poverty alleviation is to break the rural-urban poverty

syndromes, in which the rural poor become the urban poor who, due to initial skills and
abilities gained before migration, are never quite capable of either moving themselves above
poverty lines in the city or contributing sufficiently to rural households to lift them out of
poverty. Assistance can be provided in either or both the rural or the urban area, but the main
insight in policy formulation is to grasp the interconnectedness between rural and urban
poverty through rural-urban linkages entailing migration, remittances, information and other
flows. Assisting the urban poor can indirectly assist the rural poor. Alleviating poverty in
rural areas by empowering the poor with skills, education, good health and income above
subsistence would have clear linkages to alleviating urban poverty.

2. GENERATING POSITIVE RURAL-URBAN SYNERGIES IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT T

Change without development is an all too frequently used as a description for the
outcomes of rural investments. A central challenge for rural development – for balanced
spatial development in general -- is to ensure that beneficial linkages are developed with
urban producers and consumers and that there are sufficient returns of rural investment to
improve the lives of the rural poor. Predominant approaches that invest in production
expecting that the right and beneficial linkages will automatically develop are outmoded.
Policies need to be contextual and incorporate an explicit component that ensures that the
flows of capital, inputs, information and transportation infrastructure between the rural area
and targeted urban markets are operating in desirable manner.

One example of an explicit rural-urban project is the UNDP’s Hitkari project in Nepal
(Case Study 4, Nepal). The project has been very successful, as it does not function from the
assumption that desirable linkages will develop by pursuing policies that enhance local
banana production. Instead, the project has been based on assessing the demand in specific
urban centres and focussing on investing in the ability of local banana traders to expand their
service to meet these needs. Hence, the project actively manages the critical process that is
necessary to establish the beneficial linkages between rural and urban markets. The chances
of success of many other attempts at rural development can be significantly increased by
incorporating this type of explicit rural-urban focus by not only identifying what exists, but
also identifying other potentials and helping to establishthe related markets to ensure that
beneficial linkages are realised.

In this regard, the role of smaller cities and towns in rural development has received
considerable attention from development theorists and planners. These towns were expected
to play a number of vital roles: to stimulate rural development by acting as connectors
between rural production and national and international markets; as sources of inputs for
agriculture production; and as centres that provide urban services to rural people. However,
most rural towns have not fully played this role. For a number of reasons, which are
explored below, these towns themselves have been bypassed by development. New
contexts, such as introduction of new technologies in telecommunications, media and
transport, rather than permitting more balanced urban networks at the national and
international, rural and urban areas, as was commonly believed in the 1980s, has resulted in
accelerated growth of metropolitan primacy (Durand-Lasserve, 1998).

The emerging policy issue appears not be so much as one of what role can small
towns theoretically play in rural development, but rather, how to bring intermediate cities and
smaller towns into the rural-metropolitan loop in a manner that better distributes the benefits
of development over national territorial space. Unless specifically harnessed for local needs
and empowerment, increasing trade liberalisation and the rise of e-commerce in developing
countries promises to perpetuate spatial polarisation at an accelerating rate. By localising
rural-urban linkages that otherwise centre on one or two metropolitan regions, small towns
can play a positive role in rural development that would improve life chances of people
where they reside.

3. ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH AN EXPLICIT RURAL-URBAN FOCUS

The global circulation of resources and waste is also acted out on a rural-urban level.
Rural development at the sub-national level is a crucial part of the chain of events that
facilitates the flow of global resources through urban systems. The production of waste and
the degradation of critical natural resources, such as water, are by-products of the global
rural-urban patterns of production and consumption. Hence, the global trade in natural
resources and goods derived from those resources affects the capacity of rural areas to renew
their resource base.

That the scale and impact of the present form of rural and urban production and
consumption cannot be sustained for much longer is now widely recognized. Policy makers
need to be more aware that local environmental problems such as soil erosion and forest
degradation are often triggered by unsustainable practices and consumption patterns
generated in cities, which may stimulate the over-exploitation of rural resources. This
diminishes the ability of rural areas to renew their resource base. Urban policy makers need
to be more responsive to the fact that urban centres themselves cannot be sustained for much
longer if the rural and natural resources on which they depend – the rural resource base –
continues to be degraded and shrink.

Efforts to conserve resources and to rehabilitate degraded rural and urban areas need
an explicit rural-urban approach as many of the driving forces for rural degradation cannot be
found within the confines of the rural areas. Technical solutions and measures to manage the
co-existence of local people with natural resources are important but not sufficient. Policies
need a broader rural-urban spatial approach in order to identify and incorporate solutions to
mitigate the extra-rural forces driving rural degradation. Similarly, efforts to streamline
urban impacts on the environment need to be more mindful of the concrete ways in which
unsustainable lifestyles in urban centres affect rural areas. This allows policy makers to
make the connections between what kinds of urban activities are most destructive of global
resources. It can open opportunities for partnerships between rural and urban areas to
address environmental problems and help urban policy makers to identify actions that need to
be more aggressively pursued to bring urban centres within the earth’s carrying capacity.

In addition, the separation between adjacent ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ places is artificially
created by procedures that divide governments into ‘urban’ or ‘rural’ jurisdiction, by
economic planners that differentiate between the ‘urban-industry’ sector and ‘rural-
agriculture’ sector, and by agencies and organisations responsible for managing ‘rural’ or
‘urban’ environmental problems. Most environmental problems transcend rural and urban
areas, especially when these areas are adjacent to each other, as exemplified by the rapid
pace of the conversion of prime agricultural land to urban uses common throughout the
developing world in metropolitan regions. The weakening of traditional land-use systems,
access rights, unscrupulous land title transfers from poorer rural household, and lack of
coherent land use planning at the urban fringe facilitates this process at an accelerated rate.

While agricultural land is being transformed into ‘brown fields’, greater numbers of
the poor people are exposed to effluents from industrial processes that are either directly
harmful to people or agricultural crops and livestock. Modern agricultural practices and
large-scale animal husbandry around cities are having equally deleterious impacts on urban
water supplies. Separate governments for ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ areas and separate plans drafted
by agencies with separate ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ mandates are not necessary or conducive to
holistic solutions to address these ‘shared’ problems. An explicit rural-urban approach is
necessary to bring all stakeholders to the table to manage these problems. This ensures that
efforts are not duplicated, that poor people and weaker jurisdictions do not bear the brunt of
the burden, and that resources are more efficiently applied to manage the urbanisation
process.

4. STRUCTURING GOVERNANCE TO LOCAL SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC REALITIES AND

POTENTIALS

Urban and rural problems are part and parcel of the same phenomenon. One has
causal links to the other. Categorising one issue as urban only and the other exclusively as
rural ignores their interdependencies and can exacerbate problems. A rural-urban linkage
approach will yield several benefits. Instead of only treating the effects, a joint move will
facilitate looking into the cause and devise ways to counter the issue in a complementing
manner. A joint approach toward solving problems will bring into alliance the institutional
capacities of all areas directly involved in their causes and impacts. Less advantaged areas
can benefit from the more well-established urban-based institutions in terms of human
resources, financial and decisionmaking capacities, and technical support. Flows of
information between rural and urban institutions can be better incorporated in policy design
both the viewpoints.

Some countries are already taking steps in this direction. Korea has begun uniting
rural and urban spaces under an integrated city concept and looking at the issues from a
unified spatial framework. In 1995, 33 cities and 32 counties were united into Consolidated
cities, the purpose of which was to incorporate economically depressed areas with
neighboring cities to include them in appropriate regional development plans, to extend basic
infrastructure to remote rural areas, and to strengthen combined economic potential (KRISH
1994). Together these new jurisdictions comprise 26 percent of the land area of Korea.
5. SUCCESSFUL RURAL-URBAN POLICIES: SYNTHESIS AND THE TASK AHEAD

Rural development is much more than agriculture development; it entails real

linkages to local, national and international resources, markets, distribution, services and
enterprises. Similarly, in the real world urban development, which is sustained by rural
production of food, industrial crops and natural resources, has never occurred in isolation of
rural development. These observations are sufficient by themselves to suggest the need for
better understanding of the nature, including costs and benefits that flow from rural-urban
linkages and their interaction.

Strengthening rural-urban linkages has complex positive and negative effects that
policies need to understand and anticipate if rural development is to be sustained. It is
crucial, therefore, to avoid simplistic formulations that rest on the premise that merely by
strengthening rural-urban linkages, through better roads for example, but rural and urban,
rich and poor, will automatically benefit. More critical analysis is needed in actual contexts
and through comparative analysis to reveal the benefits and often counter-intuitive outcomes
of rural-urban linkages and flows. Case studies have been summarized in this paper as a
means of moving policy discussions toward a more robust and realistic understanding of
problems and actions that are most likely to have high positive pay-offs through focusing on
rural-urban integration in the course of national development.

First, it is useful to identify the types of linkages that seem to exacerbate rather than
relieve development problems. The cases show, for example, that policies to alleviate
poverty have a better chance of success under the following conditions:

ƒ Strengthened institutional capacity of the local government in governance, planning

and management -- instead of top-down planning that is unaccountable to local
people, formulaic and insensitive to local contexts.
ƒ Spatial rather than only sectoral approaches to planning
ƒ The capture of value-added and multiplier effects from rural production within the
region
ƒ Significant regional Research and Development capacities to promote constant
innovation in local production
ƒ Targeted provision of credit for small producers
ƒ Strengthened organizational associations of local producers
ƒ Promoting functions in towns that match the actual rural social and economic profiles
and needs.
ƒ Political stability, and security of life and property.
ƒ Directly empowering the poor in the process of improving spatial linkages.

Strengthening institutional capacity of the local government

 Rural-urban linkages are most likely to flourish in the context of significant
decentralization, or, more accurately, devolution of power. The issue of decentralisation is
intrinsic to notions of human progress, development, democracy, social justice, and direct
state / civil society interface. Who controls what portion of the political decision-making
about the economy at what scale is crucial for the realization of such goals as equitable
development, economic growth and availability of life enhancing opportunities. Central
concentration of power that excludes local government, which is closer and potentially more
accountable to local people, from decision making process is increasingly being identified as
a crucial factor inhibiting a more broad-based national pattern of development. The
exclusion of local agenda and aspirations in the planning process deprives the rural regions of
many opportunities that would come their way.

Devolution of power in sharing resources should not be mistaken for administrative

deconcentration. Decision making power and resources should be shared. For purposes of
planning in the public domain, a collaborative government---sharing of power and
responsibilities with the local level government and the power transcending beyond that to
the local people and their communities -- is a crucial goal of the devolution of power. This
implies that devolution and democratization to form locally accountable governments must
be simultaneously pursued. Otherwise, concentrating power in the hands of non-elected or
otherwise unaccountable local government can lead to local despotism rather than authentic
government-citizen partnerships.

In the process of political decentralisation, local governments in almost all countries

require substantial institutional reforms to strengthen governance capability decentralisation.
A comprehensive decentralisation programme would thus involve the transfer of financial
tools (taxation and allocation powers), decision-making power in government policymaking
and program development, and strengthening of human resource capacity over issues.

In most developing countries, municipalities have narrowly defined administrative

rather than decisionmaking responsibilities that are associated with managing hardware---
infrastructure provision and energy instead of policy issues such as poverty and economic
growth. Policies decided at the center are handed down to the local government to
implement. While decisions on how to use land, given the general uses that are approved by
planning agencies, can be ‘participatory’ on a local level, the key decisions are already made
at the center, allowing for little flexibility at local levels. In contrast to these common
patterns, Text Box 8 depicts the case of India where substantive decentralisation took place
for rural-urban development by amending the constitution in 1992. Municipalities were
given responsibilities for economic development, thus diffusing the decision making power
from specialists to municipalities, people and their elected representatives. Access to greater
financial resources was given by ensuring proportional access to various sources of funding
so that the local governments have the necessary financial base to address their priorities.
This legal framework allowed a bottom up approach. Punchayats (Community groups) and
municipalities prepare the development plans, which then go through several levels of further
reviews and are forwarded, to the State Government for approval. The system allows for
greater information flows from people to policy makers and a higher degree of fit between
policy measures and local conditions.

The decentralisation process should upgrade the human resources of the regional and
local government through capacity building programme to equip administrative officials to
function responsibly, efficiently, and proficiently with newly acquired powers and functions.
For instance, the Interministerial Commission for Rural Development -- CIDER --
programme in Chile aimed at establishing common guidelines of mutual interests for joint
actions; however, there were insufficient control mechanisms as regards the
operationalisation of each particular joint programme. In the beginning CIDER did not have
enough staff to assign to cover all of the tasks. The most successful results were mainly
engineered by dedicated attempts rather than from clear institutional implementation
guideline. The relatively long period of time involved between the identification of projects
and the potential availability of resources became a factor of discouragement for ministerial
 TEXT BOX 8
DECENTRALISATION FOR RURAL-URBAN DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA: ENABLING
LEGISLATION FOR RURAL-URBAN PROBLEM SOLVING

The Indian government made amendments to it’s constitution in1992 that lay the legislative basis
for addressing some of the most difficult challenges to rural-urban environmental problem solving.
Legislative factors often limit the power of different local governments to take the initiative to solve local
problems and to collaborate to address mutual problems.

The Indian government has made several changes, which allows local governments to transcend
some of the limitations in terms of decision making by specialists using mostly technical criteria, lack of
access to finance an the legal leeway to raise their own finance, and political considerations for delineating
municipal boundaries:

1. Municipalities were made responsible for economic development and social justice in addition to the
conventional municipal functions. In place of agency led land use planning, municipal and elected
bodies would now be directly involved in matters related to rural and urban planning diffusing a share
of the decision making from specialists into the hands the people and their elected representatives.
2. The new constitution requires that municipal areas shall be declared on a greater consideration of other
factors, including population area and percentage of employment in non-agriculture
3. The new approach provides that every State should constitute a Governance Board for transitional
areas – areas in transition from rural to urban – or the urban fringe in order to manage rural-urban
interaction and problems of land use at the fringe.
4. Local governments can achieve financial self-sufficiency through proportional access to state taxes,
grants in aid to municipalities from the Consolidated Fund of the State, locally raised taxes, user
charges, non-tax revenue for performance of statuary and regulatory functions, from commercial
ventures, and borrowings. These mechanisms aim to ensure that local governments have the necessary
financial base to address their priorities.

The new legal framework allows for a greater balancing of spatial, national, regional, and local
priorities, allows more information to flow from the local to regional levels, and allows national rural-
urban priorities to be grounded in local reality. Under this system, Municipalities and Panchayats prepare
development plans, which are reviewed by District Planning Committees, which consists of locally elected
representatives. These Committees consolidate the plans and prepare a Draft Development Plan for the
district as a whole. The draft development plan is prepared with respect to matters of common interest
such as spatial planning, sharing of water and other physical and natural resources, and integrating
development of infrastructure and environmental conservation. These plans are then forwarded to the State
Government for approval. This potential of flow of information from people to policy makers can only
become a reality if local governments take the initiative and use the doors that have been opened by these
legal reforms.
SOURCE: (UNCHS 1998c)

involvement in short-and medium-term programmes. This constraint not only affected

CIDER’s joint programmes, but also the whole planning process that was carried out at the
regional and local levels.

For positive development the strategies of municipal, regional, national government

and other actors should be compatible. However, traditional government structures do not
have effective mechanisms for cooperation (Text Box 9). Legislative factors often limit the
power of different local governments to take the initiative to solve local problems and to
collaborate to address mutual problems. Programmes for collaboration among different
 Text Box 9
Making Regional and Local Strategies Compatible: Growth Strategies Act in Canada

The Canadian Growth Strategies Act, which was implemented in 1995, is an innovative
framework for regional planning which treats municipal and regional governments as equals whose
strategies must be compatible. While the system encourages consensus building it also incorporates
dispute resolution mechanisms to ensure closure. The act also improves the link between senior and local
governments and creates a process for formal agreements where intergovernmental action is needed to
implement plans. With respect to rural and urban problem solving the Act addresses, among other things,
three major challenges:

ƒ Traditional government structures do not have a mechanism for co-operation among different
jurisdictions. Many challenging problems of urban growth cannot be managed by one jurisdiction
alone. The problems of urbanisation - urban sprawl, pollution exportation to weaker regions, efficient
transportation planning - require co-operation among many governments with different jurisdictions
and other organisations.
ƒ Even if there is co-operation between different jurisdictions to manage the problems of urbanisation,
agreements are not easily reached. The lack of a conflict resolution mechanism or lack of experience
in conflict resolution often results in decisions that favour the more powerful jurisdictions and sectors
of society.
ƒ Even with legislation that encourages collaboration, the hierarchical structure of governments with
superior/subordinate relationships makes it difficult for ‘smaller’ governments to air their views and to
take part fully in the decision making process.
ƒ Too often, governments act too much as planners and not enough as managers. The consequence is
that there is a divide in management. On the one hand, a tremendous amount of resources is expended
to plan while the changes occur at such a rapid pace that these plans quickly become irrelevant. On the
other hand, there are policies that are ad hoc and purely reactive to problems as they arise.

The Growth Strategies Act promotes proactive planning in anticipation of continued urbanisation
trends. It places local governments at the helm to provide a vision of where they see the development of
their communities headed and ensures consistency and participation at all level. The core lessons of this
Act are:

1. It works from the premise that regional plans should reflect consensus among the equal partners - the
local governments within a region. Therefore, it gives local governments the responsibility for
identifying issues, working together on a resolution of these issues, and towards accepting each other’s
plans. This is also done between adjacent regional governments, especially when the governments
share an airshed or bioregion. In this way it introduces sustainability goals as a basis for all local
government planning, while ensuring compatibility and consistency between plans of various local and
regional governments.
2. It recognises that an agreement will not always be possible and therefore has provisions for conflict
resolution written into the Act. This allows for fair and consistent procedures for dealing with conflict
and timely resolutions to conflicts.
3. It is Proactive. The Act pushes local and regional governments to prepare for change by focussing on
population and employment projections and devising actions to meet the needs of future residents in
such areas as housing, transportation, parks and natural areas, economic development, and services.
This approach makes governments and planning institutions more responsive as it requires them to not
only focus on the current situation in human settlements, but to understand the changes that are
occurring and the factors driving these changes, and to be prepared to manage those changes.

Approaches such as this would allow governments in the developing world to respond more than react
to the rapid urbanisation. They would allow for better identification and management of the processes that
are driving undesirable rural and urban linkages.

SOURCE: (UNCHS 1998 a)

levels and sectors of government work well when the institutional set up facilitates the
efforts. The process should also set an enabling framework to encourage the active
involvement of the community members. In the case of CIDER, because of its better level of
involvement between externally-funded special projects and the regional process of policy-
making, permitted to a certain extent the continuation of some of these projects after their
original funds were finished. The CIDER experience of Maule region, Chile, established a
programme whose main purpose was to link the policy-making process of regional
government regarding rural poverty with the specific demands that rural inhabitants
presented. The programme was seen as complementing the Plan by considering the
requirements and suggestions of poor people living in regional marginal areas. This can also
be used as reference for the allocation of public resources. The institutional and government
matrix needs to be in place to create the political will amongst the decision-makers at the
central level and more powerful urban municipalities for power and resource sharing with
additional municipalities at the regional and the local levels.

Implementing a mechanism for collaboration does not mean that the situation will be
conflict free. Lack of conflict resolution mechanism or lack of experience in conflict
resolution results in decisions in the favour of the more powerful jurisdiction and sectors of
the society. Keeping in view the problems arising due to conflict in views the Growth
Strategies Act in Canada has provision for conflict resolution written into the Act for dealing
with conflicts and timely resolution to conflicts.

Municipalities also lack the capacity to respond to the rapid changes, to identify the
problems and manage the changes. The attempts are then ad hoc and purely reactive to
problems as they arise. Often governments spend too much of resources on planning while
the changes occur at such a rapid pace that the plans quickly become irrelevant. The Growth
Strategies Act in Canada pushes local and regional governments to prepare for change by
focussing on population and employment projections and devising actions to meet the needs
of future residents (Text Box 9). In the presence of a collaborative mechanism where every
party will have interest, monitoring system through surveys, and observations (Case Study 6,
Korea) can provide feedback and help moulding the policies while the development is taking
place.

The idea of local level government is also gaining popularity in the transition
economies of Eastern Europe. By establishing self-government, it is believed that local rural
development will take place, which will work to the benefit of local people who then would
not be forced by lack of opportunities to migrate to urban areas (Case study 7, Kyrgyzstan).
A democratisation process will compel administrative officials to be accountable to their
elected officials who would in turn be transparent in their decision-making and accountable
to the citizenry for their actions. Decentralisation of power to local level and further
decentralising to the community level would accommodate multiple voices. The
development would then respond to local needs and not global impulses only. In addition to
decentralisation of power the local and regional level governments need to have mechanism
for cooperation, mechanism for conflict resolution, and mechanism for managing change and
monitoring the process.
ƒ Overcoming sectoral approach to planning.

Rural-Urban Linkages suffer from sectoral approach to problems in such problem

issues as resource degradation, water pollution, landlessness and rural migration between and
among urban and rural areas. The sectoral and top down approach to development prevents
horizontal (local government, community and NGOs) and vertical (local government,
regional government and the central government) coordination, collaboration and integration
of the development agenda among sectors. These and other challenging problems require co-
operation among many governments with different jurisdictions as well as with civil society
and private sector orgnisation (Test Box 9). This is only possible if significant levels of
authority and capacity exist at local levels and there are mechanisms for inclusion of stake
holders.

However, the institutional set up of the local, regional and national governments does
not generally allow for joint decisions to tackle complex problems that require solutions that
transcend sectoral capabilities (UNHCHS, 1998a). The joint problems of urban and rural
areas could be addressed by replacing sectoral approach with inter sectoral ways of planning
and management. Since all activities must take place in real geographical space and
locations, stating the need for multi-sector coordination is another way of calling for explicit
spatial or regional frameworks in policymaking. In this regard, the Growth Strategies Act in
Canada requires local governments to prepare a plan for managing change through
consultation with local groups. Local governments, senior staff from municipalities, adjacent
regional governments and key provincial government agencies advise during the preparation
of the regional growth strategy. The Act requires local governments to prepare a plan for
managing changes through consultation with local groups. Local governments come together
to develop the Regional Growth Strategy. An inter-government advisory committee
consisting of senior staff from municipalities, adjacent regional governments and key
provincial government agencies advise during the preparation of the regional growth
strategy. To help things go smoothly a facilitator is appointed. When the Regional Growth
Strategy is complete it is referred for sign-off within the region as well as in associated
adjacent regions. They can reject or accept the strategy. All outstanding disputes are solved
through the formal settlement process.

Another example is of the town of Ilo, Peru (Text Box 10), which illustrates a way to
get around the difficult challenge of inter-sector, inter-agency, and inter-government
coordination for managing immediate rural-urban problems such as environmental
degradation. For instance, the Interministerial Commission for Rural Development-CIDER
in Chile presents an intersectoral attempt to confront rural problems of poverty through a
better horizontal coordination of ministerial responsibilities dedicated to rural area (Apey,
1998). This coordinating body was expected to involve the participation of regional and
local governments in the implementation of most of the externally-financed programmes
within the region, so as to avoid, as much as possible, the implementation of isolated
development projects, carried out principally by external expertise.
 Text Box 10
Overcoming Sectoral and Administrative Barriers

In Ilo, Peru a Multi-Sectoral Commission on Environment was organised to bring together farmers
in the surrounding areas, industrialists, urban residents the municipality and the regional government. This
group collaborates with agencies responsible for managing the different economic sectors and
environmental media to identify and address problems in the region. By de-emphasising the traditional
boundaries, they have been able to make significant gains in finding single solutions to problems that
would have been regarded as multiple problems by different sectors. This is a concrete example of the
kinds of ‘boards’ or ‘groups’ that can be formed by governments to overcome problems of co-ordination.

SOURCE: Cecelia Tacoli, 1998

As noted, central planning carried out by sectoral bureaus is generally insensitive to

the need to spatially coordinate decision-making. There is a deep divide between urban
planning, which is mostly industrial in its orientation and inward-looking in its concerns, and
rural planning, which still tends to view rural as an aspatial agriculture sector issue and
remains suspicious of the city and urban planner (Douglass, 2000). Such traditions result in
rural and urban dimensions of development processes being effectively disconnected from
each other in policy and planning.

Reflecting these considerations, new initiatives in decentralisation of responsibilities

and coordination of various development sectors are underway in Korea. In 1995 for the first
time in Korean history locally elected government at the city and provincial scale were
instituted. The government simultaneously instituted a rural-urban integrated city concept
(Case Study 6, Korea) to overcome the rural-urban divide in policy and planning. The
approach tries to join municipal and rural areas under a single administrative unit. The
Rural-Urban Integrated City and replaces the previous fragmented approach to development
and environmental problem solving. This historic transition also attempts to include quality
of life and more decentralised economy in its planning. The process of decentralisation has
just begun and only time will tell whether decentralisation can work magic where strong
centralisation of the most of national energies on the expansion of the Capital Region of
Seoul and the Seoul-Pusan development corridor.

ƒ Capturing the value-added of the rural production in the region

Rural economies are typically linked to the national or international markets but less
so to the towns in their region. Since the marketing linkages after production are not
generally under the purview of producers, themselves, and since in a globalizing world
linking local production to international agribusiness distribution systems, rural products are
exported from the region without capturing the higher added value segments of commodity
chains leading from the field to the final consumer. Similarly, global agribusiness linkages
also have an observable tendency to move crops and resources from regions without further
local processing, with the same result of limited local capture of downstream multipliers,
which are captured by larger urban centers and, more typically, in the higher income
countries to which they are destined for higher end markets and final consumption. In more
remote rural regions, monopsonies by a handful of buyers often prevail in the purchase and
decisions about where processing will take place. In the case of Indonesia, for example, in
Easter Indonesia buyers would not purchased dried tobacco leaves, which receive higher
prices, from farmers due to government requirements that all tobacco be processed on Java
where a member of the ruling elite had been given a monopoly over all tobacco processing.
The economic loss to the rural region producing tobacco was substantial (Douglass, 1998).
Farmers say that they would double their income from tobacco if they were allowed to dry it
before selling.

Breaking such monopolies and monopsonies has been associated with the
development of networks of rural-urban linkages that, in offering more choices of markets
and access to different flows of information about prices and markets, work to overcome
spatial monopolies. As the Indonesian example, shows, however, merely building more
roads to connect villages to more villages and towns may not be enough. Political and
institutional reforms, including raising the organizational strength of producers, as the Nepal
case has illustrated, are also crucial.

ƒ Research and Development

Research and development on the production of inputs and local processing that
enables regions to effectively compete with international enterprises would also be an
important component of strategies to diversify and strengthen the capacity of rural regional
economies to capture higher value-added segments of production and distribution. Yet due
to the continuing treatment of rural as consisting only of primary production, possibilities of
diversifying the economy from crops to other processed products have not been rigorously
explored. R&D in new technologies, such as, biotech, genetic banking, aquaculture, green
houses, multi-layered production, new ways to process crops, or production of input tailored
to local crop regimes all need attention and are central to the goal of seizing local
opportunities to diversify rural economics within and beyond agriculture. Increasing the
potential for economic diversity in rural regions would also contribute to efforts in moving
away from dependency on over-exploitation of the natural resource base.

ƒ Providing credit

Rural households access to low-cost credit is one of weakest rural-urban linkages,

which makes it almost impossible to start up any business such as processing a crop and then
investing in its marketing and distribution. Local enterprises tend to be underfinanced and
lacking access to credit in small urban centres in Eastern and Southern Africa (Case Study 3,
Eastern and Southern Africa). With the same thought, the RUPP in Nepal provided
assistance package to market bananas between rural and urban markets. Later, the Hitkari
Banana Group in Nepal decided to get commercial loan to expand its business and achieve
for becoming the major fruits and banana traders in the areas (Case Study 4, Nepal). Credit
lacks for agricultural activities as well. Credit and assistance is needed for land purchase,
exchange and leasing to consolidate fragmented land holdings and keeping good agricultural
land in production (Douglass, 2000).

One of the most well-known and successful credit programs dedicating to poverty
alleviation is the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, which has become a model not only for other
developing countries but even for such industrial centers as Detroit. Started as a grassroots
credit organization for the landless poor in the aftermath of the 1971 independence struggle,
The Grameen Bank was subsequently transformed into an alternative development bank with
government support covering 7,500 settlements by 1989. Poor women are now its major
participants. It has five major objectives: (1) to extend banking facilities to the poorest men
and women in the community; (2) to eliminate exploitation by money lenders; (3) to create
opportunities for self-employment for the un- and under-employed; (4) to provide an
organizational structure which the poor can understand and in which they can fully
participate, thereby increasing their economic, social and political strength through mutual
support; (5) to reverse an age-old vicious cycle of ‘low income, low savings, low investment,
low income’ to an expanding cycle of ‘low income, credit, investment, more income, more
investment, more income.’ The very high loan repayment rate is explained by the
participatory process through which the real needs for loans are identified, reinforcement of
the ethic to repay by peer pressure, close supervision and dialogue with bank workers,
weekly repayment schedules, and continuous internal monitoring and participatory
evaluation.

Though successful in promoting increased welfare of the rural poor, the Grameen
does not specifically have rural-urban linkages in its purview. As such, the type of rural-
urban synergies that are being sought in the Nepal case discussed above can easily be
overlooked. Rural credit directly to small producers and low-income households is
important, but the larger question of economic sustainability for poverty reduces calls for
mechanisms to build regional linkages to markets, input suppliers and other urban and
regional functions and infrastructure expansion. To the extent that the provision of low-cost
loans can be made in a way that goes beyond single enterprises to deepen regional capacities
with the involvement of the poor, sustainable economic growth and poverty alleviation have
a greater likelihood of going forward hand-in-hand.

ƒ Strengthening local producer organizational capacities

Organisational strength in local producers is required for to give voice to small

producers and for making them competitive in addition to deriving several other benefits
from association such as, mutual help in difficult times that can save members from
becoming landless. In a group small farmers benefit from economies of scale in producing
inputs and / or processing activities.

Small-scale farmers generally face high storage, transportation and other marketing
costs and cannot afford to buy and sell in bulk. The absence of credit and marketing
cooperatives leads to greater landlessness. Having several benefits of working as a group,
the RUPP programme staff in Nepal (Case Study 4, Nepal) convinced the individual traders
about the benefits and strength of group formation and group work. Market and marketing of
goods was arranged by organisation of skilled labour and disadvantaged group linking labour
skills and intermediary products to existing manufacturers and / or industrial system. RUPP
supported the mechanism for buying bananas and serving urban customers. The Group buys
bananas from the local communities and adjacent villages, process the bananas and sell to
retailers and even export to other regions and now after the initial success it is planning to
expand the business by obtaining their own processing space.

Farm organisations can also work in the social sphere to provide services to the
community. And lastly, with cooperative associations among local producers, the risk of
engaging in entrepreneurial activities can be spread among members rather than individually
absorbed. For example, even in the transient economy of Eastern Europe, the hard economic
conditions made people to be prudent and spread the risk by maintaining the trend of co-
operatives that existed in the communist era (Case Study 7, Kyrgyzstan). Hence, by working
in groups, the rural producers derive strength in the domestic and international market in
dealing with metropolitan and global agribusiness interests.

CASE STUDY 6
KOREA’S RURAL URBAN INTEGRATED - CITIES

Korea developed the rural-urban integrated city concept to overcome the shortcomings of the past
approaches to rural development such as the Rural Industrialisation Programme. Given the high rate of
urbanisation in Korea, treating the rural area separate from the urban area was regarded to be impractical. The
rural-urban integrated city approach looks at rural development from a unified spatial framework, which
incorporates rural counties with cities. At a more practical level, the integrated city policy attempts to resolve
local governance issues including public services provision, local administration, and rural-urban balance.

In December 1994, the law concerning the establishment of rural-urban integrated city was passed. The
government selected 49 cities and 43 counties as candidates for integrated cities. The selection criteria for these
candidate cities and counties were: historical homogeneity; same living sphere; natural topographical condition;
and potential for balanced development within the integrated city.

The selected cities and counties were asked to hold public hearings and conduct residents’ opinion
survey asking their preference for integration. After this screening process, 41 cities and 39 counties were
amalgamated into 40 rural-urban integrated cities as of May 1995.

The effectiveness of this new approach to rural-urban problems solving in achieving its intended goals
of better quality of life, higher administrative efficiency, and balanced rural-urban development is difficult to
prove. Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that the policy of rural-urban integrated city has been partially
successful. Among the three goals, the balanced rural-urban development goal was positively assessed by
residents, public employees, and local councilmen. But the attitude survey did not reveal a strong evidence on
the positive effects of integration on the quality of life, more specifically, residents’ convenience in daily life.
With respect to higher administrative efficiency, which was one major rationale for the policy of rural-urban
integrated city, there has been no positive evidence supporting any significant improvement in administrative
efficiency.

Given this mixed assessment, Korea’s policy of rural-urban integrated cities needs more refinements
and improvements in its detailed programmatic aspects. Outstanding issues, which need to be addresses in
future refinements are:
ƒ Readjustment of planning system for the whole area of integrated cities as currently, separate planning
systems are applied to urban and rural areas of the integrated cities
ƒ Achieving equity and efficiency in services provision given different needs and demands of urban and rural
residents
ƒ Prevention of potential environmental degradation in the rural portion of integrated cities.
ƒ There may be potential conflict between the goal of local governance and spatial integration. The enlarged
geographical extent of integrated cities makes residents difficult to participate in local decision-making
process. More specifically, rural residents fear that their voice may not be heard in important facility siting
decisions because they are often overwhelmed by more organised urban residents. Moreover, there is a
need to reconsider potential trade-off among three stated goals of the policy, for example, whether
residents’ quality of life is more important than administrative efficiency.

The rural-urban integrated city concept is particularly promising because of the explicit emphasis it
places on achieving mutual rural and urban improvements and the highly contextual approach which utilises
ongoing evaluative approach for timely feedback and adjustment in the management of rural and urban areas.

SOURCE:
Kim, Won Bae. 1998. Korea’s Policy of Rural-Urban Integrated Cities. Paper presented at the International
Workshop on Rural and Urban Linkages, Curitiba, Brazil, March 1998.

LESSONS LEARNED

The study presents a case of integrating rural and urban governance by joining municipal and rural
areas under a single administrative unit. It implies that by bringing together different levels of government---
local, regional, municipal, and rural, multiple issues along the rural-urban divide can be addressed. There is
efficiency in administration and efficiency and equity in distribution of public services. However, policies
should not overlook the fact that rural residents, who are not well orgnised, might be dominated by the views of
the their more organised urban counterparts. The policies need to address the issue of incorporating the views
of the less powerful people as well. An integrated city approach accommodates for a more considerate land use
planning in urban areas, which helps in reducing stress on the rural as well as urban environment. Further more,
an evaluative mechanism for timely feedback is instrumental in reshaping the policies for a better management
of rural and urban areas.

ƒ Making town functions responsive to rural characteristics and needs

Central government allocations to cities, including rural towns, tend to be uniformly

packaged and provided. The urban functions in rural development approach discussed
previously also carried similar central place theory assumptions that all towns of the same
population size should have the same urban functions. In neither case is their a careful
consideration of the actual characteristic of rural hinterlands. Yet rural studies clearly show
that a rural plantation economy requires different town functions than does a fishing village
or a mining region economy. For rural-urban linkages to be effective in stimulating
economic development in rural regions, town functions obviously need to fit the needs of the
region.

Several mechanisms can be called upon to support those urban functions of

significance for specific rural needs. As in the Korea example, one is to include rural and
urban areas within the same administrative units so that local governments and political
processes can incorporate rural as well as urban views into planning and management
routines. Another is exemplified in the Nepal case where specific rural activities were
directly linked to the expansion of town functions.

In any case, there is a need to develop local capacities to scan rural areas for the
purposes of strengthening positive local rural-urban linkages. This can be done through rural
and village reconnaissance to better identify small-scale activities worthy of promotion
toward larger regional, national and international markets. The degree of specialization
among villages even in the same local and even low-income is quite striking; yet because
many of these specialisations are not registered in regional economic accounts, they are
routinely overlooked. In the poorer regions of Indonesia, for example, it is quite common to
find that one village specializes in certain upland vegetables growing while another is locally
well known for its stone cutters. In the case of the stone cutter village, the absence of
trucking services had meant that each stone had to be carried down on the heads of men who
daily had to climb down and back up steep slopes with their extraordinarily heavy burden
(Douglass, 1998). The function of the town as a market center could not be played due to the
absent of specific functions, namely, good roads and heavy truck services capable of
reaching the quarry area and transporting the cut stones to the town for sale and further
transportation.

ƒ Political stability, and security of life and property.

Political instability, corruption in government departments, and insecure environment

affect the performance of rural economy. Rural productivity declines, capital investments
and remittances also get chased off, and gradually migrants also breakaway their links with
the rural areas. Case Study 3 of rural-urban linkages in Eastern and Southern Africa cites the
incident of ethnic clashes in 1992 in Molo town, Kenya. The breaking down of urban-
processing industry in the town negatively affected agricultural productivity in the hinterland.

The study of Nigeria (Case Study 1, Nigeria) throws light on the aspect of safety of
life and property in maintaining rural-urban linkages. Night travel is hazardous in Nigeria.
It is often common for urban-based residents who invested in rural housing, cottage
industries and farming among others have these investment looted by hoodlums. Several
police checkpoints, which are supposed to provide security, discourage people’s movement
as bribes are collected at these points. Healthy rural-urban linkages seek for political
stability by protecting physical movement of people and movement of invisible investments
coming from the migrants.

While there is no simply way to turn political turmoil into political stability, studies
show that democratic institutions provide more a more stable basis for sustaining economies
than to centralized, authoritarian regimes. Further, where democratic forms of government
have been instituted, they prove to be resistant to counter movements to re-instate command-
and-control governments. Such observations confirm that any efforts toward activating rural
regions economically must go hand in hand with political reform where needed. Further,
once such reforms are well underway, they carry their own momentum that, while
unpredictable in many ways, tend to create ratchet effects that strengthen popular resolve
against returning to closed, elitist systems of governance. Recent reforms in Korea discussed
above are a case in point. The consolidation of local rural and urban governments for
purposes of creating new rural-urban synergies for rural development came about and was
only made possible by simultaneous political reforms to decentralization political power and
democratize local governments.

ƒ Going beyond strengthening rural-urban linkages

Physical development, such as road development, implemented in isolation of other

institutional reforms and direct efforts to build local capacities and empower the poor is
unlikely to provide the long-term basis for local development. Enough literature and
empirical studies exist on the polarization effects of strengthened linkages to warn against the
naivete of such single dimensional (Douglass, 1998). These effects include brain and brawn
drain, accelerated capital outflows, penetration of more distant markets into weaker local
markets, accelerated exploitation of natural resources, environmental degradation and a host
of other potentially negative impacts such as increasingly skewed land ownership patterns.
There are benefits as well, but without, for example, efforts to organize small producers or
protect traditional land use customs, the beneficiaries are likely to be confined to a relatively
small segment of elites.

From this perspective, those programs that recognize that strengthening rural-urban
linkages is never an economically or socially neutral process are more likely to deliver
poverty alleviation and ensure the continuity of local forms of resource stewardship with the
benefits of new linkages to many potential markets and service centers.

ƒ Economic policies designed and implemented from the bottom and horizontally
among local units of governance

Central planning through aspatial sectoral development policies invariably trump

spatial planning in guiding the flow of people, raw material and goods, and capital, which are
all crucial elements of healthy rural-urban linkages. There is generally little local input to
modulate these policies, which work to determine the use of environment, infrastructure and
provision of services, structure of rural agriculture, availability and type of jobs, and
production and consumption patterns of rural regions.

The case for expanding the role of planning vertically upward from below and
horizontally among sub-national political and administrative units is compelling. Evidence
from research and innovative policy experiences show that poverty reduction through rural-
urban linkages is more favorably pursued under the following conditions:
ƒ Information is available on existing local opportunities and potentials
ƒ Collaboration of actors is possible in political as well as technical realms
 ƒ Training and technical support is locally available and is tailored to filling gaps in
local entrepreneurial talent
ƒ Migrant remittances go beyond poverty maintenance to generate income-earning
opportunities through direct investments in enterprises and, equally important, to
invest in the types of overhead capital needed to generate economies of scale for
regional production
ƒ Improving multi-directional networks of spatial linkages

ƒ Information on existing opportunities and potentials

Multiple flows of information on existing opportunities and potentials as well as
sources of local demand are fundamental to enhancing local economies and empowering the
poor. Information flows from the local sources about the nature and structure of rural
agriculture production is also the most significant factor that determines the character of
small towns and the role of the town as a provider of goods, services and employment in the
rural region. Information on urban consumption demand can result not only in increasing
rural productivity but can also make rural towns better able to perform their roles as
transaction centres for locally produced goods and service. The rural-urban linkages
programme in Nepal (Case Study 4, Nepal) found that urban centres import about 75 percent
of basic food, most of which could be supplied from local rural markets. The programme,
accordingly, matched the domestic demand for products with the supply to ensure that rural
development maximally capitalises on meeting urban consumption needs and rural urban
centres are pulled into transacting locally produced products.

The flow of information through television and other popular communications and
entertainment media also needs to include local content. In a study of several villages in
Indonesia, it was observed that although information on national and international affairs
enriching the rural people, there is not much with regards to local content, such as
agricultural prices or other producer information (Douglass, 1998). Local information
channel will positively contribute toward the development of local economy by enhancing
the knowledge and bargaining position of especially smaller rural producers.

ƒ Collaboration among actors

TDevelopment initiatives are successful when they take into consideration diverse
views and interests and establishe collaborative relations with public agencies, the private
sector, community and NGOs. The PARUL programme in Indonesia (Case Study 8,
Indonesia) is attempting to support local economic development by linking small-scale
producers to broader markets through collaboration with larger scale enterprises. The
strategy centres on formation of public private partnerships to facilitate collaboration
between government, private firms, farmers, and other members of civil society in designing
and implementing action and initiatives.

Case study 9 (Indonesia and Africa) illustrates two examples of public-government

synergies combined to orderly develop rapidly growing and relatively vacant land on urban
fringe areas. In Indonesia, the land is consolidated through public participation, and
infrastructure and services are provided. In Mbanga-Japoma project, Sub-Saharan Africa,
partnership of public institutions, private investors and customary owners develops primary
and secondary infrastructure services in the rural-urban land.

Through collaboration, private sector organisations can be mobilised to provide a

number of services, stretch resource capacity, and support research and development
activities. Hitkari Banana group project (Case Study 4, Nepal) is an example of public
private partnership where municipalities and rural market organisation / co-operatives
together managed and facilitated urban infrastructures and services required to help the flow
and marketing of goods. Collaboration with banks, other private institutions secured start-up
credit. Similarly, the CIDER participatory programme, Chile, established associations based
on mutual cooperation and inter-municipal alliances shared staff and technical resources and
tackled common problems imposed by shortages of municipal resources (Apey, 1998).

Governments can also promote community-based development. Under the Migration

Management Program framework, the Kyrgyz government (Case Study 7, Kyrgyzstan)
intends to discourage migration to urban areas through extending support to community
actions. Community work often begins with voluntary work and by extending support to the
activities, government expands its resource base. Community members at different levels
contribute money and efforts through remittances and their own voluntary efforts in the
development of their village or rural towns and give extra mileage to the local budget. In
Finland (Case Study 10, Finland), the revitalisation efforts started at the grassroots level, that
is, by the community and organise around a tradition of voluntary work and with practically
no money. Rural migrants in Nigeria (Case Study 1, Nigeria) invested in developing
community recreation centres basic amenities and, farm and off-farm investment, and
financing education of the rural people.

Community based-development, since would imply those activities which are

beneficial to the whole community, could also pave way to eco development (Case Study,
Food / Agriculture TEXT BOX 11
Systems). These may SOCIAL FORESTERY IN HONG KONG, SINGAPORE, AND
take the form of KUALA LUMPUR
promoting social forestry
and environmental An analysis of the their case studies reveals that Honk Kong is the
management approaches one which has most successfully managed to galvanize people into
actively participating in urban forestry activities. Singapore has limited
toward natural resource public involvement in participation in the annual tree planting day, Kuala
management (Douglass, Lumpur has allocated few resources for school educational programmes
2000). In this regard on trees, and Hong Kong has organised an effective campaign of
rural areas could learn promotion and public lectures and demonstrations on aspects of
from the several horticulture and tree nursery open days. In addition, the idea of training
local people to act as ‘tree wardens’ to look after street trees in their
measures carried out by areas is also gaining ground and has shown to be a great help to hard-
cities like Honk Kong, pressed tree maintenance teams.
Kuala Lumpur, and
SOURCE: “Urban and Peri-urban Forestry: Case Studies in Developing Countries” by
Singapore as highlighted Food and Agriculture Organisation of the Untied Nations, 1999
in Text Box 11.
Community tree planting events in Hong Kong usually involve the planting of seedlings by
families or community organisations. About 20,000 people take part in the spring every
year. The Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) promotes a ‘school forest’
programme in which schools are linked with areas of forest in which they carry out
environmental studies including tree planting and maintenance. Forestry camps, attended by
about 2000 young people a year, are also organised during the summer offering weekly
courses on environmental education, tree planting methods nursery worm and forest
management.

Community based-development since would imply those activities, which are

beneficial to the whole community, could also pave way to eco development (Case Study,
Food Agriculture Systems). These could take the form of promoting social forestry and
environmental management approaches toward natural resource management (Douglass,
2000).

CASE STUDY 7
RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES IN EASTERN EUROPE AND THE FORMER SOVIET UNION:
KYRGYZTAN

Context
There are fundamental changes underway in the rural-urban relationship in the transitional economies
of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs) and Former Soviet Union (FSU). The transition period has been
characterised by agricultural restructuring and privatisation in the rural areas, and the need for changes in land
management and planning practices in urban areas. It is likely that the implications of these changes for rural-
urban linkages will start to make themselves felt as the economies stabilise and start to recover.

The transition from socialism to a market economy began at the start of the 1990’s. The agricultural
sector in the pre-1990 CEECs and FSU comprised a varying mix of state and collectivised / co-operative farms.
Farmland was usually nationalised, although experience varied considerably in the CEECs. All land was in state
ownership in the FSU. Farms were typically very large with units running into thousands of hectares. They
typically had wide ranging responsibilities in the social sphere for the provision of services for the community.
The farms supported very high levels of agricultural employment. On average in 1993, 26.7 percent of total
employment in the CEECs, for example, was in agriculture1. In the 15 member countries of the EC on average it
is about one fifth of this level, at 5.7 percent.

The process of transition to market economies in the 1990’s has driven the creation of markets and the
privatisation of resources. In the agrarian sector this has resulted in restitution of land, predominantly in the
CEECs, and privatisation of land, in the FSU, with very large numbers of new owners of often very small
holdings. Adverse economic circumstances for individual agriculture have dictated that the prudent course of
action for many has been to maintain a co-operative approach to farming to spread risk. Central support for
agriculture has largely ceased, with the result that provision in the social sphere has usually been devolved to
some residuary body, often a local council of some kind, presenting a need for funding and a requirement for
revenue raising capacity.

Agrarian policy in the transitional economies generally seeks to encourage rationalisation of farm size
through encouraging the operation of a land market; enabling the more efficient producer to acquire greater
access to resources. Mechanisms to encourage this include initiatives to secure title through forms of

1
These comprise Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia
and Slovenia.
registration and through encouragement of the development of market facilities such as mortgages, and relevant
land management and valuation skills. The rate at which private farms are spreading in the region lags far
behind original expectations (both local and international) primarily because private farming is seen as too risky
and promises relatively modest income compared to the risks. However, the building of a market economy will
gradually produce conditions that encourage further transformation of the farming structure. As economic
conditions ameliorate, further transformations are likely to result in reductions in levels of agricultural
employment. These are likely to result in increased migration from rural to urban centres for perceived higher
employment prospects.

Urban areas are also going through dramatic changes during the process of transition. Privatisation of
apartments has resulted in very high levels of owner-occupation and relatively limited potential for mobility
through purchases or rentals of property on the market. In many countries there is in fact a shortage of available
urban accommodation, leading to occupation of small apartments by extended families. However, as the
economies recover, new and better quality developments will spring up. Those who have accumulated wealth in
the new market economy circumstances are building new, low-density single family dwellings on the outskirts
of urban areas.

The case of Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked and mountainous republic in Central Asia with a land area similar to that of
the United Kingdom. The population is predominantly rural. Over 60 percent of the aggregate population is
residing in rural areas; rising to 70-80 percent in the oblasts (regional administrative areas) if the capital,
Bishkek, is excluded.

Agriculture is the main sector in the Kyrgyz economy, generating an estimated 47 percent of GDP in
1997, employing around 49 percent of the workforce, and producing half of the republic’s exports. The sector
declined along with the rest of the economy during the period 1990-95, by the end of which the main economic
indicators had reverted to their 1970 levels. The land and agrarian reforms provided a land entitlement from the
1.5 million hectares of arable land to all rural residents in the republic; an aggregate average entitlement of
around half a hectare. A viable commercial farm might, however, require 50 to 100ha in the circumstances of
the republic.

Around 35 percent of the population of Kyrgyzstan was urban in 1997, down from 38 percent in 1990.
The annual urban population growth rate, estimated at 0.4 percent for the decade 1990-2000, and the aggregate
percentages probably understate the underlying rate of urban growth. Net emigration during this period is
estimated at around 370,000, often highly qualified people of Russian, Ukrainian, German, Uzbek and Tartar
origin, many of whom may well have been predominantly urban sourced.

Apocryphal estimates of the move from rural areas to the cities suggest that between 300,000 and
1,000,000 have already moved, representing between 7 percent and 22 percent of the total population. The
Hallam Johnson Report, 1997 has recognised that one of the four strategic priorities of the Kyrgyz government
is to discourage migration from rural to urban areas through the Migration Management Program. This is
designed to include those Ministries, which have mandates, and a program capacity, to deal with rural to urban
migration and to engage them early in the process. The initiatives include measures:
ƒ to improve the information base on population migration;
ƒ to develop and implement a migration strategy drawing in the affected ministries, including for example the
Ministry of Agriculture;
ƒ to establish a research and training capability in this field, the Bishkek Migration Management Centre;
ƒ to promote community based development for poverty reduction; and
ƒ to foster the development of self-government at the local level.

REFERENCE:
Bloch P, Delehanty J and Roth M Eds: Land and Agrarian Reform in the Kyrgyz Republic: Technical Report.
Republican Centre for Land and Agrarian Reform, Ministry of Agriculture and Food, Bishkek, Kyrgyz
Republic, and Land Tenure Centre, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA, 1995
Brooks K M: Decollectivisation and the Agricultural Transition in Eastern and Central Europe. Agricultural
Policies Working Papers, World Bank, Washington DC, 1991
Csaki C: Where is Agriculture Heading in Central and Eastern Europe? Emerging Markets and the New Role
for the Government. Presidential address; Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference of Agricultural
Economists; G H Peters and D D Hedley Eds, Dartmouth, 1995
Delehanty J and Rasmussen K: Land Reform and Farm Restructuring in the Kyrgyz Republic. Post-Soviet
Geography, 1995, 36, No 9, pp 565-586
Euroconsult/Centre for World Food Studies: Farm Restructuring and Land Tenure in Reforming Socialist
Economies; A Comparative Analysis of Eastern and Central Europe. World Bank Discussion Papers No 268,
Washington DC, 1995
European Commission, Directorate General for Agriculture (DG VI): Agricultural Situation and Prospects in
the Central and Eastern European Countries. Working Documents, Brussels, 1995
Habitat II - Dialogue #6 Land and Rural/Urban Linkages in the Twenty-First Century. Proceedings,
UNCHS/FIABCI/FIG, 1996
Hallam Johnston & Associates: Migration Management in the Kyrgyz Republic. Report prepared for the
International Organisation for Management, October, 1997
International Organisation for Management: IOM Appeal for the CIS Countries in 1998. IOM, 1998
Life - Local Initiative Facility for Urban Environment. RCP, Bishkek, 1997
National Human Development Report Team: National Human Development Report of the Kyrgyz Republic,
1997. UNDP, Bishkek, 1997
International Organisation for Management: Programme Description and Appeal Technical Cooperation in
Migration Management: Kyrgyz Republic. IOM, 1998
Professional Manager Consulting Firm: Migration Report in Kyrgyz Republic: 1996 Year. International
Organisation for Migration, Bishkek, 1997
Rasmussen K: Land Reform and the Evolution of New Farm Enterprise in the Kyrgyz Republic. Unpublished
field report
The National Forum: Declaration: The National Sustainable Human Development Strategy of the Kyrgyz
Republic. Bishkek, May 28, 1997
UNCHS: Sustainable Human Settlements Development: Implementing Agenda 21. UNCHS Office of
Programme Coordination, Nairobi, 1994
United Nations: Kyrgyzstan: A Country in Transition - the UN Presence in Kyrgyzstan. UNDP, Bishkek, 1997
Zegar J S: The Impact of Economic Transformation on the Development of Rural Areas in Central and Eastern
European Countries. Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists; G H Peters
and D D Hedley Eds, Dartmouth, 1995d

SOURCE:
Adapted from: Munro-Faure, Paul 1998. “Rural-Urban Linkages in Eastern Europe: Krgyzstan .”
Paper presented at the International Workshop on Rural-Urban Linkages, Curitiba, Brazil, 10-13 March 1998.

LESSONS LEARNED

The Case Study gives an account of the changes experienced in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet
Union where the market economy is taking the place of socialist central planning. These changes include
agricultural restructuring and privatisation in the rural areas. In urban areas there are implications for land
management and planning practice. The study implies that several aspects of the socialist economy, such as the
central enforcement of large scale, often inefficient agriculture, resulted in high levels of rural population. The
collapse of the centrally planned structure and the need for agriculture to compete in a market economy have
created a picture that varies between countries. Frequently new individual owners, often with small parcels of
land, are faced with the choice of how to use their land; whether to engage or continue in agriculture, lacking
many of the required skills, with shortages of inputs and in a difficult economic environment. A common
interim approach for those already in agriculture has been to return to co-operative approaches to farming. The
prospects for agriculture are for declining levels of agricultural employment, and increasing moves to more
efficient private farming. In the short term, some transitional economies have seen movement from urban to
rural areas as a survival strategy ( Case Study 2, Romania). The trend in the longer term is likely, however, to
be in the reverse direction as the result of continuing weak agriculture sectors and better prospects for urban
based employment.

The effects of transition are also felt in the urban areas where there is often a shortage of available
residential accommodation, and where privatisation has produced inflexible residential property markets, partly
as a result of very high levels of owner-occupation. Plans and planning systems in urban areas are often based
on socialist ideals and are far removed from market economy based requirements. New accommodation, usually
relatively low-density single family housing, is, however, being developed by the newly wealthy in many
countries in an unplanned way on peri-urban land ripe for expansion.

CASE STUDY 8
POVERTY ALLEVIATION THROUGH RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES IN INDONESIA

The economic challenge in Indonesia is growing with inflation approaching 80 percent per annum and
unemployment rising sharply. The full effects of the economic crisis in changing the nature and distribution of
economic growth and poverty are not fully understood, but the Government is trying to document them more
fully. Promoting regional development remains a high priority especially given the economic hardships.
Many regions in Indonesia fail to develop primarily because they are inadequately connected to the
mainstream economy. Hence, rural areas with weak links to urban areas are handicapped in competing in
regional, national and international markets. This undermines motivation to produce, invest, raise productivity,
diversify production, or engage in new activities. The Government of Indonesia (GOI) with the supports of
United Nations Development Programme and United Nations Centre for Human Settlements attempts to look at
alternatives and have initiated a Poverty Alleviation Programme through Rural Urban Linkages (PARUL) pilot
programme to test concepts and approaches for strengthening rural-urban linkages in selected provinces and
districts. The programme has two phases, an initial Development Phase, which began in December 1997, and a
subsequent Implementation Phase, which began in January 1999. In it’s implementation phase the project name
has become Partnership for Local Economic Development (PLED).

The primary goal of PARUL is to strengthen rural-urban linkages to better integrate rural areas into
overall social and economic development by promoting a more balanced pattern of urban and rural
development. It aims to promote Local Economic Development (LED) of selected regions, and raise incomes
and create productive employment opportunities for poor households in less developed regions. Such options
are expected to benefit and strengthen the planned and ongoing initiatives of the GOI that will stimulate village
/ community development such as IDT, the Village Infrastructure Programme (VIP) and the Kecamatan
Development Fund (KDF).

The project is being applied in five pilot provinces in Indonesia have been selected for pilot studies.
They are: South Sulawesi, North Sulawesi, Irian Jaya (Sorong district), West Java (Lebak district), and DI
Yogyakarta. Pilot studies in these regions culminate in Action Plans to be implemented. Starting January 2000,
this programme was expanded to the provinces of Jambi, Lampung, and South East Sulawesi and to East Java,
Central Java, Bali, and DI Aceh.

PARUL applies an innovative methodology by focusing on the linkages between urban and rural
markets within a region and beyond, and by identifying specific development potentials. The programme will
generate Action Plans to promote production and trade for clusters of associated economic activities associated
with key export commodities. The programme supports local economic development based on export out of the
region and links small-scale producers to broader markets through collaboration with larger scale enterprises.
Central to this strategy is the formation of public and private partnerships to facilitate collaboration between
government, private firms, farmers and other members of civil society in designing and implementing actions
and initiatives. The immediate objectives of the Implementation Phase are:
1. To enhance the capacity of central and local institutions led by broad-based public-private-civic
partnership, to design and execute plans and strategies for strengthening rural-urban linkages.
2. To develop and implement policies, programs and projects that support the strengthening of linkages
for production and trade between rural and urban areas, and;
3. To facilitate replication in other areas of the country by assisting the Government and international
donors to adopt the rural-urban linkage approach in other projects concerned with innovative
approaches to poverty alleviation and regional development.

It is expected that the programme will directly benefit the staff of central and local government
agencies and national research institutes concerned with regional planning, economic development, project
finance, and certain programs for poverty alleviation. Moreover, private sector organizations, poor urban and
rural households, and NGOs will directly benefit from the programme through the anticipated increase in
production and income levels.

Thus far, the programme has established public-private partnerships at the provincial and district level
in all pilot regions and is at an initial stage of implementation of proposals for actions and initiatives to expand
production and trade among clusters of associated economic activities. It is too early to assess the impact of this
approach on poverty alleviation through promoting rural and urban economic linkages. However, it is expected
that improved insights into urban-rural interactions at the national, regional and local levels and the overall
framework for applying a rural-urban linkage approach to planning economic development will have practical
applications in other projects and that PARUL will contribute significantly towards formulating a national
strategy for poverty alleviation, regional development, and response to the economic crisis in Indonesia.

SOURCE:
Dr. Kawik Sugiana, National Project Manager - PARUL (NPO), Government of Indonesia BAPPENAS
United Nations Development Programme UNDP
United Nations Centre for Human Settlements UNCHS, Project INS/97/021

LESSONS LEARNED

Rural areas that are poorly connected to urban areas lack the capacity to compete in the regional,
national and international markets. They lack proper information and signals to produce, invest, raise
productivity, diversify production, and engage in new activities. Needed efforts to strengthen the position of
rural areas in the mainstream economy include:
1. Identifying development potentials,
2. Arranging for promoting production,
3. Market, and marketing of goods for export to other regions, and
4. Identifying actors who are involved and could be collaborated with to design and implement the
programme with success.

CASE STUDY 9
MANAGING DIVERSE STAKEHOLDERS: LAND USE MANAGEMENT AT THE URBAN FRINGE
IN ASIA AND SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Land Consolidation in Indonesia

The Land Consolidation Programme implemented in Indonesia during the 1990s is an example of
government intervention to promote public participation to ensure the orderly development of rapidly growing,
existing and new areas, and the planned development of relatively vacant areas in rural/urban fringes that were
expected to develop into residential areas. 1
 One characteristic underlying the success of the Land Consolidated Programme is it’s two pronged
approach which combines centralised and decentralised planning through a top-down land planning process
combined with stakeholder decision making at the local level.

Functionally, the Government acts as a facilitator, mediator or organiser, or somewhat of a “project

packager”. The process is conducted under the authority of the National Land Agency, involving its offices at
national, provincial and municipal levels. However, because land consolidation is a local development policy, it
gives the Mayor or Head of Regency the authority to determine the location of land consolidation areas, and to
manage and account the process. Several other agencies are involved through inter-agency teams and task
forces to support implementation. At the local and project level, the key actors in the land consolidation process
are the private owners of the land and, in case of state land, owner and/or occupiers of the land in case it is a
state owned land.

The minimum requirement for implementing a land consolidation project is that at least 85 percent of
landowners whose land covers not less than 85 percent of the total land area give their agreement. The
approach is similar to land pooling or readjustment projects as all participants contribute in the development by
providing land for infrastructure and services. The amount of land a participant is required to give up in the
process is determined by consensus among all participants. This is the most critical issue. Very small
landowners who cannot contribute land can alternatively contribute in money or labour. The land contribution
is used for providing infrastructure facilities and utilities and to building up a pool of "Cost Equivalent Land"
(CEL). The CEL can be used only by such participants whose lands are very small and take a part from it to
enlarge their land parcels against payments of compensations as determined by consensus amongst all
participants in the land consolidation project. The management of the land consolidated fund collected as
compensation and from compensation paid as substitute for land contribution are administered by the special
treasury of the regency / municipality"2

Land Management in the Urban Fringe of Cameroon: The Mbanga-Japoma Project

In the urban fringes of sub-Saharan Francophone African cities, arrangements for the provision of land
for housing are different from those observed in Asia, or in Latin America, mainly because land tenure and land
management systems are different (UNCHS-Habitat, 1999). They are characterised by the importance of
customary tenure in the urban fringes and by the subsequent development of large-scale informal commercial
subdivisions. Although they are still the main providers of land for housing in the rural-urban fringe of most
cities, customary owners’ rights and practices are rarely formally recognised by the State.

Mbanga-Japoma is a guided land development project that is being implemented in Douala, Cameroon
where most of the peri-urban land is claimed by ‘customary owners’. The aim of the Mbanga-Japoma project is
to provide serviced land at a reasonable price and to reconcile formal and customary development practices. It is
carried out in partnership with public institutions, private investors and customary owners.

The land covers 160 hectares located 30 km from the city centre, 120 hectares are feasible for
development. Phase 1 of the project (1995-1998) covers 50 hectares. Development principles are as follows:
public and parastatal institutions and formal private investors set up a partnership. Customary owners are
closely associated in the development project. The partnership develops the site with primary and secondary
infrastructure services (roads, water, sewerage and drainage, electricity), thus delineating large blocks of land of
1 to 8 hectares each. After development, the developer gives back 45 percent of the land to customary land
owners and keeps 55 percent Blocks of land are then subdivided, serviced and sold, either by the developer or
by customary owners. The final cost of a serviced plot is much lower than the cost of those provided by the
formal private sector.

There are a number of unresolved problems namely, who is eligible to buy a plot in such projects and
how to make it accessible to the low income groups. Other problems such as how to limit speculative behaviour
in the project itself and in the surrounding areas and how to deal with corruption and clientelism have not been
resolved. However, this project approach opens new perspectives for partnerships in managing rural-urban land
use in the context of sub-Saharan African cities.
REFERENCES:
1, 2
Oetomo, A and Kusbiantoro B.S. 1998. Improving urban management in Indonesia. In, Ansari, Jamal H.,
and Von Einsiedel Nathaniel, Editors. Ibid. pp. 97-116.
Ansari, Jamal H., and Von Einsiedel Nathaniel, Editors. Urban land management. Improving policies and
practices in developing countries of Asia. UNCHS, 1998, 291 p.
Durand-Lasserve, A. Gestion foncière à l'échelle des régions urbaines : quelques questions sur les rapports entre
le rural et l'urbain. In : Land and rural/urban linkages in the 21st Century. Proceedings of the
Conference, Istanbul, June 1996. Nairobi, pp. 3-15
Durand-Lasserve, Alain. Partnerships betwen public sector and informal actors: Some comments on Asian and
sub-Saharan African case studies. In: Payne, Geoffrey, Editor. Making Common Ground, 1999, pp134-152
Durand-Lasserve A. and Clerc, V. Regularization and integration of irregular settlements : lessons from
experience. Urban Management Programme Working paper N° 6, UNCHS-The World Bank, 1996. 94p.
Payne, Geoffrey, Editor. Making Common Ground. Public-Private partnership in land for housing. Intermediate
Technology Publicatios Ltd, London, October 1999. 256 p.
Payne, G.K. Urban land tenure and property rights in developing countries: a review. Intermediate Technology
Publications / Overseas Development Administration. London, 1997.
United Nations Centre for Human Settlements-Habitat. Proceedings of the Seminar on: Amenagement foncier
urbain et gouvernance locale en Afrique francophone. Enjeux et opportunites apres la Conference Habitat
II. Ouagadougou, 20-23 avril 1999. Forthcoming, 2000.
United Nations Centre for Human Settlements -Habitat, FIABCI, FIG : Land and rural/urban linkages in the
21st Century. Proceedings of the Conference, Istanbul, June 1996. Nairobi, 77p.

SOURCE:
Alain Durand Lasserve, 1998. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France

LESSONS LEARNED

The development of land on the rural-urban fringe in Indonesia shows centralisation of authority at the
national level and decentralisation of power to the mayoral level for the choice of location of land and
consolidation areas. Collaboration is established between several agencies to support implementation. The key
actors at the local and project levels are private owners of the land and, in case of state owned land, owners or
occupiers of the land. All participants contribute in the development by providing land for infrastructure either
by contributing land or equivalent amount of money.

The Cameroon, Mbanga-Japoma project shows the cost effectiveness of work when contemporary and
customary development practices are combined. Through partnership with public institutions, private investors
and customary owners, primary and secondary infrastructure services are developed resulting in the final cost of
the serviced land coming out to be cheaper than the market price.

CASE STUDY 10
RURAL-REVITALISATION THROUGH COMMUNITY EFFORT IN FINLAND

Economic growth in Finland in the mid-1960s led to movement of people out of rural areas to urban
areas and other countries. With schools closing down, shopkeepers going bankrupt and local post offices
closing, many villagers recognised that what was good for Finnish economic competitiveness was not good for
Finnish villages. In the early 1970s village revitalisation communities sprang from the grassroots in western
Finland. Since then the rural revitalisation movement has grown tremendously, today there are 3000 village
communities with around 30,000 people running the day to day activities in villages.

Village communities started with practically no money and organised around a tradition of voluntary
work called the talkoot. This turned out to be an effective substitute for money as it was psychologically
rewarding and engaging of village members. Through voluntary work villagers improve roads and recreational
facilities, run small shops, schools, post offices and essential services. At the core of the program is the
reconstitution of local cultural heritage through the revival of local festivals and customs, exhibitions at newly
established local museums. Villagers wrote the history of the towns and contacted the people that once lived
there inviting them back to the village. Municipalities were persuaded to buy land for the newcomers. These
were often sold at a symbolic price.

These efforts were done without support from developers who initially trivialised these activities on
the grounds that since they were not economically productive would not contribute to economic growth, they
could not revive small towns. Yet the success of these efforts have proved differently. The 3000 village
committees have been very successful at attracting people and have impacted the lives of about half a million
people in Finland. Many villages succeeded in surpassing the minimum school population targets to keep
municipal schools open. Two core components make this strategy successful:

Villages promote themselves aggressively. Education is essential to the strategy. For example,
through frequent theatre productions they try to raise the status of agriculture, recreate the image of rural life,
and de-romanticise the commonly accepted images of city life.

The Finnish villagers work from the premise that it is not sufficient or sustainable to simply promote
commercialisation and industrialisation in villages, rather it is important for people to share in a real social and
cultural identity for small towns to survive. They have demonstrated that revitalisation schemes need to invest
in social and cultural resources in order to work.

The success of these village societies is now being recognised and villages are beginning to receive
fiscal support from municipalities. For example, municipal authorities have received European Union subsidies
for a development project involving eight villages. The Sanki Village signed a contract with the municipal
authorities, which makes it responsible for the provision of certain services, such as setting up day care centres
for children and health care for the elderly. This support can provide the economic base to help struggling
villages to make the transition into also becoming economically rewarding places to live.

SOURCE:
Pietila, Hilkka. 1997

LESSONS LEARNED

Finnish villages experienced depopulation and closing down of services. The innovative minds of the
villagers worked to the benefit of rural-urban linkages by bringing back some of those who have migrated to
urban areas. There are three implications of this case study. One, voluntary work of the community members
could lay the foundation of revitalisation of a place by developing social services and recreational facilities.
Two, conviviality of a place depends also upon history, local customs and festivals, and three, government
support of voluntary communal activities can further lead to government’s collaboration with the community
and bringing in funds, receiving subsidies for development projects, and providing services and employment
opportunities.

Within the community the hidden strengths of both the genders, if brought to the
surface, could pool in the resources. Women have potential to lend support to local rural
development. In the case of Nigeria, women have stronger market and trade associations
especially in the southwest and east (Case Study 1, Nigeria). Community based
organisations are also stronger there, and further, physical developments are more and
poverty lower in that region than North, where people exert tremendous leverage on the
machinery of government. In Africa where migration is male dominated and rural female-
headed households tend to constitute a greater portion of the rural poor. A gender based
development approach, which encourages women’s participation, can augment the stock of
benefits that rural-urban linkages could provide (For details, please see pg. 19 and 20).

Establishing collaboration with the private sector, encouraging remittance investment,

supporting community activities through financial help, technical and organisation skills,
setting up mechanism for evaluation, and facilitating the role of women by encouraging them
and not discriminating against them can improve rural-urban linkages and subsequent
benefits accruing from it.

ƒ Training and technical support to conduct business

Knowledge is a source of power. And one of the purposes of developing rural-urban

linkages is to empower people and build their capacity for sustainable development. For
R&D and for running other businesses, training of local people and technical support is
necessary. Rural programmes geared to learning about agribusiness can educate families to
find local niches in agriculture (Case Study 11, Brazil). “Agricultural Familiar House” of the
Rural Village Programme in Parana, Brazil enrolls villagers of age 14 and above to a 3-year
diploma course. Members were trained in Nepal (Case Study 4, Nepal) in procedures of
meeting conduction, minute writing, bookkeeping, group registration procedures and bank
account opening and operation with the view to dig out the capacity of the people for success
in the undertaking.

Several urban best practices have demonstrated that training is needed for human
development. Training for developing leadership and organisational qualities is imperative
for any functioning when it comes to working in the form of an organisation / group /
cooperative. External support in the form of NGOs cannot be always there. Sustainability of
acts reckons it important to transfer the skills so that the programme functions successfully
when the support is removed so that people could take charge of their lives.

ƒ Translating migrant remittances into rural development with poverty reduction

Migrants are instrumental in developing many social services and financing

agricultural activities. Better services, such as, health clinics, community services and
improved social environment may help to lure in migrant and their remittances back to the
migrants’ place of origin not just for household consumption needs, but also for investment
in production and the enterprise and regional scale (Case Study 3, Eastern and Southern
Africa and Case Study 10, Finland). Finnish villages managed to bring back some of the
people who originally hailed from those villages. Villagers improve roads and recreational
facilities, run small shops, schools, post offices and essential services, which made the
villages attractive and convenient place to live.
 ƒ Improving multi-stranded spatial linkages and networks

Intervillage linkages increase the propensity for exchange of goods and services
within a region. The access to schools, storage and preservation facilities, and other services
is also heightened. Building roads is beneficial when villages are linked to and interact with
more than one urban centre. Access to regional and national urban networks widens market
potential and may also help to TEXT BOX 12
overcome monopolistic BENEFITS FROM IMRPROVED RURAL-URBAN
markets. It provides a wider TRANSPORT LINKAGES
range of alternative income-
earning opportunities for In the villages of Menies and Pengkelakmas, located in East
various members of rural Lombak, Java, Indonesia, the construction of a bridge and secondary
road connecting the two villages to the kabupaten (regency) road will
households. A study of enable trucks to come to Pengkelakmas. This will greatly improve
villages in Indonesia (Text flows of interaction with villagers to carry their products to the main
Box 12), reveals expectations road for delivery to middlemen (Douglass, 1998). Fishermen in the
in increased market potential adjacent village also hope to be able to sell their catch to urban centres
and higher incomes. Villages on the island. With increased market potential, incomes are expected
of Samboir are already to go up a swell as more products can be sold in a shorter space of
time.
enjoying accessibility to A similar research on the villages of Samboir Lama and Teta,
schools. It formerly took 3 located in the hills above Bima in Nusa Tenggara Barat, describes that
hours one way to walk to the these villages have just had new roads built that now links them to the
school, and with minibus it kabupaten road. As with all villages receiving road projects,
expectations are high that commercial sales of village products will go
takes up and, along with increased access to schools and public services, so
approximately 20 minutes to will general income and welfare. Minibuses now come three times a
reach the same lowland day to the villages, although they do not as yet seem to be well timed
vicinity of the school. for the two-shifts of school.

SOURCE: Mike Douglass, 1998

CASE STUDY 11
RURAL VILLAGES PROGRAMME IN PARANA, BRAZIL

In a partnership between the municipalities where the rural exodus problem is a fact, the government
of Parana is implementing Rural Villages. They provide soil for migrant farmlands to once more take root,
grating sustenance to their families, “holding” them in the fields with dignity and year-round work. The Rural
Village have defined lots averaging 5 thousand square meters and an initial 44 square meter house module, so
that dwellers may eventually enlarge it according to their needs, tastes, and regional usages.

In Rural Village, families ensured shelter and work cultivate their land in the off-season. To guarantee
the success of this new direction in life, workers and their families receive technical support, training and input,
through multidisciplinary efforts that involve mainly four State Secretaries: Housing, Agriculture and Supply,
Children and Family Affairs, and Labour.

To qualify for the programme, the head of the family must be 55 at most, having lived in the
municipality for over three years, have no real property and work as a temporary farmland earning between one
and three minimum wages. Rural Villages are built, on average, within six months. After being admitted, under
a loan for use agreement, families pay a permanence fee for 30 months, so they have time enough to till the
land, sow and harvest, within their new horizon. After that period, families that have adapted sign a 25-year
credit agreement to be rapid in installments not above 15 percent of the family income.
 Rural Villages, whenever possible, are located close to rural districts, taking advantage of the existing
infrastructure such as schools, health care centres, and shops, so as not to overburden municipalities with the
construction of new facilities, and also to ensure social exchange with other inhabited nuclei. The program in
being implemented preferably in areas with a high concentration of temporary rural labour, as the cotton-and
sugar cane-producing regions.

To participate in the programme the municipality must grant the land needed, after approved by
technical and agriculture feasibility studies. The State Government funds the purchase of the land by passing on
to the municipality 75 percent of the land price, payable in 48 installments after a grace period of one year. The
25 percent balance corresponds to the State counterpart funds. Infrastructure works are provided by state
agencies, such as CODAPAR (streets), COPEL (electricity), and SANEPAR (water and sewerage). The
municipality provides machinery and m when needed, labour. SEAB provides each Rural Village with a
chicken coop and a shed to store tools and produce.

Houses are built in the self-managed system, allowing future dwellers to define their own house. In this
system, selected families know which lot and house will be theirs, because they are drawn before work starts.
Self-management is based on human nature, leading human beings take better care of what they possess. Thus,
future dwellers are entitled to choose their plot in the Rural Village area, as well as the plan of their choice.
They may use the building material they like, buy it where convenient, and employ the labour needed. The
module alternative plans were devised to allow different locations and future additions in any direction of the
plot. Other advantages of self management is job generation in each regional labour market, as well as the
warming up of municipal economies with sale of building materials. In three years, the Government of Parana
generated 126 thousand jobs in housing and a 20 percent to 30 percent warm-up of the local building material
markets.

SOURCE: Osni Tadeu de Oliveira, Chief of Protocol, Secretaria Especial da Politica Habitacional COHAPAR
Rua Marechal Deodoro, 1133 CEP 80-060-010, Estado do Parana, Brazil

LESSONS LEARNED

Rural poverty is a package of several interlinked elements, which could only be addressed by
collaboration of actions of municipalities and local jurisdictions having responsibilities over each issue. The
Rural Villages Programme, Parana, is an example of collaboration of several municipalities in the direction of
providing cultivation land, shelter, technical support, soft loans, training and development of management
skills, and input. Soft repayment installments and locating rural village near infrastructure, schools, other social
services ensured that the villagers have access to the facilities that are usually in the urban areas and also that
they enjoy security of land ownership. These steps provide alternatives and life chances to rural people within
the rural region for which, otherwise, they stay only as long as it takes them to muster up the resources needed
for migrating to metropolitan centres. By addressing these issues, several other linkages were developed such
as, jobs in each regional labour market and boost in the business of building materials in the construction
industry.

POLICY INITIATIVES: GENERATING RURAL-URBAN SYNERGIES FOR POVERTY REDUCTION AND

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Against the backdrop of the above discussion and lessons, the intervention to reduce
poverty from the rural areas with regard to rural-urban linkages can be summarised under six
major policy areas:
 1. Strengthening capacities of regional / local government.
2. Encouraging participatory modes of development, fostering gender sensitive
approaches, and enabling collaboration among all stakeholders.
3. Localising production linkages to diversify local economies
4. Assisting in the formation of group co-operatives / enterprises.
5. Providing public infrastructure and urban and rural services.
6. Ensuring safety and security of the movement of people, goods and capital.

ƒ Strengthening capacities of regional / local government:

The fate of rural regions is written in distant capital cities nationally or internationally
with regard to the role they play in the global economy. Strengthening the institutional
capacity of the regional and local governments is the biggest stumbling block because of
which the rural regions lag behind in development. Decentralising the process of
government, reinforcing the financial, human, and administrative capacities, instituting a
democratic way, holding those who are in power accountable and installing a participatory
mechanism for including community with their pluralistic viewpoints, the linkages will
benefit rural as well as urban regions.

ƒ Encouraging participatory modes of development, promoting gender

sensitive approaches, and enabling collaboration among all stakeholders:

Acknowledging differential power relations, and establishing the mechanism for co-
operation, identifying and involving stakeholders and concerned jurisdictions and sectors in
planning in implementing and decision making will provide avenues for participatory
democracy. Collaboration with business enterprises, local community could extend the
capacity of state and local government. By sharing power, the energies, capacities and
talents of the weak, poor and the powerful are channeled in one direction to profit all
stakeholders. Concerns for managing environmental resources also come to the surface and
there are greater chances of resource conservation and environmental management measures
to be unanimously adopted by the community members regionally and nationally as well as
by the international community who have diverse interests and exercise varying degree of
power.

ƒ Localisaing production linkages to diversify local economies

Training / technical support in promoting business, establish Research and Development and
give rural education geared to develop local multiplier effects:

The lack of backward and forward linkages is one of the greatest limitations in
promoting a more dynamic process of rural-urban development. Production and
manufacturing activities need to be extended in scope and scale. By only looking at the
crops, the rural areas cannot be saved from destitution. Research and development is needed
for innovation in production processes, products and product design, and marketing. Rural
education programmes, training of local participants and technical support is required for
incorporating local knowledge and devising local changes in production and marketing.

Establishing data collection and information system:

Rural areas are underdeveloped, in part, because decisions taken about their
economies and welfare flow from the capital city or abroad rather than from local sources of
information. By establishing data collection and information system, information regarding
existing opportunities and potentials in rural areas and urban areas and urban centres in rural
regions could be made available to the people to utilise the knowledge in developing there
specific businesses. Television and radio could serve the purpose of disseminating a two-
way exchange of thoughts and knowledge. Rural production level could be tuned to the
demand assessment of specific urban centres and, simultaneously, functions of rural towns
and urban centres could be synchronised with rural productivity. This flow of information
will help making the two regions as mutually interdependent rather than existing alone within
the national boundary.

Providing credit to community members and local enterprises:

Financial flows to villages are typically on a people-to-people basis rather than on

institutional basis. This is often not enough to invest in business enterprises. Banks and
credit associations are needed for start-up upstream—basic agriculture and manufacturing
industries / downstream—processing, marketing, advertising activities. Credit is needed for
even maintaining the existing agricultural productivity by maintaining land ownership of
small-scale producers and further assisting them to purchase land and keep good agricultural
land in production. The community can also make revolving credit arrangement, which can
be assisted by NGOs and government / private businesses.

ƒ Assisting in the formation of group co-operatives / enterprises:

For rural producers to form groups / enterprises / co-operatives are a prerequisite to

creating a sustainable production base in rural areas. Diversifying production, maintaining
consistent levels of supplies, and credit for agriculture all require cooperative association
among the producers. Together, the producers could achieve economies of scale for inputs
and / or processing of activities, transporting to markets, and could further scale up
production and manufacturing.

ƒ Providing public infrastructure and urban and rural services:

Improved spatial linkages impact the movement of goods, people and capital.
Villages when linked with one another through local feeder roads and bridges in addition to
highways and with more than one urban centre widen market potential and overcome
monopolistic market practices. Low fare village-town bus system also provides a critical
level of interaction of people and exchange of goods within the rural region. Access to
agriculture support activities and social services gets improved and could also be shared
amongst villages located close to each other. Better connectivity of villages to urban areas
and improved social services pull migrants to touch base more frequently. Development of
infrastructure and services should be in complement with the policies stated earlier to prevent
the adverse affects of connectivity from occurring.

ƒ Ensuring safety and security of the movement of people, goods and capital:

To draw benefits from the provision of infrastructure also entails political stability.
Migrants invest in social development, agricultural activities and often directly involve in
cultivation of crops. Safe journeys, provision of services and infrastructure, and stable
political climate can encourage urban dwellers to go home, and / or invest and thus
strengthen their ties. Ensuring safety of travelers, their property and investment is vital to all
benefits that spatial linkages could provide.

4. CONCLUSION

The purpose of this publication is to construct policy frameworks for rural regional
planning by developing positive rural-urban linkages. The linkages need to be developed not
just for the future of cities, but also for the future of rural areas. Large urban agglomerations
in developing countries continue to receive the bulk of rural-urban population shifts. By
diversifying regional economy within agriculture and macro spatial shift to favour a more
decentralised pattern of urbanisation in the rural regions, standards of living, and the quality
of human life in rural and urban areas could be improved. The neglect of rural urban towns
and small cities, is the predominant weakness in rural-urban linkages because of which
opportunities of development are missed and rural regions fail to retain their population and
improve the life chance of those who stay.

Localised rural-urban network depends upon rural potential, which is embedded in

both “absolute space”---the nature of its own human and physical resources and their
development, and “relative space”---its degree of connectivity to larger urban and regional
systems. The rural regions are poor because they do not seize the opportunities existing in
rural resources and do not establish connections with the surrounding areas. By doing this
rural regions have closed their doors to prosperity. Localisation of linkages in terms of
strengthening hinterland production capabilities, including localized transportation linkages,
and, by extension, greater local public sector capacity to plan in concert with local private
initiatives and opportunities and with regard to regional resource endowments and human
talent is what rural regions need to save them from destitution.

The missed and undiscovered opportunities for national economic resilience and
sustainability of rural towns and villages need capturing through decentralisation.
Decentralisation of resources and decision-making power is the steppingstone to minimise
the worsening situation the publication has talked about. Sharing of power is not possible
without sincere willingness at the state level and committed stewardship at the regional and
the local level.

The rural regional planning framework proposed here is an attempt to overcome the
rural urban divide by embracing it and hence, creating a more resilient regional economy,
which will yield benefits to both the urban area and the rural region. The linkage approach
will improve the life chances of people wherever they live so that migration is not a matter of
mere survival, but a matter of choice among many options for improvement.
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