About the role of urban growth in the balance of development

Abstract

The growth of towns was a favourite target for experts on African affairs. Colonial authorities denounced it as the source of all evils found tarnishing the ideal picture they wanted to present of the territories in their care. Anti-colonial authors branded it as a diabolical colonial invention. In view of such a background of such unanimous condemnation, urban centres should have been regarded as, to say the least, largely responsible for unbalanced development. The reason it hardly was so is that the whole field of regional balance was left almost unexplored. Even today, the subject offered for consideration at this seminar remains so new, that so far as towns are concerned, we only can throw a few glances at it, dividing our views into two parts, one on the general effect of urban expansion, one on the peculiar case of cities described as "primates".