This is not a myth
globally since most poverty is still in rural areas. For most African
and many Asian nations, most poverty is in rural areas. But it is
no longer so in Latin America (or Europe and North America). Nor
does the fact that there is more poverty in rural areas mean that
urban poverty should be ignored - and an increasing proportion of
those who suffer absolute poverty worldwide live in urban areas.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, there
was a recognition among international agencies that most of their
projects were bringing little or no benefit to poor rural dwellers.
At this time, three quarters of the population of low and middle
income nations were in rural areas. Quite rightly, new priorities
were set which gave agriculture and rural livelihoods more importance.
However, this also resulted in an 'anti-urban' sentiment which meant
that urban poverty was ignored or was assumed to be insignificant.
In addition, the key role that well-governed urban centres had in
supporting more prosperous economies (see above) was ignored. This
continues to the present, even though the urban population in Africa,
Asia and Latin America has grown by 200 percent since 1970 while
the rural population has grown by only 44 percent.
The scale of the urban population within
low and middle income nations is often forgotten. For instance,
Africa is still assumed to be overwhelmingly rural but two in five
Africans now live in urban areas. Africa now has a larger urban
population than North America. It has twice as many children living
in urban areas as... (the full
text is available in the pdf file)
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