This book will help readers in getting a better picture of the characteristics of many rural and urban settlements in India which are changing. The adoption of a regional approach to planning by many governments in the world has helped in reducing spatial inequalities in social, economic and physical development. In their quest to implement development policies, national governments and international assistance agencies are showing greater concern for the spatial aspects of national development planning. And as might be expected they attempted initially to implement prescriptions for spatial planning derived from the experiences of the industrialized countries. This aspect of transferential development was less than successful since many such prescriptions were not amenable to direct transfer and others required careful adaptation to a new context.
Moreover, not uncommonly, national spatial planning was beset by fads and shortlived experiments, by severe conflicts such as those between the proponents of centralization strategies and the advocates of decentralization policies, and by the near universal condemnation of the rate of Third World urbanization. Eventually, ". . . dissatisfaction with traditional theories of spatial development, based on the Western concept of center-periphery relationships, . . . set in motion the search for alternative strategies," particularly during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Among the international assistance agencies, officials in developing countries and development theorists, integrated urban-rural development came increasingly to be seen as an important means of overcoming some of the most intransigent problems besetting regional development and the mitigation of rural poverty.
- Publisher
