The Role of Urbanization in Social Change in Asia

The analysis of urbanization in post-World War II period in Asia, and of urbanization in the Third World generally, has been vitiated by having been poured into the mould of, what has come to be widely known, as the 'over-urbanization' thesis. Taking the pattern of urbanization that developed in West Europe and North America in the nineteenth century (ending in 1914) as the norm for all urhanization in time and space, this thesis characterised urbanization in the Third World as 'over', abnormal, unhealthy and ultimately disastrous.