Reviews

Reactions to this volume will depend, at least initially, on one's view of the practicality and usefulness of comparative international research on urbanization. This reviewer, despite the immense difficulties of obtaining suitable data on urban areas in different countries, and the dangers inherent in transferring research and policy experience from one sociopolitical environment to another, considers such studies to be potentially valuable and intellectually challenging. This volume, one of several recent contributions to this area of research, contains the proceedings of an international conference on urban development held in Rotterdam in September 1979 as part of the fiftieth anniversary of the Netherlands Economic Institute. Following a brief introduction and a more extended discussion of theoretical issues by Klaassen and Scimeni, ten rather varied papers, grouped in four sections, examine aspects of urbanization in the developing countries, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and North America (read United States), respectively. In part II, Jansen and Paelinck undertake a statistical (that is, regression) analysis of the factors influencing differences in levels of urbanization and primacy in sixty-two developing countries. They show that levels of urbanization vary directly with the stage of economic development, and primacy with the degree of external trade dependence. Hardoy then looks at the history and changing perception o