A Decentralized Approach to Urbanization: The Case of Syria

This article is concerned with urban-ization strategies in Third World countries and their effects on the di-rection of urbanization and on re-ducing regional and urban-rural dis-parities. The article considers Syria and documents that urbanization has not slowed down during the past two-and-a-half decades, but that its direction has shifted from the largest cities to regional and secondary cit-ies. It is argued that the reasons for this shift are equity considerations in the allocation of resources and a strong sense of regional loyalties at the national level, as well as the util-ization of national planning to im-prove the socioeconomic and exter-nal economies of secondary and regional cities. Riad G. Mahayni is a Professor m the Depart-ment of Community and Regional Planning at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. His current research effort is focusing on urbanization and development planning in the Middle East and on planning theory.