new series
25*26
community development
international issue of
In te rn a tio n a l R ev iew o f C om m u n ity D evelop m en t
International Edition of «Centro Sociale»Sponsored by the «Adriano Olivetti» Foundation
Advisory Board
A. Ardigò, Istitu to di Sociologia, Università di Bologna - G. Balandier, Sorbonne, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris - R. Bauer,Società Um anitaria, Milano - L. Benevolo,Facoltà di A rchitettura, Università di Venezia - M. Berry, International Federation of Settlem ents, New York - F. Botts, FAO, Roma - G. Calogero,Istituto di Filosofia, Università di Roma - M. Calogero Comandini,CEPAS, Roma - V. Casara, Ministero Pubblica Istruzione, Roma - G. Cigliano, Istituto Sviluppo Edilizia Sociale, Roma - E. Clunies-Ross. Institute of Education, University of London - H. Desroche, Sorbonne, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris - /. Dumazedier, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris - A. Dunham, School of Social Work (Emeritus), University of Michigan - M. Fichera, Fondazione « A. Olivetti », Roma - E. Hytten, Div. Social Affairs, UN, Geneva - F. Lombardi, Istituto di Filosofia, Università di Roma - E. Lopes Cardozo, State University of Utrecht - A. Meister, Sorbonne, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris - L. Miniclier, Inter national Cooperation Administration, Washington - G. Molino, Amministrazione Attività Assi stenziali Italiane e Internazionali, Roma — G. Motta, Fondazione « A. Olivetti », Ivrea - R. Nisbet, Dept, of Sociology, University of California - C. Pellizzi, Istituto di Sociologia, Università di Firenze - E. Pusic, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb - L. Quaroni, Facoltà di Architet tura, Università di Roma - M.G. Ross, University of Toronto - M. Rossi-Doria, Osservato- rio di Economia Agraria, Università di Napoli - U. Serafini, Presidenza Consiglio Comuni d’Europa, Roma - M. Smith, London Council of Social Service - /. Spencer, Dept, of Social Work, University of Edinburgh - A. Todisco, Fondazione « A. Olivetti », Ivrea - A. Visalberghi, Istituto di Filosofia, Università di Roma - P. Volponi, Fondazione « A. Olivetti », Ivrea - E. de Vries, Institute of Social Studies (Emeritus), The Hague - A. Zucconi, CEPAS, Roma.
Editor : Anna M . Levi - Editorial Assistant : Ernesta Rogers Vacca Editing and Management Offices: Piazza Cavalieri di Malta, 2
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A l l rights reserved. The Editors do n ot hold them selves resp onsible fo r the views expressed by con tributors.
C en tro S o c ia le a. XVIII, n. 97-99 - Abbonamento a 6 num eri annui L. 4.000 - Estero L. 5.500 ($ 8,50) — un numero L. 800; arretrati il doppio — sped. in abbon. postale gruppo IV
In te rn a tio n a l R e v ie w
o f C om m u n ity D ev elop m en t, n. 2 5 -2 6 ,
S p rin g 1971
International Issue of « Centro Sociale », a. X V III, n. 97-99
C ontents - S o m m a ire - In d ice
Socio-Economic Problems of Latin America
P. R. Odell 3 A European View on Regional Development and Planning
in Latin America.
C. A. Vapñarsky 23 Recent Growth and Spatial Distribution Trends of the Latin
American Population.
M. C. Robirosa 49 Internal Migration, Human Resources, and Employment
within the Context of Urbanization.
J. C. Neffa 67 Le syndacalisme latino-américain devant le problème de
l’emploi. R. O.Basaldúa y
O. A. Moreno 93 La región en los procesos de planificación Latinos Americanos. Estructura institucional y bases jurídicas.
O. Oszlak 109 Agrarian Reform in Latin America: A Political Approach.
R. Cardona
Gutierrez 129 Mejoramento de tugurios y asentamientos no controlados. Los aspectos sociales.
M. J. Cavarozzi 149 Mechanisms of Political Power in Latin America: Sug
gestions for a New Conceptual Framework.
J. Nun 175 Proposte per lo studio della marginalità e della partecipa
zione in America Latina. Specific Problems
G. Mottura 213 Ancora su partecipazione e potere: osservazioni sulle pro
spettive del nuovo riformismo.
R. M. Kramer 221 The Influence of Sponsorship, Professionalism and the
Civic Culture on the Theory and Practice of Community Development.
E. Borghese 237
A.C.Twelvetrees 259
G. Riches 271
281
Aiuti all’insegnamento nei paesi sottosviluppati: dimensioni, tendenze e problemi negli ultimi anni.
An Exploratory Study of Community Associations Based on Four Areas of Edinburgh.
A Process of Community Development? Functions of Com munity Centres in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Riassunti italiani - English Summaries
R in gra zia m o l’ Istitu to T orcu a to D i T e lia di B u en os A i r e s , cui è do vu ta la scelta di tutti gli articoli che costitu iscon o la se z io n e d el p r e se n te volu m e dedicata ai “ P r o b le m i socio - econ om ici d ell’ A m e r ic a L a tin a ” ,
T h a n k s a re due to th e In stitu to T orcu a to D i T elia , B u en os A i r e s , fo r h aving org a n ized an d chosen th e a rtic les con ta in ed in th e section o f this volu m e d evoted to th e “ S ocio-econ om ic P r o b le m s o f L a tin A m e r ic a ” ,
A E u rop ea n V ie w on R e g io n a l D ev elop m en t
an d P la n n in g in L a tin A m e rica
b y P e te r R . O dell
The “ average ” West European looks at the problems of regional development and planning in Latin America with certain prejudices which arise out of his
accumulated experiences of European style environments and societies. The
prejudices are difficult to put aside even for those of us who would attempt to make a cool, scientific appraisal of the situation. Our difficulties in! com prehending and evaluating realistically the structure and nature of the regional problem in Latin America arise particularly out of two attributes of our European milieu. Firstly, they derive from our basic familiarity with a geo graphical situation in which the existence of unused and/or unpopulated parts of national territories is the exception rather than the rule; and secondly, from the existence of a general political and social consensus for the idea of an equitable geographical distribution of incomes and of job opportunities. Com bined with these aspects, moreover, are the further difficulties arising from contrasts in the size of the national entities in the two continents (see Table 1). Thus, the impact of great distances, and hence of transport costs, which have to be taken into account in any consideration of the geographical distribution of economic activities over large national territories — as well as the marked influence of regional politics in large countries — make our consideration of the spatial structure of many Latin American countries an exercise well outside the range of our European experience.
There are, however, in Latin America, as Table 1 shows, a large number of countries of roughly the same geographical scale as that of most European nations. But similarity in geographical size of national territories eliminates only one element of contrast. Most European countries have well-structured geographical patterns of activities, with all their territories more or less com pletely integrated into the national socio-economic system through effective administration, comprehensive communications and transport facilities and a hierarchy of cities and towns which between them share the availability of jobs in secondary and tertiary economic activities. Consequently, regional dif ferences in average per capita income are rather small. By way of contrast, Latin American countries such as the Dominican Republic and El Salvador, whose respective national territories are approximately the same size as Den mark and Belgium (see Table 1), appear to be essentially city states in which almost every phenomenon of economic, social and political importance is
con-centrateci in the capitai city. In both cases, the capital is so- far ahead of any rivals for the location of non-primary sector economic activities and associated developments as to make any alternative area of growth an almost inevitable non-starter. Even structural change in the economies of such countries — with the growth of manufacturing industry and tertiary sector activities — serves only to re-emphasise the geographical centralisation of the spatial pattern of
society. Manufacturing industry has an increasing propensity to be located
on or near to its markets whilst tertiary activities seek, in the main, a location as near as possible to the politico-economic centre. Thus the tendency for agglomeration becomes so powerful as to necessitate an extraordinary coun tervailing force to overcome it: a much more powerful one, in fact, than has been necessary in Western European countries with their more dispersed geo graphical patterns of economic and social development.”
The Case of Puerto Rico
In Central America, with a dozen or more countries of this geographical scale only one, Puerto Rico, appears to have given really serious attention to the problem of the increasing imbalance between core area and periphery and to have achieved any success in breaking the trend towards greater and greater spatial concentration of activities and the move towards the city-state phenomenon. This significant development in regional planning has emerged from Puerto Rico’s ‘ operation bootstrap ’ whose basic aim was to achieve a rapid rate of growth in per capita income through large scale industriali sation. Though no other small, developing nation can hope to match Puerto Rico’s rate of progress in this direction — in the absence of the privileges Puerto Rico enjoyed vis-à-vis the United States (i.e. a position inside US tariff barriers but without US tax obligations) — all the others are aiming at roughly the same end of diversifying their economies into manufacturing industry so as to increase employment and to raise per capita income. Thus, the expe rience and efforts of Puerto Rico in tackling the problems of the spatial com ponent in economic development would seem to a European observer, used to see attention given to these problems, to be of some general relevance for the smaller Latin American countries.
To a European observer it is not very surprising or unusual to find that regional economic plans in Puerto Rico emerged out of some concern for physical planning. In the 1950s this had involved the preparation of ‘ master- plans ’ for highways, rural communities, airports, hospitals and health centres
and also a plan for each of Puerto Rico’s 7& municipalities. This approach *
* For a m ore detailed discussion of this topic, see in this volum e the article by
Table 1. - Western Europe and Latin America: Contrasts in Size o f Countries and in Patterns o f Urbanization
Countries Ranked in Order o f Area A rea Population Population Num ber o f 000's in o f largest other cities: Europe Latin A m erica o f k m 2 millions city *
(in 000's) > 100.000 > 10% o f largest Brazil 8,512 86.7 5,383 31 1 8 Argentina 2,777 23.3 7,000 1 21 0 Mexico 1,972 46.7 5,5501 22 2 Peru 1,285 12.4 1,834 4 1 Colombia 1,139 19,2 2,066 19 7 Bolivia 1,098 3.8 360 0 6 1 Venezuela 912 9.4 1,764 6 3 Chile 757 9.1 2,314 5 1 France 547 49.9 7,369 30 2 Spain 505 32.1 2,599 30 7 Sweden 450 7.9 1,262 3 2 Paraguay 407 2.2 305 0 5 1 Norway 324 3.8 484 2 5 1 Italy 301 52.4 2,485 35 12 Ecuador 283 5.5 651 1 3 1 West Germany 248 57.7 1,851 55 27 United Kingdom 244 55.1 7,914 57 2 Guyana 215 0.7 148 0 1 0 1 Uruguay 187 2.8 1,158 0 0 Surinam 163 0.4 150 0 9 1 Nicaragua 130 1.8 262 0 41 Cuba 114 7.9 1,544 4 2 Honduras 112 2.4 170 0 3 1 Guatemala 109 4.7 577 0 1 1 Iceland 103 0.2 91 o 2 51 Portugal 92 9.4 826 1 21 French G uyana 91 0.04 18 -Austria 84 7.3 1,638 4 2 Panam a 77 1.4 358 0 1 Ireland 70 2.9 650 1 21 Costa Rica 51 1.6 349 0 1 1 Dominican Rep. 49 3.9 577 1 2 1 Denmark 43 4.8 1,378 2 1 Switzerland 41 6.1 657 6 7 1 Netherlands 34 12.9 1,048 14 14 Belgium 30 9.6 1,074 4 4 Haiti 28 4.6 240 1 0 1 1 British Honduras 23 0.1 45 0 2 2 1 El Salvador 21 3.2 317 1 4 1 Jamaica 11 1.9 376 0 O 1 Puerto Rico 9 2.7 754 1 2 1 Trinidad 5 1.0 120 1 0 5 1 Luxemburg 2 0.3 79 o 2 7 1 Barbados 0.4 0.3 11 -
-* Agglomeration figures, except for largest city of: Bolivia, Norway, Ecuador, West-Germany Guatemala, Portugal, Haiti, El Salvador, Luxemburg.
1 Estimates. 2 N o t applicable.
nominally involved the integration of physical planning with economic and social planning but in practice this meant little more than a concern for the rehabilitation of sugar workers whose numbers were declining quickly following the mechanisation of the industry. With the implementation of an industrial development policy, however, it became clear that the physical plans had to be redrawn within the framework of an industrial location policy without which few industrial investors would look beyond the San Juan metropolitan area for their factory sites. The early years of the industrialisation process had clearly demontrated this, for between 1950 and 1953 over 10,000 of the 17,000 industrial jobs created were in factories located in San Juan: that is, over 55% of the job opportunities in an area which, at that time, had only 18% of the island’s total population. The reasons for this geographical con centration of industrial growth are not hard to pick out.
First, San Juan offered the lowest transport cost location in an industria lisation process which was based essentially on the Importation of raw mate rials and semi-manufactures and the exportation of the finished products to the markets of the US. For this in and out movement, the port of San Juan offered facilities far ahead of those in the minor ports of Ponce and Mayaquez. Location in San Juan thus eliminated the costs of trunk road haulage of raw
materials and finished goods across the island to and from the port. Thus,
San Juan appeared likely to be the maximum profit location for an indu strialist who would also be 'impressed by the capital city’s virtual monopoly in the provision, of central services and amenities. For example, its commercial and professional services were more than twice the number for all the rest of the island and certainly even more important than this in terms of size and expertise. ! It had more than three times as many first class hotel rooms as all other towns; most of the non-sectarian schools working in English; a wide variety of government services, distributors, consultants, equipment main tenance1 firms etc., and the island’s only international airport.
In other words, San Juan already had a pre-industrial core-area status and its consequential attraction of the new and now rapidly expanding industrial sector seemed | likely to enhance this status even further and thus to contribute towards the development of an accentuated regional inequality in the island. This situation formed the background to the decision to introduce a positive industrial location policy. This aimed to “ contribute to the orderly regional development of the island ” and, in the first place, laid emphasis on establish ing as many factories as possible in the smaller and more remote towns “ where people have not been getting a proportionate share of the new industrial jobs ”. Thus, Ian Industrial Decentralisation Programme was launched. Part of the programme lay in improving the island’s infrastructure outside San Juan — in matters such as new and improved roads, the provision of electricity supplies, and the building of factory premises ready for immediate occupation — in
order to make factory development elsewhere practicable. However, indus trialists still had to be convinced that profit maximisation could be achieved by locating away from, rather than in, San Juan. This required some positive financial inducements and so spatial variations in the level of incentives to industrialists wore introduced. The geographical pattern of these incentives — as existing in 1964 — is shown in Figure 1.
Some success in this decentralisation policy has been achieved as the 'per centage of job opportunities in industry in San Juan fell from over 55% 'to only a little over one-third. However, getting some of the industrial develop ment away from San Juan was not the complete answer to effective regional development jin Puerto Rico: the geographical pattern of decentralisation had also to be determined. An early aim in this respect was to ensure that at
1 Rental rates for Fomento factories
2. Tax exemption zones
3 Localization incentives capital grants
Grant for 30 100 employees $30,000 $50,000 20,000 35,000 15,000 25,000 5,000 10,000
□
Nil Nil 0 Kilometres 60t--- «— —1____ I______ I_____ I_____ I
least one industrial plant went to each one 'of the 76 municipalities so as to get all parts of the island physically involved in the growth sector of the
economy. But;such an aim involved a sub-optimisation of the efficiency of
the spatial economy, due to the high unit costs which would be involved in developing the required infrastructure for such a pattern'of industrial activities and to the likelihood that none of the firms concerned would achieve any external economies in their 'operations. The difficulties and costs of imple menting such a policy were gradually appreciated and since the mid-1960s it has been replaced by a policy which 'has aimed at the creation of major industrial growth in the main regional centres of the island — Arecibo, Maya- quez and Ponce. The economic base for such a policy is very obviously a
much stronger one. In the first place these relatively small cities (40,000,
55,000 and 120,000 respectively) can be expanded cheaply compared with
expansion costs in San Juan. Secondly, with their industrialisation, increas
ing returns on public investment in (the cities can be expected. And thirdly, the concentration of development will enable the industrialists to secure at least some of the external economies which they'seek. Success for the policy has come through the establishment of an oil refining/petrochemical and asso ciated industries complex at Ponce which/has done a great deal to re-vitalise the southern part of the island and to provide a further stimulus for expansion along the route to/San Juan. The extension of the growth zone to Mayaquez along a newly constructed road will complete part of a geographical pattern of industrialisation which will bring most municipalities within reach 'of
employment opportunities. The development of Arecibo will do the same
for the north-west of the 'island. In other words, on the assumption that
Puerto Rico can continue to attract industry, then the spatial economy will gradually be re-orientated to produce a ‘ b etter’ balance'between San Juan and the rest of the island. This will not only produce a situation which is socially desirable 'but also one that is most probably economically advantageous, in light of the substantial cost savings which will be achieved in limiting the need to expand services and facilities in the expensive metropolitan area.
None of this means, of course, that San Juan itself will not continue to grow, for it is the centre of the growing tourist industry and it remains the centre of administration and government and the dominant commercial and service centre. Because of these facts there is inevitably some new growth of job opportunities in the San Juan area no matter where on the island a factory is located. But the industrial decentralisation programme will take away from the metropolitan region the additional growth element that otherwise it
would most certainly have had. Hence, the problems of organising capital
city growth become that much easier to handle whilst, on the other hand, the direct and indirect job opportunities created in the decentralised growth points will eventually bring the towns concerned to a size and degree of
affluence at which they can begin to offer effective competition to San Juan in the provision of a widening range of services. The speed with which this can be done, with the consequential creation of a more complete and ordered hierarchy of central places in Puerto Rico, depends basically on the degree of success of the indutrial decentralisation programme, for only this can pro vide the economic base on which their other functions can develop.
Problems of Smaller Countries
This Latin American example of a deliberately planned spatial economy desi gned to secure a geographical pattern of activities — and of population — quite different from that which would have emerged had market forces been left to work themselves out, is familiar and encouraging to the European observer, as it appears to represent the successful application to a developing country of types of measures that have been used to restructure the economic geography of the more industrialised economies of his own continent. Natu rally, the application and results of the policy produce much the same que stions as they have in Europe. Is the planned pattern more or less efficient than the unplanned one? Has government expenditure and insistence on regional development inhibited new activities thus reducing the overall rate of economic growth? But such questions are, and seem likely to remain, unanswerable in both European and Puerto' Rican contexts. However, one wonders if the questions need answering — or even asking — for in relatively small coun tries, with little by way of unoccupied areas, it seems unnecessary to prove that it is better to prevent all activities, other than those in the primary sector, from concentrating at one point in the territory. So many other considerations in the social and political spheres indicate the high degree of desirability of dispersing secondary and tertiary activities that the onus of proof should lie with those who advocate allowing economic forces to bring about centra lisation.
Therefore, within the framework of a policy which accepts and seeks to implement decentralisation, the main considerations in the regional planning of these smaller countries would appear to be as follows. First, some evalua tion of the different costs and benefits of different strategies (e.g. dispersion to a small number of large regional centres; or dispersion to a larger number
of smaller centres). Second, the creation of job opportunities in secondary
and tertiary activities within daily reach of all the job-seeking population. And thirdly, a recognition of the need to give some attention to the type of environment within which the spatial economic pattern is being created. Thus, regional planning in the large number of small to medium-sized Latin American countries — from Trinidad, Puerto Rico and Jamaica through to Nicaragua
and Uruguay (see Table 1) — becomes a matter of “ how best to do it ” rather
than of “ should we do it or not In the light of this quite tenable hypo
thesis, it is rather sad to find that such countries have apparently made rela tively little efforts on the regional development aspects of national planning. Quite naturally, this relative lack of efforts is reflected in the evolution of national space economies, in which the growth of the centre and the stagnation or decline of the periphery represent the most recognisable elements.
These smaller states are all unitary in political structure and the resulting high degree of government centralisation provides a powerful stimulus for centralised development not only as an effect of the concentration of employment in government and associated services, but also from the concentration of infrastructure expenditure in the core-area, and the enhanced degree of attrac tion that this area thus has for the location of private-sector secondary and
tertiary activities. Attention to the development of the rest of the national
territory tends to be, at best, some effort to improve roads and power supplies. While the latter improve living conditions for the small number of mon-core area inhabitants that can afford connections and also eliminate one of the barriers to the location of factories etc. they do not, of course, constitute any positive incentive to dispersal as they offer nothing that the core-area does not already have. The former — roads — also improve living conditions in the periphery (by improving accessibility to services) but, in economic terms, their effects in favouring further concentration would appear to be stronger than their dispersal effects. This arises because the developing road system is almost invariably built from the core-area outwards, so that the greatest improvement in accessibility is achieved by the centre itself which then becomes even more attractive for industrial development and therefore continues to attract mi grants from the periphery — probably even more strongly than before — thus adding to the problems of overcrowding in the centre.
The early period of structural change in the economies of small nations therefore requires a very positive regional policy if a situation involving the centralisation of everything but the primary economic activities in the core area, usually the capital city, is to be avoided. The validity of this description of the pattern of spatial activities in the process of development is demon strated in all the smaller Latin American countries — in none more so perhaps than Uruguay where structural economic change started much earlier and where continued centralised development has produced an entity more like
a city-state than a nation. In Uruguay so many of the available resources
now have to be devoted to the economy of Montevideo that too few are left to secure the effective development of the periphery, much of which remains almost devoid of activities other than an insufficiently capitalised agriculture making less than maximum use of the land’s capabilities and from which migration to Montevideo still continues. Many hypotheses have been advanced
to try to explain Uruguay’s poor economic performance over the last quarter of a century; perhaps a basic reason lies in the successful policy makers’ willing ness to allow Montevideo to secure almost all the development that has been achieved since the commercialisation of agriculture. It appears likely that an alternative spatial structure, whereby the costs of providing the goods and services required by the community would have been reduced, might well have created conditions in which continued economic growth would have been possible. Perhaps a change in policy is still possible for Uruguay, should its government provide sufficient incentives to get productive activities into chosen growth points in the rest of the country and thus turn the spatial pattern into one with strongly developing dispersed centres of activities around which the rest of the national territory might be successfully integrated into a coherent whole. This has happened in Denmark and New Zealand, for example, where agricultural and non-agricultural activities jointly produce expanding economies whose benefits are enjoyed by inhabitants in all parts of the national terri tories. Uruguay’s example, to date, should at the same time present a warning to other Latin American countries which in their early decades of structural economic change largely seem content to “ let things happen where they will ” instead of where they need to be in the long term interests of national economic growth, whose rate will ultimately fall as the country has to suffer the dise conomies and ‘ unfairness ’ of highly centralised geographical patterns of deve lopment. The Puerto Rican approach provides an alternative model for eva luation and for emulation in view of the particular conditions existing within a national territory for securing a fully structured and integrated national space economy.
The Large Countries
On turning his attention from the smaller to the larger Latin American coun tries, the European moves away from the scale of spatial experience with which he is familiar (see Table 1) and any use of a core-periphery model to describe the geographical pattern of activities now involves a different spatial scale of generalisation. As Figure 2 shows, for example, the whole of Puerto Rico will fit comfortably within the core-area of Venezuela. In such different geographical circumstances the incidence of transportation costs becomes a
much more critical consideration affecting location decisions. This is parti
cularly true when one notes that the great majority of secondary and tertiary activities of the kind being most strongly developed in the large Latin American countries (viz. import-substitution activities and associated government and private sector services) tend rather to a preference for market orientated loca tions than to any other: and in Latin America a particular historical
deve-lopment process has produced a very small number of such centres. These are
shown in Figure 3 and ranked in Table 2. Here we have the important
growth points and demand centres in Latin America (though it should be noted that as the results were derived from an analysis of electricity consumption, a few centres are included not because of their importance in general pro duction and consumption terms but because they are centres of very energy intensive industries). The data illustrate the dominance of one centre over others within most of the countries. Buenos Aires is 6.5 times more important than Rosario, Argentina’s second city. Mexico City is over 6 times more important than either Monterrey or Veracruz. The twin cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro dominate the Brazilian space economy in the same way as does Lima in Peru, Caracas in Venezuela and Havana in Cuba. In Chile more activities are found in the Greater Santiago region (including Valparaiso)
Table 2. - Ranked Centres o f Economic Activity in Latin America
Rank Size
Rank Centre Country within
Country (when Buen Aires = 1C
1 Buenos Aires Argentina 1 100
2 Sâo Paulo Brazil 1 63
3 Mexico City Mexico 1 50
4 Rio de Janeiro Brazil 2 34
5 Santiago Chile 1 25 6 Havana Cuba 1 18 7 Caracas Venezuela 1 17 8 Lima Peru 1 17 9 Rosario Argentina 2 15 10 Montevideo Uruguay 1 13 11 Antofagasta Chile 2 9.1
12 M ar del Plata Argentina 3 8.9
13 Belo Horizonte Brazil 3 8.6
14 Maracaibo Oil Towns Venezuela 2 8,4
15 Concepcion Chile 3 7.5
16 Veracruz Mexico 2 7,0
17 Monterrey Mexico 3 6.8
18 Medellin Colombia 1 6.6
19 Ciudad Guayana Venezuela 3 6.5
20 Mazatlân Mexico 4 6,3 21 Cordoba Argentina 4 5.8 22 Recife Brazil 4 5.7 23 Bogota Colombia 2 5.7 24 Panam a Panama 1 5.3 25 Cali Colombia 3 5.0 26 Mendoza Argentina 5 4.8 27 Paraguana Venezuela 4 4.7 28 M aracaibo Venezuela 5 4.5 29 Salvador Brazil 5 4.4 30 La Paz Bolivia 1 3.8
31 Porto Alegre Brazil 6 3.7
32 G uadalajara Mexico 5 3.6
33 Tampico Mexico 6 3.1
34 Barranquilla Colombia 4 2.9
35 San José Costa Rica 1 2.7
36 San Juan Argentina 6 2.6
37 Chihuahua Mexico 6 2.5
38 San Salvador E l Salvador 1 2.4
39 Santiago Cuba 2 2.4
40 Cajam arca Peru 2 2.4
41 Bahia Blanca Argentina 7 2.3
than in all the rest of the country. Within the whole of Latin America over 90% of non-agricultural activities are located in only 41 centres of develop ment although in the continent as a whole there are something like 200 cities with over 50,000 people around which integrated national space economies could be built. As Table 2 shows, moreover, the ‘ top ten ’ of the 41 centres account for about 70% of the activities located in the centres, indicating the existence of a small number of even more highly deceloped ‘ super ’ core-areas including the capital cities of 6 of the 8 largest Latin American countries. With this kind of evidence available, the description of every Latin American country as one having a ‘ dual spatial economy’ marked by a developed ‘ core-area ’ of limited spatial extent, with an important industrial component contributing to its degree of development, and an extensive underdeveloped ‘ periphery ’ with few secondary activities, appears not to be any exagge ration.
But the concentration of the most productive activities within the geographical framework established by the distribution of the continent’s population — and which, as shown by Figure 4, is itself spatially concentrated — marks only one of the two outstanding features of the geography of Latin America’s economic activities. The second outstanding feature is the continued existence within most of the large Latin American countries of a “ resource frontier” . Faced with such a phenomenon, the European regional planner gets somewhat out of his depth and seeks an escape through “ a too hot, too wet, too dry, too high hypothesis for explaining the emptiness; or he preents explanations relying upon the alleged propensity of the Latin American civilisations to ignore oppor tunities in the interior because of their strong feelings in favour of coastally orientated, city living! Both hypotheses do, of course, contain some element of truth, but the total explanations for the continued existence of resource frontiers vary from country to country, as does the degree to which each country contributes to the so-called empty heart of the continent. In regional planning terms, however, what is common to the existence of a resource fron tier is the emergence of a whole new range of economic, political and social calculations that have to be made as a foundation to realistic decision-making in the field.
A new range of calculations would be needed because governments have to compare the relative costs and benefits of development in the resource frontier region and development within the already populated region (where, too, there
will also be various alternatives). To use the word “ calculations” may,
owever, be misleading in that it may give the impression of decisions taken on the basis of precisely quantified considerations. This is certainly far from being so, for most of the -costs and benefits are unquantifiable, whilst those that are involve such contrasting time periods of anticipated expenditure and income that the choice of a discount rate will be the most critical factor in
the evaluation — yet a decision on the choice of discount rate to be used in such calculations involves a value judgement in itself.
Thus, regional development policies involving the opening up of a resource frontier depend on more fundamental motivation for such activities than that of a social cost/benefit study. In the United States in the 19th century there was the element of the nation’s desire to achieve its “ manifest destiny ” of coast to coast control. A roughly similar type of unquantifiable motivation appears to lie behind Brazil’s push into the interior, where the new capital of Brasilia represents only one aspect of the colonialisation-of-new-lands-process as a result of which the whole of Amazonia will be brought into the Brazilian national entity. The projected — and partly completed — Trans-Amazonia road network is another important manifestation of this attitude but of even greater potential importance is the ultimate result of the significant fiscal encou ragement the national government is now giving to private enterprise to seek out opportunities for profit-making in the frontier region. Up to 50% of any company’s profits are relieved of national tax obligations when they are inve sted in projects in Amazonia and other parts of the resource frontier. Thus, a larger part of the country’s available supply of investment capital is devoted to opening up the interior than would otherwise be the case. As this invest ment is most unlikely to produce any return in the short-term or to provide very many additional job opportunities, this aspect of the country’s regional planning efforts must necessarily limit the efforts for the development of the populated parts of the country, which are deprived of investment they might otherwise have secured (though it should be noted that it may not have been invested in Brazil at all, but might have leaked to external opportunities). On the other side of the continent one finds an example where the need for and desirability of maintaning expenditure in the already occupied part of the country has inhibited investment in the opening up of frontier territory. This is Peru where a long history of plans to colonise and develop the “ oriente ” culminated in the comprehensive proposals of former President Terry Belaunde. He foresaw the fundamental reshaping of the country’s economic geography through the construction of the so-called ‘ marginal highway ’ to the east of the Andes and through the consequential developments along its length. Though he was able to show that the scheme was practical — in a physical sense — neither political nor economic motivations for its implementation were strong enough to bring it to the point of really serious consideration. Many saw the concept as being of little more than theoretical validity and in their ranking of priorities for investment funds put it far below alternatives which promised either higher profits or some alleviation of the lot of those living in the “ alti- plano ” and the coast. In sofar that investment in the populated areas always seems likely to bring the most significant economic and political returns, and because the scale of investment required in the frontier areas will always be
frighteningly high for governments with access to only limited funds, one has here a situation in which the development of underdeveloped and unpopulated regions will not take place in the foreseeable future. To the outside observer of the Latin American regional planning scene this suggests that large parts of many national territories — Bolivia, Ecuador, Columbia, Paraguay and Argentina as well as Peru — will remain unused and unpopulated for much of the rest of this century at least, whilst more attention will be paid to the reshaping and re-ordering of the spatial patterns of development in the occu pied parts, in none of which is there yet such pressure of population on resources than attention must be given to opening up new regions.
However, there is one major regional development project in Latin America which suggests the possibility of resource frontier development as an alter native to restructuring the regional economy of the populated parts of the
country. This is based on the argument that such a development has the
effect of so altering the basic spatial framework of the economy that the tradi tional problems of imbalance between a small developed core-area and a large under-developed periphery can be tackled within an entirely new and more advantageous situation which allows new opportunities for regional rede velopment. Such argument lies behind the Guayana development project in Venezuela (see Figure 5) which since 1960 has been an integrated and com prehensive scheme for the regional planning of a remote and little utilised part of the country. By dint of a most carefully structured programme and at high investment cost, the objective is well on the way towards success and has thus had the effect of greatly extending the effective national territory of Vene zuela, with the resource frontier pushed well away to the south and east of the country.
But one must note that the attention and expenditure devoted to the Guayana project has provided a way of easing successive Venezuelan governments out of a considerable dilemma. Governments since 1958 have been politically com mitted to regional development and planning, for their support came mainly from outside Caracas where hitherto most of the country’s expenditure and growth had been localised. Yet how to do regional planning and where to do it was not part of the expertise of national development planners at that time: thus, concentrating on the Guayana project represented the one step that could be taken with some confidence, as the known resource base for the development was clearly outstanding and its economic viability a risk worth taking. At the same time it was politically ideal, for1 it was sufficiently bold to capture the headlines and, most probably, public support too and thus serve to improve the image of the government. Finally it was a ‘ growth point ’ in space whose development would be unhindered by pre-existing social and economic problems and which could be handled from the centre as a Caracas
based and controlled project. It would, therefore, pose no political problems of dispersed decision taking and control.
In these considerations lies a more than adequate explanation for the Vene zuelan decision to go initially for a geographical extension of the effectively occupied national territory rather than for re-organisation of the spatial eco nomic structure of the pre-existing populated regions within which there were some particularly tough problems to solve: as a result of several decades of a trend towards the centralisation of all highly productive activities (except those in the petroleum sector) the Caracas metropolitan region by 1960 con tained, on some 3% of total national territory, about 32% of the total popu lation and as much as 80% of all non-agricultural and non-petroleum sector
activities. The regional planning devices and government mechanisms that
produced the Guayana project did nothing, of course, to solve the problems of this pre-existing spatial structure. Yet its implementation made comprehen
sive regional planning inevitable — and also made it more difficult. The Guayana project itself necessitated forecasting the developments in other regions of the country — which regions could, and would, provide the migrants for Guayana, and the internal trade flows which would be established as a result of the development of production, and of consumption, at Santo Tomé. To cope with these and other needs the national plan had to be restructured to include spatial analysis and regional, as well as sectoral, predictions. Moreover, the Guayana project also had a demonstration effect in every other part of the country where development was locally considered to be essential —> meaning, in effects, every part of the country except the unpopulated areas of the south.
H undreds of millions of dollars were being invested in Guayana. By copying the example o f the G uayana Corporation, every region m ight hope to gain fo r itself equally favourable conside ration. Regional planning becam e all the rage. State governors dem anded it; private organisations supported it and local leader ship organised to dem and of the central authorities better co-ordi nation of developm ent activities w ithin their ow n areas and funds especially earm arked fo r regional investments.*
Both politically and economically this posed serious problems. Politically,
because the areas demanding regional planning — for example, the Andean states with their problems of access, pressure of population on land resources and outmigration; and the State of Zulia now suffering from the relative sta gnation in the oil industry and its run-down of employment with increasing mechanisation and automation — were areas with population, problems and politicians. Thus, highly centralised development projects, such as the Guayana programme, were obviously inappropriate. Politically, therefore, decision making would have to be dispersed to regional entities with all the dangers that this entailed to the unity of a federal country. Economically, there was little exper tise and little data with which and on which to take rational decisions. Input- output analysis and cost-benefit analyses, etc., could be applied to decision making in sectors of the national economy but not to investment decision for allocating resources to different regions of the country. And even if they could, should regions within which the marginal productivity of capital invested always fell below the return on capital invested elsewhere be denied the faci lities required to improve living standards of the populations concerned?
Thus, Venezuela’s immediate post-1960 concentration on the expansion of its effectively occupied territory as the main aim of its regional development programme only put off for a short time the need to pay attention to the regional structure of the previously populated areas and, somewhat paradoxically,
* Fr ie d m a n n J., Regional D evelopm ent Policy: A Case Study o f Venezuela.
has probably had the effect of enhancing the claims and demands of the less well-off regions of the country for a more appropriate share of the wealth largely concentrated in the Caracas region whose continued growth, in turn (with accompanying problems of expansion, congestion and heightening political awareness), meant that no government could afford to starve it of adequate capital investment: a feature of the regional needs of all the large Latin Ame rican countries.
Conclusions
Thus, the emerging Venezuelan situation clearly demonstrates the complexity of the regional problems that it and ten other large countries in the continent
have to face. Leaving the regional problem to sort itself out is still one
approach to the issue — sometimes because of the advice of some economic advisers who believe that where things are located in a national territory either makes no difference to the rate of advancement of national welfare or can only have the effect of reducing growth rates to levels below the maximum that is otherwise achievable; and sometimes because there is too little motivation for the implementation of regional plans. Such attitudes were formerly domi nant but are now much less so with a consequential increasing recommen dation for, and the acceptance of, the need to include a spatial or regional planning component in national plans.
For the smaller countries, as already demonstrated, the determination of the geography of growth on the basis of considerations other than economic ones is probably not going to make much difference to the size of the national product and its rate of growth. But for the larger countries, and especially for those with virgin territory still to conquer, spatial variables in costs of production and marketing and spatial competition for available investment funds add up to really significant economic issues in development policies. And there is not a wealth of relevant experience from elsewhere on which to
draw for resolving the issues. The contrasting historical processes and geo
graphical patterns and scales of growth in Western Europe make our expe rience hardly valid, whilst the United States tackled its resource frontier problem at a time when the process of economic growth was altogether simpler and less involved, and one in which governments were, by comparison with the situation today, barely involved directly at all. Present US experience, with its high degree of decentralised decision taking and its abhorrence of Federal intervention to promote or restrain areal growth, is even less relevant to Latin America. Latin American countries thus have to find their own ways of tackling their regional problems (if one excludes the possibility of adapting Soviet atti tude and experiences — something which Cuba is, in fact, doing and whose
results will merit close attention) and would appear likely to achieve more by listening to one another and by observing and by analysing eacb others’ experiments in this respect than by paying exclusive attention to what has been done in the rest of the world.
To the European student of the geographical analysis and planning of national economies, Latin America certainly offers far more to get his teeth into than do the comparatively very small scale and minor regional problems of his own continent. Most of us, however, remain firmly committed to the exami nation and processing of the minutiae of Europe’s geography of economic development: perhaps a few more of us could be thrown into the really “ deep end ” of the regional planning swimming pool and be encouraged to devote some of our energies to the academically and practically worthwhile spatial development problems of Latin America.
Pe t e r R . Od e ll
R ecen t G row th a n d S p a tia l D is tr ib u tio n T ren d s
o f th e L a tin A m e rica n P o p u la tio n
b y C ésar A . V a p ñ a r sk y
I. Latin America, One W orld or Twenty?
Most papers on Latin America put so much emphasis on hasty generalizations concerning the region as a whole, that it seems convenient here to start by remarking on the striking internal heterogeneity of the region in respect of most social indicators utilized in international comparisons, first of all those which are intended to measure degrees of economic and social development.1 Some years ago Wekemans and Segundo2 constructed a typology of Latin American countries, separating them into six strata according to a complex correlation of variables referred to their economies, their ethnic and demo graphic situation, their culture, their social stratification, and their political organization.3 The range was enormous for each individual index. The upper
level group comprised Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. These countries had,
to consider only a few of the indexes employed to construct this typology, practically all of their population white, a percentage of literate population greater than 80, from 56 to 128 physicians per 100,000 population and an index of energy consumption per capita ranking from .78 to .98. On the other hand, the lower level group was formed by several countries from Central America and the Caribbean, namely, Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, the Domi
nican Republic, Nicaragua and El Salvador. The extreme case within this
group was Haiti, with 5 per cent white population, 11 per cent of their popu lation able to read and write, only 9 physicians per 100,000 population, and an index of energy consumption per capita of only .03.
These selected examples from the work quoted may lead to think that Latin American countries can be ordered the same way with respect to any
index of socioeconomic development. In fact, the construction of Vekemans
and Segundo’s typology was not so easy. In the final grouping the different
cotunries do not apear neatly ordered with respect to any single variable; only a sophisticated combination of them (which is certainly not free from con troversy) could lead to the arrangement adopted. Perhaps the most interesting
case in this respect is Venezuela. Ranking the first according to per capita
income, per capita energy consumption, index of cement consumption, and per cent employment in manufacture, it exhibited a far lower percentage of
foreign bom than either Uruguay, Argentina or Panama, its percentage of university students was lower than those of Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Cuba, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, Peru, or even Paraguay (a country with overall ranking immediately above the lower level group), and its percentage of lite racy was superior only to the countries of the lower level group plus Bolivia, Peru and Brazil.
But the inspection of each country’s individual values of the indexes selected by Vekemans and Segundo, describes only half of the whole picture. For not only international heterogeneity is enormous in Latin America; internal hete rogeneity, within each country, adds a good deal to the complete image. In most countries vast disparities exist between socioeconomic strata,4 between urban and rural areas, between different regions. This characteristic feature has given place to the concept of “ structural dualism ” to refer to the temporal coexistence, in close spatial proximity, of two societies which respond more or less to dichotomic distinctions classic in sociological theory, between a “ preindustrial ”, or “ sacred ”, or “ traditional ” society, and an “ industrial ”, or “ secular ”, or “ modern ” one.
Structural dualism might seem to present some advantages for development in view of the modem theory of unbalanced growth.5 This model of economic growth proposes to concentrate the efforts to develop a country, in a first stage, in one or a few selected areas from which further development of multiplying effects is expected. But it makes the sociological assumption that society at large will be prepared to assimilate, in a second stage, the advantages cumulated by the moderninzing sector and region where development was initiated. In this respect the theoretical assumption needs careful assessment. Within the principal aim of the present paper, population problems of Latin America, a remark of Prof. Stycos6 seems appropriate to illustrate this question. He points out the sharp contrasts existing between urban and rural social life in most Latin American countries, disparities which are bound to be enhanced by a broadening gap between urban and rural areas, originated in the dispro portionately greater growth of each country’s primate city. He directs attention to the fact that, in these conditions, the progressive transfer from urban to rural areas of attitutes leading to diminishing fertility (which characterized in the past the European demographic transition), need not be taken for granted in Latin America for the near future.7
In spite of Latin American heterogeneity, are there features other than sheer vicinity which could justify an analysis of the region as a whole, especially as far as its population problem is concerned? Certainly. For one thing, no Latin American country can be considered as fully developed according to European standards; those of Vekemans and Segundo’s upper level group exhibit indexes roughly similar to only moderately advanced Western European countries.
Secondly, all Latin American countries stand in a roughly similar general situation in the world as a part of the “ periphery ” with respect to the “ center ”, Up to the second world war, all of them depended economically each on one, or at most two or three, agricultural or mining products, or fuels, which were exported to a market external to the whole region, whereas most of the needed manufactured products (as well as raw materials and food stuffs other than ithe few ones produced within the country) were imported from Western Europe or the USA. This is still the situation in many countries. In some other ones, however, the impossibility of importing manufactured goods during the second world war stimulated some diversification of national economy, and nowadays the domestic market of finished consumption goods is satisfied mostly by domestic manufacturing. In smaller countries this process was seriously bounded up by the restricted nature of their internal demand of consumption goods, which was an obstacle to the establishment of enter prises which could produce a wide variety of even this limited kind of industrial products. However, in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, where the stage of imports replacement is mainly over, capital goods industries are still in an incipient stage. And even these countries still depend, for imports necessary to prompt further economic development, on foreign exchange which continues to be gathered from a traditional restricted set of export goods. These export goods have to be sold at international prices continuosly declining with respect to those of the products required to build up a domestic heavy industry. Thus, to go beyond the incipient industrialization stage characte rizing imports replacement, even those Latin American countries enjoying a comparatively higher standard of living and literacy, a full fledged social stratification system, and other features typical of at least moderatly advanced countries, exhibit a particularly vulnerable position in the world economic system. For example, Argentina is the Latin American country where a greater proportion of the gross national product, 37 per cent, corresponds to manu facturing, whereas: agriculture accounts for only 15 per cent; however, 90 per cent of its exports still are agricultural goods.
This fact is only one of the typical evidences of external dependency, a feature shared, to a greater or lesser extent, by all countries of Latin America.8 Linked to integrative elements derived from a binding history and cultural heritage, this common situation of dependency explains a sort of supranational feeling of belongingness, a powerful ideological force present throughout the
whole region. In spite of these socially integrative elements, international
economic integration in Latin America is still more of a program than a reality.9
In effect, it may seem suprising to discover the actual isolation of Latin
American countries with respect to each other. As a rule, each of these
countries constitutes a spatial system of internal interaction from which more
movements of people, interchange of goods, and flows of information take place
with Europe and USA than with the other Latin American countries. To
employ a useful geographical term, the “ ecumene ” of each country (that is, that part of its territory which is effectively settled, well interconnected, and embraces most of its population and economic activities), is both small and separated from the equivalent territory of neighbor countries by vast lands poorly occupied or even uninhabitable. To some extent, this is a factor responsible for the actual division of the four original viceroyalties (and a few captaincies general) of the Spanish Empire, existing towards the beginning of the nineteenth century,10 into eighteen politically independent republics. For the South American portion of Latin America, an additional geographical feature is that the ecumene is circumscribed to coastal or nearly coastal regions, except, obviously, in the case of the only fully mediterranean countries, Bolivia and Paraguay which, interestingly enough, are the least developed of South America.
This partial attempt to describe similarities and dissimilarities among Latin American countries seems unavoidable to understand the recent population changes still in progress in the region, changes which have no precedent in the whole world as regards their velocity and quantitative level. Such changes can be summarized, in a few words, as two complementary aspects. On one hand, the overall regional rate of population growth has accelerated at an astonishing speed during the last three or four decades. On the other, such a phenomenal growth has been concomitant to a relatively strong redistri bution of population within each country, the pattern being one of intensive concentration in a few key parts of already settled national territory rather than one of extensive dispersion over diverse areas of the country.
In view of the previous emphasis on the regional heterogeneity, a qualifi cation is necessary here. Whereas population growth is affecting quite diffe rentially the various Latin American republics, internal migration flows are strongly redistributing the population within practically all the countries of the region — including even those where overall population growth is slow.
Both aspects of these demographic-ecological changes recognize as main
source the natural increase of population within each country. Migration
among different countries of Latin America is a minor aspect to consider in an account of the total recent growth of each one. Immigration from other regions of the world is at present perhaps even more negligible, although in at least one country, Argentina, it has been the fundamental component of growth until some decades ago, and in other two republics, Uruguay and Brazil, an important factor during the same period, as well as in a fourth one, Venezuela, in more recent times. At present, however, each country approaches, to a greater or lesser extent, the model of a closed population system, whereas within each of these quasi-closed systems strong migration currents are taking
place. Nevertheless, so far the net result of internal migration has been to consolidate the previous unequal distribution of population over the national territory more than to reshape the inherited pattern of human settlement.
These quasi-closed population systems are in diverse stages of a double and irreversible process of transition, from high birth and death rates to low ones, and from a low to a high proportion, of their population living in cities, particularly in large cities. In a superficial view each country seems to be at a different step in the classic model of the demographic transition, if one starts from the basis of the European experience and assumes that the stages of the transition in Latin America, though taking place a century later, are similar to those of advanced Western European countries. Yet, one has to be careful in applying such a model automatically to Latin American countries. First, one fundamental feature of the demographic transition in Europe has been its connection with an industrialization process, which both preceded and stimulated urbanization, whereas in all of Latin America pervasive urba nization has taken place and is still going on taking place in advance of industrialization. Second, the differential timing of the process within Latin America is not immaterial from the viewpoint of the prospects, for each indi vidual country, of an economic process which both can cope with the popu lation growth problem and, in addition, can lift the per capita income and
reduce the present income inequality. It would be naive to think that Latin
American countries demographic-ally more “ mature ”, such as Argentina or Uruguay, are the model which other countries where population is growing faster at present shall necessarily approach.
II. Recent Population Growth
Latin America is the world’s main region where population is growing at the highest speed. In this part of the world, the so called “ population explo
sion started perhaps before the first world war, but the acceleration of the
process has been impressive especially during the last thirty years. Out of
the total world’s population the share of Latin America is still relatively low, though its rise during this century has been substantial — from only about 2.7 per cent in 1900 to 4.9 in 1920, to 5.5 in 1940, and to 6.8 in I960.11
This extraordinary change in the relative position of Latin American popu lation with respect to the world’s, is the result of a tremendous overall rate of population increase. The annual rate of growth for Latin America on the whole rose from about 2.5 per cent a year, during the decade 1940-50, to about 2.9 per cent during the following one, and may have mounted still more during the decade which is coming to a close.12
