This book is the outcome of the Conference on Population Growth, Urbanization, and Urban Policies in the Asia-Pacific Region, held in Honolulu during 8-12 April 1985. It provides wide attention among development planners, urban managers, and scholars in the field of urban and development planning.

This book looks at local collective action and city government responses and its impact on the neighbourhood and the city in Pacific Asia.

Between 1500 and 1900 there was a constant growth in the numbers of large cities and networks of smaller towns throughout the Pacific world in which traders and primary producers did business. The essays in Urbanization and the Pacific World explore the increasingly complex economic relationships that connected cities in and around the Pacific world to each other, and pay particular attention to the impact that growing cities had on the economies of their hinterlands. The volume also contains articles that examine the problems that city growth created and the ways in which people were able to cope with them. Along with the new introduction, the essays cover all of the regions of the Pacific world in which city growth took place, and will allow the reader to consider a wide range of common and contrasting urban experiences.

This publication seeks to explain the nature of settlements termed “urban villages” as set within the context of growing levels of urbanization in contemporary Pacific towns and cities. It investigates the meaning and conceptualization of myriad forms of urban villages by examining the evolution of different types of settlement commonly known as native or traditional villages, and more recently squatter and informal settlements. It views village-like settlements such as squatter and informal settlements as a type of urban village, and examines the role these and other urban villages play in shaping and making the Pacific town and city and arguably, the Pacific village city. It presents key actions that Pacific countries and development partners need to consider as part of urban and national development plans when rethinking how to conceptualize the ongoing phenomena of urban villages while achieving a more equitable distribution of the benefits of urbanization.

This report investigates urbanization trends across the 14 Pacific developing member countries of the Asian Development Bank. It examines the history of Pacific urbanization, current state of infrastructure and service provision within urban areas, and systems of urban governance. It presents key actions that Pacific countries need to take to manage urban growth, to meet the needs of their urban citizens, and to benefit from the potential of the urban economy.