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Biomedical subjects

H W Richardson

Publications and source records attributed to H W Richardson.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1989

Asian megacity characteristics, problems, and policies.

"Using ten Asian megacities as examples, this article discusses a range of megacity characteristics and problems, including population growth, economic structure, spatial strategies, land policy, urban service provision, institutional development, and managerial problems. In spite of major progress in urban service delivery, ineffective land policies and inadequate cost-recovery systems remain serious obstacles. Megacities need and are promoting policentric spatial structures, but implementation lags in many cases. Institutional reforms are needed to cope with the metropolitan region character of megacity growth."

Asia↗
PubMed1989

The big, bad city: mega-city myth?

This paper raises the question of whether or not the virtues of big city size were exaggerated in the literature which appeared in the 1970s with respect to developing country megacities. It examines negative externalities (especially pollution), the capital costs associated with megacity growth, the productivity advantages of large cities, the role of spatial restructuring towards a policentric pattern as a relief to core city congestion, and the problems of metropolitan management (including the appropriate institutional framework). The adoption of constructive policy actions could handle the following problems: that the declining rates of megacity growth may reflect declining productivity advantages; that capital costs of urbanization increase strongly with city size; that there are diseconomies of scale in urban management; that negative externalities may be more severe in developing country megacities in physical but not in imputed monetary damage terms; and that policentric evolution may be hampered by the wrong type of government intervention.

Demography↗
PubMed1988

Economic development, population and primacy.

"This paper investigates the relationship between economic development and primacy advanced by El-Shakhs, Mera and others, and finds no statistically significant link when obvious demographic influences are taken into account. Three variables (national population, the urban population share, and a Latin American dummy) explain 40% of the variation in primacy in a sample of 116 countries (including 82 developing countries). Economic factors do not appear to be important. Demography may be more influential than economics in attempts to explain primacy."

Demography↗
PubMed1986

The distribution of population and employment in a polycentric city: the case of Los Angeles.

"The distribution of population and employment in metropolitan Los Angeles in 1970 and 1980 is examined in this paper. Population continued to disperse in the 1970s, whereas the geographical distribution of employment combined job clustering around a few major employment centers with a high degree of general job dispersion. In Los Angeles polycentrism has been associated with shorter work trips, particularly intracounty trips in the more peripheral counties." Population data are for 2,403 comparable census tracts for 1970 and 1980; data concerning geographical employment distribution are from the 1980 census.

Americas↗
PubMed1986

The costs of urbanization: a case study of Pakistan.

"A methodology is developed for estimating the aggregate costs of urbanization in Pakistan for 1983-2003. These costs are then compared with the future investment resource pool, and are found to be larger than the total pool. Alternative policy solutions to alleviate the problem are explored. Although some capital-saving strategies (such as major public works programs in rural areas and labor-intensive employment policies) would be helpful, it will be impossible to avoid a substantial rise in the proportion of the urban population without services from about one quarter to about one half of the total. The paper concludes with suggestions for refining the methodology in future studies."

Asia↗