Cities

December 2019, Paper, "The United Nations forecasts that “Africa’s urban population is likely to nearly triple between 2018 and 2050”. Together, Africa and India account for almost two thirds of the projected growth in the world’s urban population from 4.2 billion in 2018 to 6.7 billion in 2050. The urbanisation of our planet's poorer countries is one of the most important phenomena of the twenty-first century and a critical component of structural change. Yet, our intellectual tools for dealing with the great challenges of developing-country cities remain underdeveloped. In this paper, we survey the economics of developing-country cities and try to make the case that development economists should spend more of their time thinking about and working in cities and urban economists should spend more of their time thinking about and working in developing countries."