1. Introduction: Urban Development

This book is the second volume of a two-volume festschrift in honor of Professor Baleshwar Thakur – titled “Spatial Diversity and Dynamics in Resources and Urban Development.” The volume is intended to provide an opportunity for specialists in urban development who utilize urban development processes to understand urban practices, policy, and politics both in the metropolitan and peripheral regions of the world. The volume recognizes that the locus of urban development now lies in the transforming of peripheral regions of the world, which has caused a paradigm shift in regional and local decision making. Given this overview of urban development, this volume revisits our understanding of interdependencies between places and among scales. Beyond the applied nature of chapters, this volume engages with dynamic issues of urban development that can be approached from diverse perspectives. Consequently, contributions use cutting-edge theories and spatial techniques to examine dramatic changes in issues such as: urban growth in developing and transforming regions, infrastructure growth as an urban land shaper, proliferation of housing and squatter settlements, our changing perceptions and quality of urban life, impact of rural to urban migration on land use dynamics, impact of spatial division of labor on ethnicity in cities, the impact of locational decisions at the local and regional scales on metropolitan retail and wholesale space and structure, and the cumulative impact of all of this on future urban planning regulations.