oncerning Asia are not always reflected in the classic development indicators that have informed students of Western development. For Asia, it is imperative that new indices be taken into account, indices that recognize, for example, that presently the ôlocus of global poverty is moving into cities (UN-HABITAT).ö In Asia, where many rural poor have been uprooted, the proliferation of urban slums threatens to undermine other efforts geared toward economic liberalization and ôdevelopmentö in a Western sense. Presently, nearly one-third of the worldÆs urban population, or one billion people, lives in urban slums; in Asia this percentage is generally higher: in South-Central Asia, for example, 58% of the urban population lives in a slum (UN-HABITAT).
These statistics assume an even more frightening character when one considers that population growth in Asia is proliferating at a considerable rate. AsiaÆs population is expected to reach 5.3 billion by 2050, which constitutes a 58% increase over present levels (Bongaarts 57). In AsiaÆs most
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