B. Basic Descriptions

We can begin with the overall assessment of the urban condition in each country, then move to the 12 categories of problems, and finally focus on more specific, individual conditions. To examine the overall condition, we can simply, take the average of all the scores of the 39 conditions. Recall that a score of 1 is given if the condition is considered an urgent major problem, and a score of 5 is given if the condition is considered an advantage for the city. This gives us a positive score, such that the higher the score the better the condition is perceived to be.

Overall Scores. Since the Japanese figures are not directly comparable with those for the other seven countries, it will be necessary to separate the groups of countries somewhat. For our 102 cities other than Japan, the overall mean for all 39 conditions was 2.83. The range was from a low of 1.73 (Hadyai in Thailand) to a high of 4.03 (Penang Island in Malaysia). Malaysia had the highest overall mean (3.58), followed by India (2.96), Korea (2.84), The Philippines (2.80), Nepal (2.78), with Thailand (2.70), and Indonesia (2.66) having the lowest scores, or the most serious urban problems. The overall mean score for Japan was 3.05, with a range from 2.20 to 3.93.

Country Scores. Table 9 shows the mean scores for each of the 12 categories of conditions, both for all cities, and for each country. These are also displayed graphically in Figures 4 through 9. This allows us to see which types of problems are most serious and which conditions are the most favorable for the cities. First we can note from the last row in the table that Malaysia has the highest overall mean (3.58), followed by Japan(3.05). They were the only countries with means above 3.0. India and Korea come next, both remaining slightly above the overall average of 2.83. The Philippines, Thailand, Nepal, and Indonesia all have scores below the overall mean. This overall ranking is probably best explained by a combination of wealth and urbanization. Japan is by far the most wealthy and has the capacity to solve many of the urban problems that other countries find so pressing. Malaysia is among the wealthiest of the less developed countries. It is less wealthy than Korea, but it has a strong rural development program, and has a far lower growth of urbanization than Korea, thus it has less objective urban pressures. Malaysia's small size, lower density, slower urbanization and greater wealth therefore insulate it from some of the most serious urban problems we find in the less developed countries.

Table 9.
Mean Scores* for 12 Categories of Urban Conditions
in 8 Asian Countries

Figures 4-9 Urban Problem Scores

Problem Area Scores. From column 9, which provides mean scores for each problem area for all countries excluding Japan, we can see which problems are the most serious. With an overall mean score of 2.83, we find six conditions below the mean: Public Utilities, Transportation, Revenues, Employment, Pollution and Housing, in ascending order. These tend to be among the most serious problems for all of the countries in the survey. Further, they are problems that reflect poverty plus development and rapid urbanization, or the conditions that most strain urban infrastructure and services. For Japan the lowest score is for Transportation, followed by Public Utilities, Pollution, and Revenues, all below Japan's overall mean score. Like the poorer countries, Japan faces urban problems of transportation, public utilities and pollution. It does not, however, face the serious problems of poverty - low employment and lack of housing - that plague its less wealthy neighbors.

At the other end, on the side of more advantageous or less serious conditions, we have social services. For countries other than Japan, Health-Welfare-Family-Planning, and Education, plus Urban Personnel, are the conditions that are most favorably assessed by the urban administrators overall. These conditions also rank very high for all countries, though they are not the highest for all. For India, Indonesia, Korea, and Malaysia they are the highest categories. Thailand ranks the quality and quantity of urban personnel above its health and education services. For The Philippines, education is the highest, followed by its revenue conditions, putting health and family planning in third place. For Japan, employment js the most advantageous conditions followed closely by housing and general educational and health conditions, and personnel.

Housing Scores. Housing scores represent something of a special case. We asked about problems of the Homeless, and the supply of Low Cost, Middle Income, and High Income housing. Since these imply very different conditions of welfare, summing them does not present a full picture of the extent or the character of the problem. Table 10 provides the detailed breakdown of scores needed to assess the housing problem. Japan does not have a problem with the homeless, as many less developed countries do, thus that portion of the question was omitted from the Japanese survey.

Obviously the means for the overall housing condition mask considerable differences between the problem of housing at different income levels. Housing has a wide range of scores, from some of the lowest (1.7 for homeless in The Philippines) to some of the highest (4.6 for high income housing in Malaysia). There is a general rise in the quality of the housing condition as perceived by the urban administrators as we go up the income scale. Higher cost housing represents less a problem than does low cost housing or the homeless, and this is true in all countries.

Table 10.
Mean Scores* for 4 Categories** of Housing Problems in
8 Asian Countries

Fig.10 Housing Scores

Note that only India and the Philippines rank their homeless problem as the most severe, even worse than the problem of low cost housing. All the others rank the homeless as less a problem than tha of low cost housing. For Malaysia the homeless issue is considered satisfactory, a condition that is clearly evident on the streets of Malaysian cities.

There is also a distressing sign here. If housing is a problem in general, it is not all housing, but only that for the poor that is seen as a serious problem. High and Middle income housing tends to be more available, and even to constitute an advantage in the perceptions of some of the administrations. Later, when we examine some of the relationships among problem area scores, we can raise questions about degrees of inequality in housing. The differences between scores for the homeless and for high income housing are graphically shown in Figure 10.

Individual Problem Scores. When we turn from the 12 broad categories to the 39 individual conditions in countries other than Japan, this broad pattern in part remains generally stable, but it also shows some interesting turns. The conditions that received the lowest scores included Garbage (2.0), Low Cost Housing (2.2), Sewage (2.3), Unemployment (2.3), Traffic flows and volume (2.3), and the Homeless (2.4). At the other end, the highest mean scores went to Family Planning (3.7) and Primary Education (3.7). Then came Secondary Education (3.5), High Income Housing (3.4), and Primary Health Care and Middle Income Housing (both with 3.3). Not surprisingly the most serious problems are those associated with poverty and crowding: congested traffic, lack of housing for the poor, inadequacy of the most basic utilities, and unemployment.

There is an important policy implication in this finding. Much of this set of problems could be alleviated by employment, which would provide the income for housing and the revenue base for better utilities. But the problems can also be addressed by public construction of those needed utilities. This would address the serious problem of the physical infrastructure, and it would also provide jobs and income for the poor.

Health, Family Planning, and Education. It is interesting to find health, family planning and education ranking highest all countries. This is true even in Japan, though note that it is not family planning or education services, but the "General" level of health and education among the population. The thrust for economic development over the past few decades has turned attention and resources to human capital. As we saw above in the Country Profiles, all of these countries, and most Asian countries as well, have made massive headway since roughly 1950 in providing basic education and health services to the great majority of their populations. Everywhere we have seen the decline of mortality and the extension of education as Asian countries have mobilized resources to fulfill the mass demands and the elite dreams that came with independence. Since about 1960, Asia has also led the world in establishing effective national family planning programs. The results are seen in the rise of contraceptive use rates, and the decline of fertility. All of this is progress is clearly reflected in the urban administrators' assessment of problems and advantages.

The Personnel Paradox and the Problem of Centralization. Finally, we can draw attention to two administrative conditions whose interrelations provide an interesting window on specific problems some administrators face. This concerns the relationship between the quality and quantity of urban government personnel, and the revenue base and the control over revenues the city administrators have. We first deal with all countries except Japan, since the latter used slightly different questions on these items. The quantity of personnel scores above average (3.03), and the quality of personnel is judged to be even higher (3.10) for the 70 administrators who provided responses.*5 . On the other hand, the revenue base is considered a problem(2.54), and the city's control over revenue is an even more serious problem (2.49). That is, personnel is less a problem than the magnitude and control of financial resources. Especially striking is the difference between the administrators' perceptions of the quality of their personnel, and the control they are given over financial resources. These are shown in figure 7. Overall, personnel quality is less a problem than a resource control. This pattern of difference is, however, found only in Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, and India. In Indonesia there were only two responses on the quality and quantity of personnel, thus we the personnel quality score is omitted. For Japan the question of resource control was omitted. For the Philippines and Nepal, the resource control scores are higher than the personnel scores.

For the four countries with the dominant pattern, we believe this reflects a condition on which many urban specialists on the developing world have commented on for some time. The problem lies in central government, which wishes to maintain control over local units. Most specialists agree that this produces administrative bottlenecks, causes great delays, retards local initiative and prevents sensitive adaptation of general policies to local conditions.*6 In effect, central control retards the very development of. local initiative that both central and local government want. Our urban administrator respondents are saying much the same thing. They are saying that they have good people and would like to get ahead with the job, but they are restrained both by the lack of revenues, and even more by the lack of control over their revenues. Many governments have attempted to correct this problem by promoting administrative decentralization, but few have been really willing to give up control over the local units.

Nepal and The Philippines represent deviant cases in this set of observations. Nepal finds that both the quality and quantity of urban personnel represent a serious problem.On the other hand both the revenue base and the control of revenue are considered satisfactory. Nepal's scores not only reverse the general trend, but the difference in the two scores is the largest for all countries. It should be noted, however, that all of the five questionnaires for Nepal were completed by a single administrator in the capital. In the case of many of the objective urban conditions, this may well provide accurate information, though it does not obtain the views of the front line administrators, which was the original plan of the enquiry. In the case of urban personnel and resource control, however, it is quite possible, perhaps even likely, that local and central administrators will have different judgements. It may well be that in the case of Nepal, we are seeing the common differences between central and local administrators, rather than gaining the kind of view from the local administrators that we have received in the other countries.

For The Philippines the scores are all quite close. Neither the quality or quantity of personnel is considered any more than a minor problem (3.09 and 3.18), and the base and control of revenues both get a score of 3.55, almost satisfactory. The Philippines has, indeed, been promoting administrative decentralization for some time, and it may be that the scores we find reflect some success in this movement. At any rate, it would appear that the relationship between administrators' judgements of personnel and resource control would be a fruitful line of research. It is possible that follow-up interviews may well uncover useful suggestions for effective administrative reform that would increase local initiative.

*5. This poses something of a problem, which requires selecting only those who answer both sets of questions for the analysis. In effect, we eliminate Indonesia from the analysis, since in all other countries all questions had the same number of respondents.
*6 . This was the subject of a very early set of astute observations by Edward Shills in "Political Development in the New States"' Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol (2), 1959-60. Gayl Ness also found the same conditions and provided a case study of successful decentralization and local initiative in Malaysia's Rural Development Program.
See his Bureaucracy and Rural development in Malaysia, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).