Much more could be written from the data provided by the 133 responses, were there more time and resources for theanalysis. The data are avai1able on disk, written to ASCII or SPSS formats and can be provided to scholars who would like to use them. What we have been able to do for this report is to present some of the major highlights of how certain Asian admimistrators view their urban problems. Here we can provide two rather brief and summary types of conclusions. One concerns the data from the responses, indicating how urban problems are perceived and suggesting some of the comditions that alrtct those perceptions. The second type of conclusion concerns th echaracter, strengths and weaknesses of the survey itself since this is now the second bi-annual survey carried ou tby the Asian Urban Information Center of Kobe, it is useful to pause to consider how well the Center's overall plan is working.

Urban Administrators and Their Problems There are six areas in which the survey taps administrators'perceptions. Each calls for a brief comment. First, however, it is important to note that the countries in this survey include a wide range of social and economic conditions. We provided at the outset a set of data on nationaI aggregate social and economic conditions to set these cities in their national context. The ten countries include one of the world's richest, Japan, and four of the world's poorest, Nepal, Pakistan, India, China. The countries of Southeast Asia have higher levels of income and welfare, but are still far below Japan. The urbanization and economic data clearly show the rapid transformation that has brought Korea to the world's attention for its "economic miracle." We expect these larger contextual conditions will affect both the chamcter of urban problems and the way urban administrators see those problems.

1. The Desire to Expand the Urban Area. Once again we find that the great majority of ufban adminlstrators wish to expand the area of their cities, sometimes even if they fee the city size is already very large or of apprqpriate size. The reported desire for expansion is to facilitate urban planmig and to increase the revenue base. The persistence of this finding throughout the work of the Asian Urban Information Center of Kobe it itself noteworthy. Prior to the organization of the Center, the same reseaqch team undertook a comparative study of Kobe and Singapore. Both port cities gaced major problems of population and pbrt congestion, and low urban life quality in 1960. Both transformed themselves through port and industrial development and population relocation to become model cities with exceptionally high life quality. Though they did this in very different ways, they both found it necessary to expand their area to provide for more rational urban planmng. Singapore could do it by fiat, Kobe had to negotiate the absorption of smaller surrounding tovms with local, prefectural and national governments. We found the same thing in the first urban Inquiry in 1989-90, and again in the in-depth study of ten port cities in 5 countries. Small cities unable to expand their boundaries face problems of urban plaming and resource limitations.*7 Urban administrators wish to expand their area of control
We also found, however, that Chinese cities have recently been greatly expanded in their area, and now include much "rural"area. It is uncertain whether this level of aerial expansion is needed for effective urban planning. That is a question that could reasonably be included in one of the future in- depth studies.

2. Migration. Most cities in Asia are growing by in-migration as Well as by natural increase. In the lower income coumtries of South and southeast Asia, this mIgration stream is quite substantial, and urban administrators tend to see tha it presents major problems for the city. The grwth by migration represents in part the rapid urban growth that strairLns the services and infrastructure of the city. For Japan, however, the situation is reversed. Japan has completed the demographic transihon, its population growth rate is very low, and in fact many cities face problems of excessive out-migration, which draws away the productive and reproductive young. Thus, expectedly, JapaneSe administrators view in- migradon as satisfactory or giving an advantage to the city. In the rest of Asia, even to a certain extent in Korea, migration is a mixed blessing. It brings young productive people, but it is also part of the population dyTmmics that places great stress on urban services and infrastructure.

It is recognized that there are little good and reliable data on migration, and that it is almost impossible to do anything about rapid inward migration. Few cities have any real plans to try to divert the migration stream, and even ftwer find the efforts they do make to be effective. This renects the broader understanding of Asian urban migration. Urbanization will continue, and there seems to be little one can do about that.

7. It is also instructive to note that in field visits to Surabaya during an AUICK study directors' meeting in Yogyakarta in October 1993, we found administrators saying the same thing. Resistance of the national government or of local units to be included in the larger urban planning network, both for the city and for the port of Surabaya, constituted an obstacle to more effective planning.

3. Fertility and Family Planning Asian administrators' views on the level of their city's fertility are strangely mixed, and sometimes quite at variance with what would be predicted given the national level of fertility. This constitutes a problem in validity, which we address below. At the same time, the administrators tend to see the successes Asian governments have achieved in developing national fertility-limitation programs and in actually reducing fertility. This can be said to constitute one of the major success stories in most of Asia. There are some regional variances, in that East Asia leads Southeast, which in turn leads South Asia. But countries have differed as well, and there is a rather close relationship between two perceptions. When urban administrators find their city fertility levels to be too high, they also tend to see urgent problems in their local family planning programs.

Needless to say, Japanese administrators have little to say about fertility levels, since they are already so low, except to lament the slow growth. Korean administrators accurately reflect the very rapid change in reproductive behavior in their country, and are generally satisfied with fertility rates.

4. Urban Pollution Air and water pollution are the major pollution problems identified by the administrators. For all countries, except China and Pakistan, vehicles are seen as the major source of air pollution. For China and Pakistan, with very low automobile populations, the industrial sources are considered more important. Water pollution, on the other hand is seen to result mostly from industrial waste, and sewage. Japan leads in seeing human sources, especially domestic waste as the major cause of water pollution. Here, Asian rapid urban and economic growth is illustrating one of its major costs. The poorer countries face both rapid growth, which causes pollution, and a lack of resources to abate the pollution. The richer countries are growing and changing more slowly, and they also have the resources to deal more effectively with pollution. Korea is caught in the middle. Its very rapid development has brought greatly increased pollution levels, but not yet sufficient resources to deal effectively with them. That is expected to change in the very near future, while the poorer countries face a longer period of increasing levels of air and water pollution.

5. Traffic Like pollution, traffic congestion is one of the major costs of urbanization and development. The administrators see very clearly that rapid urbanization implies a rapid increase in vehicles, which produces greater problems of traffic congestion. For rich countries like Japan, such minor bottlenecks as construction delays are thought to be a major cause of traffic problems, but for all the rest, the problem lies in the rapid growth of vehicles. To address the problems, most cities are engaging in construction projects to attempt to move the vehicles more effectively and efficiently. This typical construction approach may in fact produce as many problems as it solves, as better roads simply attract more vehicles. Few cities are working on mass transit systems, designed to move goods and people more efficiently, rather than moving vehicles more efficiently. Even fewer cities are using negative market incentives to reduce the flow of vehicles. There is, however, both much experimentation in this area, and a generally increased pressure that can be expected to increase the experimentation and produce some innovative approaches in the near future. This, too, is an arena that bears careful observation.

6. Urban Problems As in the first Inquiry, we used a simple five point scale that asked administrators to rate the seriousness of a variety of common urban problems. Overall, the results were similar to those obtained in the first Inquiry, and there are also some interesting country conditions that stood out. First, most administrators reflect the success Asia has had in the past few decades in promoting health and education services, and most see these to be areas of greatest achievement. At the other end, the most serious problems are those that stem from pressures on the infrastructure: transportation, utilities, employment and housing.

Housing overall, however is something of a mixed condition. The problem areas for the lower income countries are in the homeless and in squatters. The squatters problems was one of the few areas in which the perceived seriousness of the problem was closely related to the rate of urban growth. More rapid growth produces greater administrators' perception of squatter problems. Upper and middle class housing, on the other hand tend to be rated quite satisfactory. Except in Japan. There, as might be expected, the homeless and squatters are no problem, and the major problem lies in adequate housing for middle and upper income people, but even here the problems are not considered very serious.

Employment is also a mixed condition. The most serious problems in all countries, again excepting Japan, are general and male unemployment. It is interesting to note that despite the publicity given to the problem of child labor in recent international organization activities, Asian urban administrators seldom view the child labor problem as a serious one. It is also evident, however that either local conditions or local perceptions differ greatly here. In China, for example, three administrators saw child labor as a serious problem, but seven saw it as a condition that was satisfactory or advantageous for the city.

Finally, crime is also somewhat mixed. The major problems are those of violent and property crime, and especially for some counties drug abuse. Prostitution and organized crime tend to be viewed as less serious. The interesting exception is Korea, where all crime problems tend to be viewed as major or urgent problems. Korean administrators' view crime as a far more serious problem than do their counterparts in the rest of Asia.

AUICK's Survey Strategy. As before we note that this type of mailed, self-administered survey asking for both factual data and administrators' judgments and perceptions presents a major problem. As before, AUICK sent out about 250 questionnaires and received responses from around half of the administrators. The questionnaires were sent to an access person in each country, who managed whatever translation was needed, distributed, followed-up, collected the questionnaires and returned them to Kobe. All access persons performed and extremely valuable service, and their assistance is greatly appreciated.

The overall return rate was about 50 percent. In addition, there was great variance in the completion of all items. Moreover, although the instructions were to ask the Mayor or chief administrative head to complete the questionnaire, it was completed by a wide range of people. Only about 18 percent were completed by the top elected or administrative official. About half, however, were completed by a higher level planning official. The most deviant case was China, where all 14 questionnaires appear to have been completed by academic social scientists, usually in a university population research institute. As yet, we have not been able to identify any particular pattern of responses related to the position of the respondent. There were basically two types of questions. On the one hand were factual questions about such things as area and population size, migration flows, and contraceptive use rates. Other questions asked for the judgment of the city official of the seriousness of a specific set of urban problems. The overall pattern of responses showed a number of distinctive characteristics.

First, there was the highest return rate and the highest completion rate in Japan and Korea. With well developed administrative and communication systems, urban administrators have the data to respond, and are apparently more accustomed to receiving and complying with such requests. Gaining a high response rate in the lower income countries required a great deal of follow-up by the country access person, and even then the results are disappointing. In addition, in many cases the objective data requested were apparently not available, leading to low completion rates for some questions. On the other hand, when we asked for administrators' judgments, the completion rate tended to be very high, although even here there were some notable gaps as some administrators did not provide judgments on specific blocks of questions.

The overall effect is to give us a sample of responses about which we know very little. It would be difficult to argue that this sample accurately reflects Asian urban administrators' views in any clear cut way. What we can say is unfortunately limited to these 133 cities, or to the specific administrators who completed the questionnaire.

At the same time, we have tested some of the perceptions against other published objective data*8 and find that we can trust administrators' perceptions about their city sizes, though not about the flow of migration, except in Japan and Korea. Through a variety of cross tabulations, we could also make a case for at least rational judgments, which seem to be based on good perceptions of objective conditions. It is quite obvious, for example, that Japanese administrators should see far fewer problems and express greater capacities to deal with those problems than their counterparts from the lower income countries. It is also reasonable to expect that Korean exceptionally rapid transition from a rural-agrarian to an urban- industrial society in just 40 years should produce some exceptional strains. It is also to be expected that the administrators in the lower income countries with high rates of urban growth should express great concern over the massive problems they face. These patterns lend credence to the responses and suggest that we take them seriously, if not always literally. These responses are also important, we believe, because they are the voices of the urban administrators, who must daily deal with a massive set of problems, often with far fewer human and material resources than they need. They deserve our attention and they need our assistance.

It is with the aim of providing some voice to Asian urban administrators that the Asian Urban Information Center of Kobe presents these finding.