Effectiveness of population and industrial decentralization policies on metropolitan concentration: Greece and Japan in a cross-national impact evaluation.

Abstract

Post World War II has witnessed an ever-increasing trend in metropolitan concentration in both developed and developing nations. The post-industrial western economies have gone through an evolutionary process of urban concentration, deconcentration, and perhaps even reconcentration. Developing Third World nations, especially those at a transitional stage, are facing the problems of significant urban concentration, often linked to industrialization of their economies. A goal of this study is to see what lessons can be transferred from an analysis of a free-market developed nation, Japan, and a mixed market transitional nation, Greece, to an analysis of Third World countries who are searching for a model to help their counter-urbanization or decentralization policies. Urban overgrowth or optimum city-size arguments have been used mostly in developed nations as the principal motivation for population and industrial decentralization policies. This study found that most population and industrial decentralization policies are largely ineffective with respect to the intended key outcome indicator, the significant reduction of metropolitan concentration of population and economic activities in major cities. By evaluating decentralization policies of two major case studies, Greece and Japan, we tried to find which policies are effective and which are ineffective. Case studies of selected countries belonging to different world systems are analyzed to determine reasons for policy failure. The implication of the findings for future practice and research are examined. Secondary data analyses for countries such as Greece, Japan, Great Britain, France, Sweden, Nigeria, Yugoslavia, Kenya, Brazil, and the United States, combined with the field experience of the Author lead to the conclusion that population and industrial decentralization policies have little or no impacts on metropolitan concentration in any of these highly divergent contexts.