Urbanization, migration and urban research in comparative context: an urban systems perspective

"The urbanization process is not only global in scale, and thus subject to universal principles, but intensely specific in time and place. The former calls for research which is both transnational and comparative, the latter for analyses set in the appropriate socioeconomic and political circumstances. This paper outlines a conceptual framework, based on the theory of urban systems, that can accommodate both spatial scales as well as provide a bridge between research focusing on developed and developing countries. A developmental model of migration is introduced to illustrate the approach and the paper concludes with a series of challenges to future research."