Conclusions and Recommendations

Abstract

Throughout history, cities have been centres of government, trade, industry, communications and finance; leaders in the arts, technology, education and cultural life; the standard-bearers of progress in local, provincial and national development. They have provided markets for the farm produce of the rural areas, employment for the surplus population of their hinterlands, refuge in times of war and famine, and freedom from the restrictive customs of a conservative countryside. Even when failing to fulfil some of these central dynamic roles, they have still been the catalysts of change from era to era.