ducted a survey on urbanization in the Philippines. The Philippines is a very i nteresting case to study and offers a guideline in understanding the situation in countries where eco-nomic and social development has been lagging. This repo rt consists of seven chapters and discusses economic progress and development i n addition to urbanization. It would only take an hour to read it, so I would l ike you to read it by all means.

Now, what are the implications of "urbanization" which is taking place extensiv ely in your countries? What are the important points and how are the problems t hat will brought about by urbanization different from the existing ones?

First, development of urbanization differs from country to country. It is more advanced in some countries than in others and the rate of urbanization also var y. There is also a theoretical question of whether urbanization is blessing or not for the humanity. Theo-retically speaking, the phenomenon of urbanization s hould be the same regardless of whether the country is developed or not, but it s process is different. While urbanization occurs in the so-called developed co untries as a byproduct of industrialization during gradual advancement of devel opment, it occurs suddenly in developing countries without being accompanied by industrialization. This distortion resulting from the imbalance that is created between the speed of industrialization and urbanization has occurred in some of the Asian countries. Population has increased so rapidly in urban areas that it has become impossible for the governments to deal with the ever-increasing popu lation. This is the case of urbanization in developing countries in Asia and ot her regions.

While developed countries are able to maintain balance in a sense because their urbaniza-tion and industrialization have slowed down considerably, the same is not true for devel-oping countries. As urbanization is advancing much more rapi dly, cities that are receiv-ing the influx of population from rural areas do no t have the time to make the adjustment. They do not have the leeway nor time to do so. The direction and phenomenon of ur-banization may be the same between de veloped and developing countries but the process is different.

The problems of urbanization that are occurring in developed countries include ill effects of excessive concentration of industry and population in large citi es as well as air pollu-tion, water pollution and environmental pollution broug ht about by seeking only the economy of scale, resulting in further deteriorati on of social environment. These phe-nomena experienced by developed countries a re now occurring in developing countries as well.

Let us return to the survey on the Philippines. I would like to raise some poin ts here instead of going into details. First of all, if you were to describe th e Philippines in one word, it would be "a country of multiple culture," i.e. a country in which various cultures coexist. It seems that this says more about t his country than anything else. The charac-teristic that separates the Philippi nes from other Asian countries is that she has many cul-tures. The Philippines has a very large population of 69 million. China, Indonesia and Thailand also h ave large population but 69 million is also very large. And in the Philip-