analysis for community-building and rebuilding programs 

 could help provide a global economic stimulus and 

 extensive new opportunities for jobs among the worlds 

 unemployed. 



2. Upgrading Intermediate Cities and Rural Life 



Most of the world's poorest people live in rural 

 areas and small villages, cut off from the help that 

 science and technology could provide. The low 

 productivity of rural economies and the hundreds of 

 millions of people in subsistence agriculture are 

 reason enough for the immediate relief that innovative 

 technologies could supply. A major task is to increase 

 the attractions of rural life in order to assure the 

 future of agriculture and other resource development 

 and to reduce the waves of migration that the largest 

 cities are unprepared to absorb. 



More desirable living conditions in intermediate- 

 sized cities (100,000 to 500,000 population) could also 

 act as a counter-attraction to the metropolis (see 

 Pivkin 1976) . These cities are less committed to 

 costly infrastructure than the major cities, and could 

 serve as models for the application of new technology 

 and new ideas in community development. New 

 technological approaches could be introduced into such 

 settings: solar energy, waste management, water 

 recycling, desalination, innovative public transport, 

 and new applications of telecommunications. 



Proposed Initiatives 



We propose that the United States allocate grant 

 funds for a series of projects to demonstrate new 

 applications of science and technology in smaller 

 cities. These projects would emphasize resource- 

 conserving approaches to urban development, such as 

 those mentioned above. Such an effort could be 

 administered either bilaterally or through the U.N. 

 Habitat Center, and would require a program comprising 

 the following steps: 



— an inventory and assessment of existing resource- 

 conserving technologies and of their applicability 

 to developing countries; 



-- packaging information for discussions and planning 

 with selected countries for the application of 

 appropriate technologies ; 



— establishment of evaluation and monitoring 

 mechanisms, development of case studies, and 



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