settlements. The beginnings of integrated community- 

 building around the world, from self-help sites-and- 

 services projects to massive planned urban development, 

 indicate the potentials for better cities, more jobs, 

 and the stimulation of economic activity. 



The potentials of transportation technology are 

 linked in part to problems associated with urbanization 

 and the entire urban-rural continuum of human 

 settlements. In the cities, traffic congestion, 

 inadeguate transport, and the poor condition of public 

 transit reduce efficiency, opportunity, and the guality 

 of life for entire communities. Obstacles to mobility 

 are especially injurious to the lowest income families. 



Transport problems in developing countries go 

 beyond the problems of human settlements, however. 

 Nearly every aspect of socioeconomic development 

 depends in part on the ability to move people and 

 goods. Access to land and other resources, and ability 

 to obtain fertilizer and other agricultural inputs and 

 to market farm surpluses, are frustrated by lack of 

 all-weather transport. The ability to tap mineral and 

 forest resources and to extend the areas for trading in 

 goods and services depends on the availability and 

 reasonable cost of transport. Today, even the transfer 

 of knowledge and ideas depends on the ability to 

 transport information physically. A primary need, 

 therefore, is to supply the transportation necessary to 

 support other objectives of development without 

 excessive use of resources. 



In this regard, one of the most promising 

 possibilities of science and technology lies in new 

 methods that might shift part of the communications 

 burden from the transportation sector, while 

 simultaneously surpassing the effectiveness of old 

 methods of transporting information. Modern telephone, 

 television, radio, and information systems could make 

 telecommunications a major means of overcoming the time 

 and space barriers that inhibit development. Use of 

 these systems calls for both enhancing the capacities 

 of developing countries for assembling and using 

 knowledge and creating new, low-cost international 

 communications networks for global transfer of science 

 and technological innovations. 



In the three areas of urbanization, transportation, 

 and communications, a set of common conditions is 

 evident in which U.S. science and technology might be 

 used to accelerate development and improve living 

 conditions in developing countries. 



A central problem is that for most poverty-stricken 

 people, the opportunities for betterment are 

 inaccessible — spatially, economically, and socially. 

 The quality of their lives remains below what might be 

 reasonably expected in both urban and rural places. 



182 



