154 Managing Systems of Secondary Cities
Euphrates and Tigris river systems. The region contains more than 65 per cent of the world’s known oil and natural gas reserves, which has enabled some of the smaller Gulf states to enjoy some of the world’s highest rates of GDP per capita and develop modern cities in desert landscapes. However, many countries of the region have been rocked by political unrest and civil war, and a significant proportion of the MENA region’s population remain poor and/or living in migrant settlements in the larger cities. There are more than 20 million migrant workers in the Middle East, with some countries, such as Qatar and Kuwait, having more migrant workers than nationals. Many migrants live in impoverished conditions, but the remittances they send to their home countries, such as India, Bangladesh and the Philippines, have a very significant impact in supporting rural and smaller urban centres in their home countries. The MENA region lags behind all other regions in the democracy index (Campbell et al., 2012). The Middle East and North Africa region has one of the most centralized government structures in the world (Tosun and Yilmaz, 2008). Much of this was inherited from the Ottoman Empire system of governance, which focused on a centralized taxation system and had a direct impact on current government structure. With decades of both external and internal threats and conflicts, governments in MENA have veered strongly towards nationalism and centralism related to governance and economic and social development policies. Overall, local-government systems in the region can be characterized as a form of re-concentration rather than one of devolved local self-government (Tosun and Yilmaz, 2008:7). In many countries a large share of public expenditure is dispersed through subnational governments, which act as agents of central government ministries and departments. Local-government elected representatives have little decision-making power over expenditure and planning of development, which remains largely centralized. Since the Arab Spring reforms there is increasing pressure for greater decentralization and strengthening of local government, but it will likely take some time for nations to realize, given the urgent need to reform many centralized institutions and governance systems. The following presents two brief case studies, which profile policies related to decentralization, urbanization and secondary city development in two MENA region countries: Tunisia and Turkey. The former is undergoing substantial reforms since the uprisings of 2010. The latter laid down the historic governance structures of most of the MENA, but underwent massive social, economic and governance transition, which still continues, following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918.
7.4.1 Tunisia Urbanization in Tunisia The Tunisian Republic is more than 66 per cent urbanized. Its largest city, Tunis, with a greater metropolitan area population of 2,412,500 (2011) comprises several large