The Developing World's Motorization Challenge

摘要

Motorization is transforming cities and even rural areas of the developing world. The economic and social benefits are enormous. It provides individual flexible transportation in urban areas and reduced manual labor and improved market access in rural areas. In the longer term, however, motorization may stifle local development, increase pollution, and create unprecedented safety hazards. Without careful attention to the motorization process, disaster looms for cities of the developing world-disaster from which the industrialized countries cannot be isolated. In rural areas and small cities of China and India, millions of small indigenous three- and four-wheel "agricultural" trucks are proliferating. In China, these vehicles are banned in large cities because of their slow speed and high emissions, but agricultural vehicle sales in China still outnumber those of conventional cars and trucks by more than five to one. Costing anywhere from $400 to $3,000 each, these vehicles are the heart of millions of small businesses that transport farm products to local markets and that move construction materials and locally manufactured products; they also serve as the principal mode of motorized travel in rural areas. They are analogous to the Model T in the United States. Agricultural vehicles are essential to local economic development and to the creation of entrepreneurial business activity in rural areas.