Do urban dwellers benefit from an urban bias in the policies and funding allocations of government and international agencies?

This was the contention of Michael Lipton in his 1977 book 'Why Poor People Stay Poor: Urban Bias in World Development'. It spawned much discussion and many more publications on this topic, with Google Scholar showing Lipton’s book has been cited more than 4,000 times.

I was asked to review this book in 1977 and never thought to question what it says. But as I began to spend time in cities, working with local research teams on living conditions and health risks, doubts began to grow.