120 Book Reviews

In these areas, therefore, rainfall harvesting clearly has a major role. It is often already practised and the challenge is to develop acceptable, effective and low-cost improvements. In runoff farming the problem is the low short-run private return to the (often considerable) amount of labour required in moving earth and rocks to create the bunds, contour ridges, hoops (semi-circular catchments on slopes), etc. This is especially the case where household labour has alternative employment during the slack season, e.g. migration, or where the earthworks are meant primarily for soil conservation or afforestation. The study provides useful case histories of work with communities under these circumstances, with development of simpler techniques (most notably the ingenious hose-level for marking contours).

My only points of criticism are that I would have liked to see more on the experience with use of public works schemes in soil engineering works in order to overcome the problem of their low short-run returns to labour, similarly on water harvesting for larger- scale afforestation in arid and semi-arid areas. An apparently underexplored area is the potential of rainwater harvesting for crop and tree cultivation in predominantly sandy soils.

MICHAEL HUBBARD Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham

THE SPATIAL DIMENSIONS OF DEVELOPMENT POLICY Dennis A. Rondinelli Bowker Publishing Co., 1985, 264 pp.

THE EARTH SCIENCES AND PLANNING IN THE THIRD WORLD John C. Doornkamp Liverpool University Press, 1985, 100 pp,

These two books are intended to aid planners in less-developed countries. One is a guide of how to go about the task of planning; the other is more of a treatise of the ills that will befall any planner who fails to include earth scientists in any planning exercise. Both volumes are full of common sense and are written in a straightforward manner, and neither, by admission, really offers anything very original.

Rondinelli’s book is the archetypal handbook. It instructs the planner in the tools available for planning urban functions in rural development (UFRD); an approach developed by Rondinelli during a session of USAID projects in the 1970s. It is intended for planners with little experience in this field and introduces a series of basic methods of data collection and analysis. Most of the tools are well known in the geographicalhegional science literature but the book brings them usefully together in one place. Having recently read several M. Sc dissertations by budding planners from less-developed countries who have employed the concept, I am less than convinced that the handbook will be wholly successful. It is very good at showing them how to use the tools, but what is less easily absorbed is the rationale and purpose of the analysis. The final outcome, therefore, may be a whole series of data collection and analysis exercises, with little use made of them to really help poor people. I suspect that this may happen anyway in less-developed country planning circles, so I can’t really blame the author; and, unlike many planning handbooks, the contents of this one do not contain any dangers for the local population.

If Rondinelli patiently leads the unsophisticated planner through a series of methods and provides ten phases of UFRD analysis, Doornkamp is more interested in stimulating an awareness of the need for earth science analysis. Perhaps I am too much the geographer, but I am rather surprised that there is much need to make such a case. It seems to me absolutely obvious that the stability of the land and its susceptibility to earthquakes should be studied before a dam is built. Doesn’t everyone accept that the availability of water should be studied before urban development is planned? And yet, beyond the constant advocacy of this need, the book really offers very little. It does not tell the planner how to carry out the evaluation, it really does little more than make the case for an appropriate