Jayapal, P. creator text xu| 2000 continuing ng p.118-23 The large cities in the developing countries are faced with substantial management problems. Not withstanding the considerabale awareness about the need, and willingness to promote decentralized development of large cities, the practiced spatial policies have not been considered adequate enough to achieve this objective. The developing countries are perceived to be concerned with the possible negative impact of such growth retarding initiatives, on the overall growth of national GDP. In the developing country's context, there is a need to adopt approaches which would enable decentralisation of activities and population from the large cities, even while ensuring sustained economic growth. This paper discusses the various pre-requisites for achieving successful spatial decentralisation of large cities, and advocates short distant based spatial decentralization efforts, as more appropriate than long distance based initiatives. - Reproduced Decentralization Indian Journal of Regional Science 180718