A prerequisite for taking any responsibility is to know that it is there and to understand what it entails. Hence, the substance of urban management must be clearly identified, if its responsibilities are to be accepted or assigned and if they are to be carried out. A principal cause of weak management of urban areas in developing countries may be this lack of awareness of what urban management is, what it entails, and who then must do it or might benefit from doing it. Local and regional cultural and historical differences may lie behind very different degrees of awareness, giving rise to some of the variations in the quality of urban management from one place to another.