How can links between disaster mitigation and urban planning be strengthened? Can urban livelihood strategies reduce poor city dwellers’ vulnerability to disaster? Scant attention is currently paid by relief organisations to urban planning and disaster mitigation, according to a recent Care International report.
This report, by researchers working in urban agriculture (UA), examines concrete strategies to integrate city farming into the urban landscape. Drawing on original field work in cities across the rapidly urbanising global South, the book examines the contribution of UA and city farming to livelihoods and food security. The case studies covered by the authors, focus on the following aspects of urban agriculture:
This paper describes how urbanization and climate change shape water insecurity in two villages, Sultanpur and Jhanjhrola Khera in periurban Gurgaon in the North-West Indian state of Haryana. Using ethnographic and participatory approaches, it documents the people's lived experience of a changing climate and water insecurity. While urbanization and climate variability alter the availability of water, the effects of this are aggravated by a complex interaction of caste, class, gender and locational factors.
Countries throughout the world are rapidly urbanising, particularly in the developing world, and for the first time in human history, the majority of people today are no longer living in rural areas, but rather in cities. This report examines the worldwide phenomenon of urbanisation from the point of view of women’s housing rights.
Can the twin developmental goals of administrative decentralisation and improving services for the urban poor be meshed? How can urban authorities and local politicians learn to listen to service users, particularly women? What services should be run by municipalities and what could be managed by neighbourhood or private management?
How can young people be involved in creating more livable cities? Can the noble participation principles set forth in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Agenda 21 of the Earth Summit, and Habitat II be realised? What is being done to help young people, especially children in difficult circumstances, to get their voices heard by policy-makers?
Could more efficient use of energy have an impact on poverty alleviation? What changes in energy use patterns are likely to generate the greatest benefits for the poor? What are the constraints on the uptake of energy efficiency measures? Can they be overcome?
Secure land rights are important for development and poverty reduction and the greatest challenges for providing such rights are in urban, peri-urban areas, and the most productive rural areas. This publication updates and revises UN-HABITAT’s 2004 publication ‘Urban Land for All’, and stresses the need for policies that facilitate access to land for all sections of their existing and future populations – particularly those on low or irregular incomes.
This paper examines urban health in low- and middle-income countries, in relation to two sets of environmental issues:
persistent local environmental health burdens, and most notably the water, sanitation and housing deficiencies prevalent in the poor neighbourhoods of so many urban settlements
emerging global environmental burdens that will be experienced in urban areas, and most notably those associated with climate change
Mitchells Plain is about 20km from the Cape Town city centre. It was built in the 1970s as a township for people classified as ‘Coloured’, who were forcibly removed from areas that had been declared ‘whites only’ under the Group Areas Act. Various attempts were made to upgrade the Mitchells Plain Town Centre (MPTC) after the advent of democracy in 1994, but these were disjointed and lacked a champion to drive the process.
Through our robust search engine, you can search for any item of the over 64,800 highly curated resources in the Land Library.
If you would like to find an overview of what is possible, feel free to peruse the Search Guide.
