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The main goal of this book is to put urbanization and its challenges squarely on Africa’s development agenda. Planned urbanization can improve living conditions for the majority, help in the expansion of the middle class, and create conditions for economic transformation. However, many African cities have developed haphazardly, resulting in the decline of public services, in slum proliferation, and increases in poverty. African cities thrive on activities characterized by easy entry and low productivity, generally referred to as the "informal sector". Indeed, today some urban dwellers are poorer than their cousins in the countryside. In spite of reform attempts, many governments have not b...
Peri-urban interfaces - the zones where urban and rural areas meet - suffer from the greatest problems to humans caused by rapid urbanization, including intense pressures on resources, slum formation, lack of adequate services such as water and sanitation, poor planning and degradation of farmland. These areas, home to hundreds of millions of people, face unique problems and need distinctive and innovative approaches and solutions. This book, authored by top researchers and practitioners, covers the full breadth and depth of the impacts of rapid urbanization on livelihoods, poverty and resources in the peri-urban zones in diverse African, Asian, Latin American and Caribbean contexts. Topics ...
Harare is at the epicentre of the economic meltdown and political crisis that has devastated Zimbabwe over the last decade and led to a mass exodus from the country. Those who remained in Zimbabwe’s largest city and capital endured unprecedented hardship as the formal economy collapsed, unemployment soared and poverty deepened. Household surveys conducted in Harare with official sanction between 2003 and 2009 appear to demonstrate that food insecurity was not a particularly serious problem, a conclusion sharply at odds with reality. In 2008, at the height of the crisis, AFSUN therefore implemented its own baseline food security survey in Harare using a well-tested and reliable methodology....
This book on urban design extends and develops the widely accepted 'compact city' solution. It provides a design proposal for a new kind of sustainable urban landscape: Urban Agriculture. By growing food within an urban rather than exclusively rural environment, urban agriculture would reduce the need for industrialized production, packaging and transportation of foodstuffs to the city dwelling consumers. The revolutionary and innovative concepts put forth in this book have potential to shape the future of our cities quality of life within them. Urban design is shown in practice through international case studies and the arguments presented are supported by quantified economic, environmental and social justifications.
This book focuses on peri-urban development processes in Africa, with special emphasis on Zimbabwe. The debates included highlight a number of issues in the peri-urban context, such as access to water, appropriate technologies and land management, political economy in the peri-urban space, peri-urban agriculture, and place marketing in peri-urban development, among others. The debates raised by the authors in this book revolve around locating the peri-urban space within the context of sustainability, in which key issues are addressed. The book essentially examines peri-urban development processes from various angles in an effort to understand how peri-urban areas develop, function, and how t...
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 international license. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Authoritarianism is on the rise globally, with more than twice as many countries experiencing democratic decline as democratic enhancement in recent years. This has been occurring simultaneously with unprecedented rates of urbanization in many parts of the world, raising questions about the role of cities - often considered the focal points of democratic deepening - in this authoritarian turn. While most literature considers authoritarianism on the national scale, the chapters i...
This book is a collection of essays, bringing together seventeen contributions from different disciplines, with various, but complementary points of view, to discuss the directions and key components of risk governance. Some of the many issues of interest to risk scholars addressed in this work include the analysis of proactive approaches to the governance of risk from natural hazards; approaches to broaden the scope of public policies related to the management of risks from natural hazards, including emergency and environmental management, community development and spatial planning.
This authoritative guide promotes safe, healthy andnon-exploitative working conditions for the construction industry.It combines theoretical analysis and case-studies from around theworld, offering recommendations for best practice. The book results from a project funded by the GenevaInternational Academic Network, with staff from the InternationalLabour Office and the University of Geneva. It presents anddiscusses the challenges and potential of local authorities topromote decent work in construction. Existing literature on decent work focuses mainly on the rolesand responsibilities of actors in the private sector but thecontribution of the public sector should not be ignored. Localauthorit...
Urban agriculture is an increasingly popular practice in cities worldwide, and a sustainable future for it is critical, especially for the urban poor of the developing world.
This book is part of a series produced in association with the Open University and forms part of the Open University course DD304: Understanding cities.