Urban blogs

Climate resilient cities: a role for the media

Journalists can remind city officials and urban residents about ‘hidden finance’ for climate resilience, and ensure the money gets well spent, says David Dodman.

Slum-dwellers show that revolutions are not built in a day

Slum dwellers across Africa and Asia have used new tactics to achieve social justice and urban rights.

8 points on financing climate change adaptation in urban areas

As the urgency for governments and international agencies to address climate change increases, an expert meeting identified eight key points on finance priorities.

How does a changing climate impact on urban poverty?

When floods hit a city, usually low-income groups are hit hardest. The devastation that such disasters cause can be linked to the failure of city governments to manage growth and build infrastructure.

Does development assistance have a future?

No one unequivocally and wholeheartedly said development assistance worked at yesterday’s debate on whether it had a future. All three panel speakers saw the need for a radical change in approach.

Rethinking finance for development in city ‘slums’

The Asian Coalition for Community Action is challenging the traditional model of aid by providing small grants to low-income communities to upgrade the ‘slums’ or informal settlements in which they live.

Basic service provision shouldn’t just be a money maker

Are utility companies forgetting that their core function is to provide services and not just make money?

6th World Urban Forum: will the agenda of slum and shack dwellers ever get considered?

David Satterthwaite asks why representatives from the federations and networks of slum or shack dwellers were absent from almost all the official events and wonders when their priorities will get the attention they deserve.

The real issue is universal access to affordable basic services

Why have global leaders endorsed partial Millennium Development Goal targets, asks Diana Mitlin, leaving millions without water, sanitation or healthcare?

Beyond the Millennium Development Goals

How can we ensure the targets that replace the Millennium Development Goals lead to a future that low-income groups want?

Why enumeration counts: documenting by the undocumented

People living in informal settlements are often deliberately left out of official surveys and maps. Now they're documenting themselves.

Debunking the myths about migration and climate change

After years of alarmist predictions of hundreds of millions of climate refugees fleeing their homes, there is now a broad-based consensus that while the impacts of climate change will increase the number of migrants, it is not the only factor that drives people to move

Thailand's floods: complex political and geographical factors behind the crisis

The scale of Thailand's floods are unprecedented. In the midst of the crisis, water management has become a politically sensitive matter

Why survivors should lead responses to disasters

People power: the urban poor are now a force to be reckoned with

Speakers at the "View from the streets" event in London showed how the urban poor can group together to bring about change

Why are the main means by which urban dwellers avoid hunger ignored?

The issue of hunger in urban areas has long been neglected, as part of a more general neglect of urban poverty. And when the issue is covered, there are some glaring gaps in the analysis

No easy, quick solutions to improving life in the "slums"

BBC journalist Paul Mason’s “Our World,” shown on the 26th August 2011, relies once more on professionalized solutions to offer hope to those living in Manila, the capital of the Philippines – and the most densely populated city on earth. But they’re not a viable solution for the 900 million people living in informal settlements and other forms of inadequate accommodation such as crowded inner city dwellings.

Braking Beijing’s car addiction

Driven by subsidies for small cars and an ever increasing middle class, the Chinese year of the tiger saw a ferocious increase in the car industry — a whopping 18.1 million vehicles (including 13.8 million cars) were sold in China in 2010, up by a third from the previous year. But will new efforts by Beijing combat both the booming economy and the grid-locked streets? And is this another example of China setting a new course for a greener future?

Low2No helps show how to build sustainable cities

‘Low-carbon growth’ seems to be mentioned all the time with regards to environment and development policy. As a theory this is great, but how can the theory be made more concrete? What might the practice of low-carbon growth look like when applied to urban environments?

Let's get compact

The future sprawls before us — urban sprawl, that is. John Vidal of the UK Guardian says that in 50 years, we could see ‘vast “mega-regions” which may stretch hundreds of miles across countries and be home to more than 100 million people’.

In fact, they’re here already: the gargantuan Hong Kong-Shenhzen-Ghaungzhou conurbation, to take just one example, houses more than 120 million people.

Whether in-migration to these regions is a trickle or a flood (and the downturn has apparently had a mixed effect on migration to cities), the urban pull remains powerful, as the poor chase jobs and escape degraded rural environments or conflict.