The Human Settlements Conditions Of The World S Urban Poor

'The world has entered the urban millennium. Nearly half the world's people are now city dwellers, and the rapid increase in urban population is expected to continue, mainly in developing countries. This historic transition is being further propelled by the powerful forces of globalization. The central challenge for the international community is clear: to make both urbanization and globalization work for all people, instead of leaving billions behind or on the margins. Cities in a Globalizing World: Global Report on Human Settlements is a comprehensive review of conditions in the world's cities and the prospects for making them better, safer places to live in an age of globalization. I hope that it will provide all stakeholders - foremost among them the urban poor themselves - with reliable and timely information with which to set our policies right and get the machinery of urban life moving in a constructive direction.' From the Foreword by Kofi Annan, Secretary-General, United Nations. Cities in a Globalizing World presents a comprehensive review of the world's cities and analyses the positive and negative impacts on human settlements of the global trends towards social and economic integration and the rapid changes in information and communication technologies. In this Global Report, the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) draws on specially commissioned and contributed background papers from more than 80 leading international specialists. The report focuses on recent trends in human settlements and their implications for poverty, inequity and social polarization. It develops advance knowledge for urban planning and management policies in support and promotion of inclusive cities and good urban governance. This major and influential report is the most authoritative and up-to-date assessment of human settlements conditions and trends. Written in clear, non-technical language and supported by informative graphics, case studies and extensive statistical data, it should be an essential tool and reference for academics, researchers, planners, public authorities and civil society organizations around the world.

The Challenge of Slums presents the first global assessment of slums, emphasizing their problems and prospects. Using a newly formulated operational definition of slums, it presents estimates of the number of urban slum dwellers and examines the factors at all level, from local to global, that underlie the formation of slums as well as their social, spatial and economic characteristics and dynamics. It goes on to evaluate the principal policy responses to the slum challenge of the last few decades. From this assessment, the immensity of the challenges that slums pose is clear. Almost 1 billion people live in slums, the majority in the developing world where over 40 per cent of the urban population are slum dwellers. The number is growing and will continue to increase unless there is serious and concerted action by municipal authorities, governments, civil society and the international community. This report points the way forward and identifies the most promising approaches to achieving the United Nations Millennium Declaration targets for improving the lives of slum dwellers by scaling up participatory slum upgrading and poverty reduction programmes. The Global Report on Human Settlements is the most authoritative and up-to-date assessment of conditions and trends in the world's cities. Written in clear language and supported by informative graphics, case studies and extensive statistical data, it will be an essential tool and reference for researchers, academics, planners, public authorities and civil society organizations around the world.

"This publication presents a methodology for participative informal settlement upgrading with the support of information technology, the result of research and development activities carried out by UNCHS (Habitat) and a group of partners. Examining a number of experiences in the field, and through direct support to specific tool development activities, Habitat aims to consolidate a wealth of practical and field experiences into a methodological framework. The methodology refers to the project preparation phase, including community involvement protocols, and the information management system related to it. This methodology should be seen as a practical reference framework for programme managers and officials involved in designing and managing settlement upgrading projects and should assist policy makers and external support agencies in policy formulation and resource allocation. It will also provide a technical background to the Global Campaigns for Secure Tenure and for Good Urban Governance that UNCHS (Habitat) is launching in the year 2000"--p. 3.

It examines the range of strategies, including the most recent experiments in local community - private sector partnership, that have been used to try and improve housing conditions for the very poor and why they have so often failed. It also reviews the state of existing policy-oriented research with a view to understanding the possible future of these settlements.

'The world has entered the urban millennium. Nearly half the world's people are now city dwellers and the rapid increase in urban population is expected to continue mainly in developing countries. This historic transition is being further propelled by the powerful forces of globalization. The central challenge for the international community is clear: to make both urbanization and globalization work for all people instead of leaving billions behind or on the margins ... Cities in a Globalizing World: Global Report on Human Settlements 2001 is a comprehensive review of conditions in the world's.

Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject Politics - Topic: Development Politics, grade: 1,0 (A), University of Constance (Faculty for Management Science), course: Mega-cities worldwide and theit administration, language: English, abstract: Cities have a long tradition; they exist since thousands of years. They have always had attractive power to mankind. 200 years ago just a small proportion of men was living in cities. Today nearly three billions of people live in urban areas - this is the half of the total world population - and it is estimated by international institutions like UN or World Bank, that this number will go on growing. With an increasing number of people living in cities several problems do come up. One very - maybe the most - important problem is housing the urban poor in the mega-cities of the developing world. Tipple/Willis (1991: 1) argue that "Housing the poor in the developing world is one of the major challenges facing mankind in the last decade of the twentieth century". my opinion, this challenge does still exist in the twenty-first century. And this challenge does not only exist in the developing countries in Africa, Asia and South America but also in the industrialised world, like the USA or the European countries, although the problems in these countries are by far not so tremendous and apparent. Who does not know Harlem in New York? Everybody knows that there are bad living conditions. But what are the problems of the people living in Harlem compared with the problems of the inhabitants of slums and squatter areas in the developing world. To cite Tipple/Willis (1991: 1) once more: "The major housing problem is the shortage of affordable accommodation for the urban poor; the low-income majority". There have been many official housing programs to provide more housing possibilities or to improve the existing housings - especially in the countries of the Third World -, but none of them have been successful at all. All these programs were unable to provide enough dwellings; the history of housing construction programs has shown that all measures need substantial resources, cities often do not have. This paper wants to show the problems concerning housing the urban poor in the developing world and why these problems arise. After this more general introduction I will concentrate upon squatter-settlements in the Third World. Within this part I will point out some of the housing programs, which were used to solve the immense problems with housing the poor in the mega-cities. [...]

This is a review of conditions and trends in cities around the world and in the urbanization process. Prepared by Habitat (United Nations Centre for Human Settlements) the book shows the positive and negative side of cities while stressing the crucial impo