Women Urbanization And Sustainability

This work considers the city as a gendered space and examines women’s experiences and engagement in both urbanization and sustainability. Such a focus offers distinctive insights into the question of what it means for a city to be sustainable, asking further how sustainability needs to work with gender and the gendered lives of cities’ inhabitants. Vitally, it considers women’s lives in cities and their work to forge more sustainable cities through a wide variety of means, including governmental, non-governmental and local grassroots and individual efforts towards sustainable urban life. The volume is transnational, offering case-studies from a wide range of city sites and sustainability efforts. It explores crucial questions such as the gendered nature and women’s experiences of current urbanization; the gendered nature of urban sustainability thinking and programmes; and local alternatives and resistances to dominant modes of addressing urbanization challenges.

This book examines urbanization and migration processes in South Asia. By analyzing the socio-economic impacts and infrastructural, environmental and institutional aspects of different conurbations, it highlights conflicts over agricultural land as well as the effects on health, education, poverty and the welfare of children, women and old people. The authors also explore issues of mobility; connectivity and accessibility of public services, and discuss the effective use of new urban-management tools, such as the concept of smart cities and urban spatial monitoring.

The problems related to the process of industrialisation such as biodiversity depletion, climate change and a worsening of health and living conditions, especially but not only in developing countries, intensify. Therefore, there is an increasing need to search for integrated solutions to make development more sustainable. The United Nations has acknowledged the problem and approved the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. On 1st January 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the Agenda officially came into force. These goals cover the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection. The Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals comprehensively addresses the SDGs in an integrated way. The Encyclopedia encompasses 17 volumes, each one devoted to one of the 17 SDGs. This volume addresses SDG 11, namely “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” and contains the description of a range of terms, which allows a better understanding and fosters knowledge. This book presents a set of papers on the state of the art of knowledge and practices about the numerous challenges for cities, solutions and opportunities for the future. Concretely, the defined targets are: Ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums Provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities and older persons Enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage Significantly reduce the number of deaths and the number of people affected and substantially decrease the direct economic losses relative to global gross domestic product caused by disasters, including water-related disasters, with a focus on protecting the poor and people in vulnerable situations Reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to air quality and municipal and other waste management Provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities Support positive economic, social and environmental links between urban, peri-urban and rural areas by strengthening national and regional development planning Substantially increase the number of cities and human settlements adopting and implementing integrated policies and plans towards inclusion, resource efficiency, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, resilience to disasters, and develop and implement, in line with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, holistic disaster risk management at all levels Support least developed countries, including through financial and technical assistance, in building sustainable and resilient buildings utilizing local materials Editorial Board Samuel Borges Barbosa, Luciana Londero Brandli, Elisa Conticelli, Erin A. Hopkins, Olga Kuznetsova, Astrid Skjerven, Hari Srinivas

Exploring the relationship between place and identity, this book gathers 30 papers that highlight experiences from throughout the Asia-Pacific region. The countries profiled include China, India, Japan, Indonesia, and Thailand. Readers will gain a better understanding of how urbanization is affecting gender equity in Asian-Pacific cities in the 21st century. The contributing authors examine the practical implications of urban development and link them with the broader perspective of urban ecology. They consider how visceral experiences connect with structural and discursive spheres. Further, they investigate how multiple, interconnected relations of power shape gender (in)equity in urban ecologies, and address such issues as construction of Kawaii as an idealized femininity, diversity among homosexuals in urban India, and single women and rental housing. In turn, the authors present hitherto unexplored sub-themes from historiography and existentialist literary perspectives, and share a vast range of multi-disciplinary views on issues concerning gendered dispossession due to the impact of urban policy and governance. The topics covered include socio-spatial and ethnic segregation in urban spaces; intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and caste in urban spaces; and identity-based marginalization, including that of LGBT groups. Overall, the book brings together perspectives from the humanities and the social sciences, and represents a valuable contribution to the vital theoretical and practical debates on urbanism and gender equity.

"There is a widespread perception that the development process is in a state of multiple crisis. While the notion of sustainable development is supposed to address adequately its environmental dimensions, there is still no agreed framework relating women to this new perspective. This book is an attempt to present and disentangle the various positions put forward by major actors and to clarify the political and theoretical issues that are at stake in the debates on women, the environment and sustainable development. Among the current critiques of the western model of development which the authors review are the feminist analysis of Science itself and the power relations inherent in the production of knowledge; Women, Environment and Development (WED); Alternative Development; Environmental Reformism; and Deep Ecology, Social Ecology and Ecofeminism. In traversing this important landscape of ideas, they show how they criticise the dominant developmental model at the various levels of epistemology, theory and policy. The authors also go further and put forward their own ideas as to the basic elements they consider necessary in constructing a paradigmatic shift -- emphasising such values as holism, mutuality, justice, autonomy, self-reliance, sustainability and peace. This unique work is a signally useful contribution to clarifying thinking on a topic with immense implications for all women."--Publisher's description.