Book notes
Uganda has a progressive national refugee policy that provides freedom of movement and the right to work, own land and access basic services in urban centres.
Better Buses, Better Cities focuses on US cities, which generally are not known for being bus-friendly. To take one striking example, some crosstown buses in New York City apparently move at half the speed of Hawaiian lava.
Men, women and children who are forced to flee their homes often bear the mental or physical scars of conflict. Refugees’ arduous journeys to urban areas and the conditions they encounter there can present further health challenges.
Overall, China has very few international migrants, who make up less than .1 per cent of the country’s population. A quarter of these are in Shanghai, and the urban master plan aims to increase their numbers several times over by 2035.
The city of Hawassa is growing fast, driven by the recent construction of a flagship industrial park that is expected to attract up to 60,000 workers by 2021.
Access to land and shelter in Mogadishu is governed by a complex system of formal and informal mechanisms. While wealthier people can resort to bank loans and notaries to secure housing, for the city’s poor, displaced and vulnerable, finding shelter in informal settlements is more difficult.
Standing alongside Nairobi’s well-known slums are high-rise tenements and other “informal” housing types that contravene planning and building regulations.
Urban Design under Neoliberalism demonstrates how urban design practice in Santiago, Chile is characterized by neoliberal strategies.
Violence isn’t a straightforward concept. Mahadevia and Desai, in their chapter on everyday violence in the Indian cities of Ahmedabad and Guwahati, acknowledge that Indian cities don’t have the high levels of violence reported for certain cities in Latin America and Africa.
As the title of this book implies, the authors examine the growth of ecological farming and alternative food networks in China from two perspectives – those sponsored in a top down manner by the state and those arising from the bottom up through the efforts of farmers, organizers, consumers and o