Book notes
Engaging our readers in preparing book notes
Our Book Notes section has short descriptions of books, papers and reports that we have prepared on all subjects relevant to urban issues. These are summaries rather than reviews. These go into the Book Notes online database that contains all Book Notes since our 1993 editions. It has facilities for searching by author, title, key word, city or country.
As an experiment, we are opening this to our readers so it can draw on a wider pool of knowledge. So we invite you to send us short summaries of new publications you have read that you found interesting – and relevant to urban issues. Authors may submit summaries too, but not promotional material. We welcome your submission on relevant publications published within the last two years. This includes English-language Book Notes and English summaries of publications in Spanish, French or Portuguese. You will be listed as the author of the summary.
If you would like to submit a Book Note, please search the database on this page to ensure that the publication has not already been covered. Please specify the title, author, publisher, year of publication, number of pages, and ISBN (if applicable). For the description, between one and six paragraphs is sufficient. Book Notes can be sent to Jenny.Peebles@iied.org
(For a searchable database of papers in Environment and Urbanization, go to http://eau.sagepub.com/)
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This paper describes how participatory budgeting was introduced to Yaoundé (Cameroon).
While the economic development of the BRICS (Brazil, Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa) has already been widely discussed, this book examines its specific urban aspects and compares policies and impacts of urbanization and urban growth and different development trajectories among
This book shows the complexity of economic, social and spatial change that is part of Africa’s urbanization. Each of the 14 chapters presents one of the critical academic and policy areas that concern specifically African aspects of urban revolution.
There is an emerging consensus that urbanisation is critically important to international development, but considerable confusion over what urbanisation actually is; whether it is accelerating or slowing; whether it should be encouraged or discouraged; and, more generally, what the responses shou
This paper describes the role of federations and networks of slum/shack dwellers in developing effective responses to their needs through partnerships with local governments. It has a particular interest in the role of Community-Based Engagement and Monitoring in this.
Following Rio+20 (the UN Conference on Sustainable Development) and the call for climate and disaster risk reduction as priority areas for sustainable development, this book presents a timely re-evaluation of current urban planning strategies.
This book reviews contemporary urban dynamics in Latin America and considers the common features of cities in the region, such as high socioeconomic inequalities and tensions between seemingly dichotomous features (e.g.
This book highlights the complexity of the challenges and solutions to safe and sustainable urban transport.
The environmental histories recounted in this book reveal stark contrasts between Western cities and urban settlements in the global South.