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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Plenty has been written about Detroit as a cautionary tale of urban decay – from its industrial manufacturing heyday to its persistent problems with racism, poverty and mass flight to the suburbs.
Cash transfers can offer value-for-money in humanitarian responses, and cash transfer programming (CTP) has the potential to transform humanitarian architecture.
Seen as a valuable resource for cities and towns, green infrastructure holds the “potential to mitigate many of the challenges facing urban environments, including biodiversity loss, environmental degradation and health inequalities”, as well as adaptation to climate change and food secu
Cities Interrupted brings together researchers in architecture, geography, urban planning, photography and art to explore some of the ways that visual culture responds to, intervenes in, decelerates and critiques global conditions of urban speed and mobility.
Ken Conca, the author of An Unfinished Foundation, acknowledges that his writing to date has been generally informed by three aspects: being sceptical about formal political processes, looking beyond the state for institutional politics, and believing that good things happen when margina
El artículo propone una reflexión sobre la importancia de un enfoque cultural para la comprensión de la pobreza, a partir de nuevas concepciones sobre ésta y desde la mirada de los pobres, recalcando la importancia de la adecuada comprensión de los contextos y las culturas.
Across sub-Saharan Africa, water services for low-income urban communities remain variable and often unaffordable. Although water kiosks may be available and households may be connected on shared and metered connections, costs often remain prohibitively high.
This Worldwatch Institute publication suggests some different directions for more sustainable cities. Sustainability is framed in an all-encompassing way. While much of the book discusses responses to climate challenges, space is also given to social justice consideration.
This book focuses on socio-cultural aspects of urban transformations in Iranian cities. The content is mainly based on a selection of papers accepted for the conference “Urban Change in Iran”, hosted by the Bartlett Development Planning Unit of University College London.