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/)
Search the database
Both informal and formal mechanisms govern the ownership and management of the land market in Karachi, Pakistan. This book aims to identify and discuss these mechanisms in a manner that is accessible to practitioners and stakeholders alike.
In the words of its editors, Johnson, Toly and Schroeder, “[t]his book is about the ways in which cities, transnational urban networks and global governance institutions have repositioned themselves in the context of urbanization and global climate change” (pages 3–4).
This edited collection compares urban planning in the colonial and postcolonial eras of Lusophone Africa. The premise is that it is difficult to understand current and future conditions of planning in these countries without knowing their political and infrastructural histories.
The aims of this book include discussing the complex relationships among physical landscapes, natural resources, and their modification by human land use in various Asian environments.
Rebuilding Community after Katrina compiles reflections on an unusual initiative.
The two water supply agencies in Can Tho City, Vietnam have contradictory interests when it comes to providing clean water to peri-urban residents. This impedes the provision of high-quality treated water and makes water supply more costly.
Rapid urbanization and industrialization have had multiple impacts on rural Vietnam since economic reforms were introduced in the mid-1980s. In a 2006 study, the authors discovered that three rural settlements focused on specialty fruits were thriving amid all the socioeconomic changes.
The nature of food consumption and production is changing. In the past, rural areas produced food primarily for cities. Urban residents often consumed more than they needed, while the poorest rural smallholders often went hungry.
Rapid growth and urbanization are affecting diets in China, creating tension among competing food-related policy goals. Between 1980 and 2010, the country’s urban population grew from 191 million to 636 million.
The largest and most detailed set of data about what are termed “slums” or “informal settlements” has been built from enumerations undertaken by the residents of these settlements and their federations. These include settlement profiles, house-by-house surveys and mapping.