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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THE PAPER DRAWS together thinking on the two themes of globalization and social policy. Globalization is linked by the author to the process of economic transformation, a process which, along with other problems, has been associated with the continuing economic decline in Africa.
In China, as in many other countries undergoing rapid economic growth, increasing socio-economic inequalities and environmental damage are the main threats to sustainable urbanization.
?IN 1997, THE provincial government of Córdoba signed a 30-year concession contract with Aguas Cordobesas, a private consortium led by Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux, for the delivery of water in the municipality of Córdoba (the second largest city in Argentina).
IN 1997, WITH little preparation or support and no tendering process, the Biratnagar Sub-municipal Corporation entered into a ten-year contractual agreement with Americorp Environmental Services Inc., a US-based company, for municipal solid waste management.
IN 1997, GWERU municipality began working towards a public-private partnership for water and sanitation services throughout the municipal area. A methodical and well-informed approach was adopted, drawing on international expertise when skill gaps within the municipality were identified.
AS PART OF the preparations for the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development, an expert group meeting was convened in Bolivia in 1993 on the subject of population distribution and migration.
THIS MOST RECENT global survey on forced evictions, compiled by the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), covers the years 1994–1997, and examines cases involving over 3 million people in 31 countries.
THIS IS ONE of the most detailed overviews available on the scale and nature of rental housing in the South and the possibilities for governments and other institutions to encourage and support rental housing.