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 examines urban health in low- and middle-income countries in relation to two sets of environmental issues.
This paper notes that the debate raging between private sector and public sector delivery service systems ignores the fact that governance issues are central to efficient and equitable access to water.
This paper continues the theme of water delivery to the urban poor, concentrating on informal water vendors, providers of a crucial service to a significant minority of the urban poor.
This paper examines the contribution that local water and sanitation companies make in delivering services to the urban poor.
This paper discusses the common constraints to the provision of improved sanitation services to people living in low-income urban communities in Africa.
The work on community-led sanitation by the Orangi Pilot Project in Pakistan is among the best-known and best-documented experiences of reaching low-income urban dwellers with good quality sanitation.
This paper was developed for the Ford Foundation. It covers the key aspects of a pro-poor and ecologically sustainable urban agenda for Africa.
This paper examines the proportion of national populations living in “large villages” and in urban centres in different population size categories, drawing on recent census data for some 70 nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Africa is in the midst of an urban transition, and over the next 10 years its urban population is projected to increase by more than 150 million.
This paper considers the extent to which the indicators used for measuring poverty in Argentina provide an accurate portrayal of poverty in Buenos Aires and inform policies to reduce it. Three points are highlighted.