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
Drawing on the cost of living surveys conducted by the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR), this paper suggests that the scale and depth of urban poverty in Zambia is underestimated by official poverty lines.
This paper describes migration dynamics and the impact of gradual environmental change on the livelihoods of people living in two very different areas of Bolivia.
The lack of access to housing finance remains a major obstacle to home ownership in countries such as Malawi, especially among low-income earners.
Over half of the world’s population now lives in urban centres. Most of the world’s urban population and largest cities lie outside the most prosperous nations and almost all future growth in the world’s urban population is projected to be in low- and middle-income countries.
This paper discusses ideas and methodologies on reducing urban poverty, paying particular attention to the changes that can be triggered by the practice of community savings.
This paper discusses the many limitations of the official poverty lines applied in Sri Lanka (and many other nations).
More than 2.5 billion people lack improved sanitation, with nearly 30 per cent residing in urban areas and the rest in rural areas. Improving sanitation is often a low priority for development professionals, and it may require uncomfortable discussions and difficult behaviour changes.
THIS WORKING PAPER draws on the authors’ involvement with Indonesia’s Integrated Urban Infrastructure Development Programme (IUIDP) from 1988 to 1993.
Providing water and sanitation services to low-income communities is a key development challenge in urban areas.