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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Journalist Rasna Warah has selected 15 essays by “development cynics”, who present indictments on the aid industry in Africa. Most of the contributors are based in Nairobi and range from correspondents and researchers, to artists, development practitioners and private sector professionals.
THIS PAPER REPORTS on the findings from a survey of NGOs and community-based organizations to assess the usefulness of Agenda 21, the programme of action that 179 governments formally endorsed at the Earth Summit (the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) in Rio de Janeiro in
THE PURPOSE OF this book is to assist in the understanding of Earth Summit II, held in New York City in June 1997, which sought to assess progress in implementing the commitments made by the governments of most of the world's nations at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.
This paper describes the experiences of the Homeless People’s Federation of the Philippines with community-driven measures for disaster avoidance, disaster preparedness and post-disaster response. This is discussed in light of the five disasters.
PERIPERI (PARTNERS ENHANCING Resilience for People Exposed to Risk) is a network of those involved in both development and disaster reduction policy and practice. It aims to profile wide-ranging opportunities to build resilience to natural and other threats.
THE 2002 EDITION of the World Disasters Report marks the tenth anniversary of this annual publication. This report’s theme focuses on the reduction of the risks that natural disasters pose to vulnerable communities around the world.
This publication draws on evaluations of initiatives that sought to push forward our understanding of the concept and practice of local disaster risk management.
This large-format book with many colour photos and drawings is an amazing documentation of home, work, life and culture in Dharavi.
THE NOBEL PRIZE-winning economist, Amartya Sen, suggested that development can be seen as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy – so it requires the removal of sources of “unfreedoms”.