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 introductory guide, intended for city authorities, is practical and accessible. It’s full of policy recommendations, next steps, suggestions for further reading, short case studies, and simple graphics.
The historical context of Beijing Garbage dates back to imperial Beijing (pre-1913), when there was no problem of abundant solid waste. In the thrifty periods that followed, recycling was presented as a patriotic duty.
“India is in the process of a revolutionary urban transition” (page 1).
In For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut’s Frontiers, architect and planner Hiba Bou Akar describes how the spectre of anticipated war between sectarian groups informs spatial planning practices in Beirut, Lebanon.
Reversing Urban Inequality in Johannesburg investigates the ways that neoliberal urban policy produces sociospatial inequality in South Africa’s largest city.
It’s challenging, of course, to generalize scientists’ experiences across the entire African continent. Yet this book, based on a four-year study and over 250 interviews, draws out some commonalities among them, as well as some issues that are even more broadly applicable.
A Gender Perspective of Municipal Solid Waste Generation and Management in the City of Bamenda, Cameroon highlights the importance of recognizing and mainstreaming gender perspectives into municipal waste policies and strategies to achieve efficient waste management.
Asia is urbanizing faster than Europe and North America did in the past, and will continue to have the majority of the world’s megacities (urban agglomeration areas with a population of over 10 million).
Urban Safety and Peacebuilding investigates how to sustain peace in the city, drawing attention to the community-level origins of building peace.
In the global South, there is a pressing need to enable and promote resilience to cope with the chronic stresses and acute shocks associated with urbanization and climate change.