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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IN THE CURRENT discourse on development, the role of local government as enabler has been given increasing attention in response to increasing decentralization.
THIS BOOK IS a collection of case studies from ten countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America, describing the structure and functions of their local governments.
Despite their good intentions, governments, donors and development agencies have often failed to make significant improvements in the lives of poor people and enhance their capacity to help themselves.
LOCAL EXCHANGE TRADING SYSTEMS (LETS) were first developed in Canada in response to a situation with high levels of unemployment and poverty. Many of those without jobs were willing to work.
THIS BOOK IS summarized in the paper on Durban's Local Agenda 21 in this issue. In 1994, Durban became the first city in South Africa to accept the Local Agenda 21 mandate as a corporate responsibility.
THE FOCUS OF this book is on understanding resource management as a socio-cultural concept.
THIS BRIEF SUMMARIZES the results of research in Eldoret (Kenya), Enugu (Nigeria), Gaborone (Botswana), Kampala (Uganda), Lusaka (Zambia) and Maseru (Lesotho) that has analyzed informal land delivery mechanisms (especially with regard to the poor and women), the institutions that regulate land tr
?IN MOST SUB-Saharan African countries, the state lacks the capacity to fulfil the key tasks of urban land management, including issuing and registration of titles and regulation of sub-division and use. This is partly because the colonial administrations believed
THIS REPORT DISCUSSES the types of land tenure and property rights that currently exist, how these have served the needs of lower-income groups, and the implications for policies relating to urban land tenure and property rights.