Environnement urbain: recherche et action dans les pays en développement

THE PAPERS IN this edited collection were originally presented at an international meeting held in Burkina Faso in 1997, which brought together researchers working in the six projects of the programme ‘Urban Environment Management’ supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. The book focuses on methodological issues and aims to combine theory and practice by describing the methodological approaches adopted in each project, and how they have been implemented. Four main issues are identified by the editors in the introduction as central to research and action in urban contexts in the South. They are, first, the ways in which priorities for urban intervention are set, often in the name of material benefits but at the expense of social and environmental dimensions; second, the nature of the available financial, technical and human resources for the development of urban centres in the South, and the criteria determining their use; third, the changing identity of the different actors involved (local government, private sector, grassroots organisations) and the ways in which they coordinate their efforts; fourth, the demographic, political and institutional contexts in which local change takes place. The five chapters in Part One examine the theoretical underpinnings of participatory and action research approaches and describe their application in the design and implementation of research projects in urban contexts in the South. The papers in Part Two describe the projects’experiences in urban centres in the South. These include waste management in Hô Chi Minh Ville, Vietnam and in Tunisia; environmental management in Quito, Ecuador; the re-use of liquid waste in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and Nouakchott (Mauritania); community management experiences in N’Djaména (Tchad), Dakar and Thiès (Senegal); participatory management of vegetable gardens in Jinja, Uganda; solid waste management in Ouagadougou; and environmental management in intermediate urban centres in Northern Pakistan, Bolivia and Mozambique.