Cities and Development

by Jo Beall, Sean Fox

By 2030 more than sixty percent of the world's population will live in urban areas, with most of the world’s population growth over the next twenty-five years being absorbed by cities and towns in low and middle income countries. What are the consequences of this shift? Demographic pressure already strains the capacity of local and national governments to manage urban change. Today, nearly one billion people live in slums, and in the absence of significant intervention that number is set to double in the next two decades. Will our future be dominated by mega-cities of poverty and despair, or can urbanization be harnessed to advance human and economic development? Cities and Development provides a critical exploration of the dynamic relationship between urbanism and development. Highlighting both the challenges and opportunities associated with rapid urban change, the book This book brings into conversation debates from urban and development studies and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of current policy and planning responses to the contemporary urban challenge. It includes research orientated supplements in the form of summaries, boxed case studies, development questions and further reading. The book is intended for senior undergraduate and graduate students interested in urban, international and development studies, as well as policy-makers and planners concerned with equitable and sustainable urban development.

288 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2007

Reviews

[Yanti · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have just finished the book Cities and Development by Sean Fox and Jo Beall 📚

📚From this book I learned about various perspectives on the dynamic relationship between urbanism and development from a global perspective.

🏙 This book also contains many things such as the relationship between urbanization and development, the role cities play in fostering economic growth in a globalizing world, the complexities of managing urban environments, and the importance of urban planning, governance and politics in shaping city futures.

⁉️ At the end of the chapter this book also contains many questions for us to think about and discuss together, for example in the last chapter discussing participatory budgeting and several best practices in Brazil, the author creates a guideline of questions to dig deeper into what we read and what we can do and explore more.
Some critical points that I get from this book
❗️Sustainable development refers to intervensions that expand real freedoms while taking accpint of long-term environmental consequences and it cab be assessed both at local and global levels.
❗️Governance is a more general term that refers to the relationship between citizens and governments at different level; to ways in which decision that affect society are made and implemented.
❗️Improving essential urban services is incontrovertible, both for reasons of equity, to improve the health and capabilities of the urban poor, as well as to ensure the efficient functioning of cities and urban populations more generally.