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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Overall, China has very few international migrants, who make up less than .1 per cent of the country’s population. A quarter of these are in Shanghai, and the urban master plan aims to increase their numbers several times over by 2035.
The city of Hawassa is growing fast, driven by the recent construction of a flagship industrial park that is expected to attract up to 60,000 workers by 2021.
Access to land and shelter in Mogadishu is governed by a complex system of formal and informal mechanisms. While wealthier people can resort to bank loans and notaries to secure housing, for the city’s poor, displaced and vulnerable, finding shelter in informal settlements is more difficult.
Standing alongside Nairobi’s well-known slums are high-rise tenements and other “informal” housing types that contravene planning and building regulations.
Urban Design under Neoliberalism demonstrates how urban design practice in Santiago, Chile is characterized by neoliberal strategies.
Violence isn’t a straightforward concept. Mahadevia and Desai, in their chapter on everyday violence in the Indian cities of Ahmedabad and Guwahati, acknowledge that Indian cities don’t have the high levels of violence reported for certain cities in Latin America and Africa.
As the title of this book implies, the authors examine the growth of ecological farming and alternative food networks in China from two perspectives – those sponsored in a top down manner by the state and those arising from the bottom up through the efforts of farmers, organizers, consumers and o
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).