Poverty and governance are both issues high on the agenda of international agencies and governments in the South. With urban areas accounting for a steadily growing share of the world's poor people, an international team of researchers focused their attention on the hitherto little-studied relationship between urban governance and urban poverty.In their timely and in-depth examination of ten cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America, they demonstrate that in many countries the globa...

Finance is a critical issue for municipal governments around the world, and a major constraint on the delivery of pro-poor services at the local level. In many countries, decentralisation has brought the issue of municipal finance to the fore. This sourcebook provides a framework for analysing municipal finance capacity and ways of addressing financial constraints.The ideas come from real-life innovative practice in four countries - India, Brazil, Kenya and Uganda - with additional...

Roundabouts have become one of the most significant traffic control measures because they are generally statistically safer and more efficient than traditional at grade intersections. This book is dedicated to the evaluation of the operating conditions of roundabouts. In five parts, it thoroughly illustrates the calculation of the capacity, including reliability, and waiting phenomena parameters, such as the times spent in the system and queue lengths. Fully worked examples are included th...

'Trading zone' is a concept introduced by Peter Galison in his social scientific research on how scientists representing different sub-cultures and paradigms have been able to coordinate their interaction locally. In this book, Italian and Finnish planning researchers extend the use of the concept to different contexts of urban planning and management, where there is a need for new ideas and tools in managing the interaction of different stakeholders. The trading zone concept is approached...

In a world of increasing mobility, how people of different cultures live together is a key issue of our age, especially for those responsible for planning and running cities. New thinking is needed on how diverse communities can cooperate in productive harmony instead of leading parallel or antagonistic lives. Policy is often dominated by mitigating the perceived negative effects of diversity, and little thought is given to how a ?diversity dividend? or increased innovative capacity might ...

What exactly is 'small change'?Build a bus stop in an urban slum and a vibrant community sprouts and grows around it - that is the power of small changes that have huge positive effects.This book is an argument for the wisdom of the street, the ingenuity of the improvisers and the long-term, large-scale effectiveness of immediate, small-scale actions. Written by Nabeel Hamdi, the guru of urban participatory development and the master of the art, Small Change brings over thr...

City-making is an art, not a formula. The skills required to re-enchant the city are far wider than the conventional ones like architecture, engineering and land-use planning. There is no simplistic, ten-point plan, but strong principles can help send good city-making on its way. The vision for 21st century cities must be to be the most imaginative cities for the world rather than in the world. This one change of word - from 'in' to 'for' - gives city-making an ethical foundation and value...

There is consensus in literature that urban areas have become increasingly vulnerable to the outcomes of economic restructuring under the neoliberal political economic ideology. The increased frequency and widening diversity of problems offer evidence that the socio-economic and spatial policies, planning and practices introduced under the neoliberal agenda can no longer be sustained. As this shortfall was becoming more evident among urban policymakers, planners, and researchers in differe...

A world more urban...The world is undergoing massive urbanization, and is projected to increase from three to over four billion city dwellers, mostly in the developing world, within 15 years. This historic shift is producing dramatic effects on human well-being and the environment....but less poorUnplanned shanty-towns without basic services are not an inevitable consequence of urbanization and slums are not explained by poverty alone. Urban misery also stems from mis...

Despite extensive efforts to understand the overall effect of urban structure on the current patterns of urban mobility, we are still far from a consensual perspective on this complex matter. To help build agreement on the factors influencing travel behaviour, this book discusses the influence of alternative urban structures on sustainable mobility. Bringing together two existing and complementary methods to study the relationship between urban structure and mobility, the authors compare t...

When disaster strikes in cities the effects can be catastrophic compared to other environments. But what factors actually determine the vulnerability or resilience of cities? The Vulnerability of Cities fills a vital gap in disaster studies by examining the too-often overlooked impact of disasters on cities, the conditions leading to high losses from urban disasters and why some households and communities withstand disaster more effectively than others.Mark Pelling takes a fresh lo...

This book examines wayfinding from a broad public health perspective and articulates what needs to be done to create better wayfinding for all people regardless of age, ability, or mode of transportation. Addressing both science and the human experience, the book brings together a group of international experts to examine community wayfinding from a variety of viewpoints.It first presents a critical foundation for understanding wayfinding from an individual perspective. Next, it de...