Our Urban Future: New Paradigms for Equity and Sustainability

by Akhtar A, Badshah

By the year 2005 half the world's population will be living in cities. Already, half the poor are urban dwellers. Confronted with the sheer scale of the problem, urban policy in the South has undergone a succession of sharp changes of approach over the years. More recently, as the exciting examples in this book vividly show, there are renewed grounds for optimism that a new approach, with an emphasis on a partnership between the people, NGOs, private investors and local authorities, can have a more effective impact in tackling the multiple dimensions of the urban crisis facing the poor.

The purpose of this book is to seek out innovative, but not necessarily well-known, approaches that have actually worked on a rather large scale in a variety of big city contexts in India, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia and elsewhere. Dr Badshah's aim is to identify effective urban practices that are socially equitable, ecologically sustainable, economically viable and - equally important - culturally transferrable into other contexts.

This up-to-date presentation of some of the most fruitful current approaches to tackling urban problems, with its wealth of original case study detail collected in situ, makes it a book of considerable value to all those - planners, researchers, teachers, policy makers - involved in seeking to create a better urban future.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published February 15, 1996