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| State of the World's Cities 2006/7 | Buy a book...
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| Author(s): | UN-HABITAT |
| Publisher: | Macmillan |
| ISBN: | 1844073785 |
| Format: | softback |
| 204pp | |
| Price: | £18.99 |
| Review Date: | 15 November 2006 |
| Review: | The subtitle of this book is The Millennium Development Goals and Urban Sustainability: 30 Years of Shaping the Habitat Agenda. It gives data from UN-HABITAT (the United Nations Human Settlements programme) on urban poverty. Since the Millennium Declaration in 2000 many governments have made progress towards reducing poverty but this progress has not been consistent from country to country or even across cities. The world is becoming more urban and poverty is moving to the cities but, as this report shows, slum formation is neither inevitable nor acceptable. The report begins by highlighting the major urbanization trends in the world and gives a global and regional view of slums. It goes on to look at slums in more detail, giving a detailed analysis of them using five indicators (lack of durable housing, lack of sufficient living area, lack of access to improved water, lack of access to improved sanitation, and lack of secure tenure). Using information from slum and non-slum areas, the connection between living conditions and human development is described. Lastly, a policy assessment of slum upgrading and previous policies in more than 100 countries is given and suggestions of actions that could improve matters are made. |