Cities are facing enormous challenges, with rapidly growing urban populations, often worsening environmental conditions and deteriorating infrastructure, inequalities and housing shortages, unemployment, crime and violence. This title explains how planning and municipal government can address these challenges.

Published annually in 28 languages, each edition draws on the breadth of expertise of the Worldwatch Institute's team of writers and researchers. It is essential for anyone concerned with building a positive, global future.

Cities are perhaps one of humanity's most complex creations, never finished, never definitive. They are like a journey that never ends. Their evolution is determined by their ascent into greatness or their descent into decline. They are the past, the present and the future. Cities contain both order and chaos. In them reside beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice. They can bring out the best or the worst in humankind. They are the physical manifestation of history and culture and incubators of innovation, industry, technology, entrepreneurship and creativity. Cities are the materialization of humanity's noblest ideas, ambitions and aspirations but when not planned or governed properly, can be the repository of society's ills. Cities drive national economies by creating wealth, enhancing social development and providing employment but they can also be the breeding grounds for poverty, exclusion and environmental degradation. The 21st Century is the Century of the City. Half of humanity now lives in cities, and within the next two decades, 60 per cent of the world's people will reside in urban areas. How can city planners and policymakers harmonize the various interests, diversity and inherent contradictions within cities? What ingredients are needed to create harmony between the physical, social, environmental and cultural aspects of a city and the human beings that inhabit it? This report adopts the concept of Harmonious Cities as a theoretical framework in order to understand today's urban world, and also as an operational tool to confront the most important challenges facing urban areas and their development processes. It recognizes that tolerance, diversity, social justice and good governance, all of which are inter-related, are as important to sustainable urban development as physical planning. It addresses national concerns by searching for solutions at the city level. For that purpose, it focuses on three key areas: spatial or regional harmony, which examines the main drivers of urban growth in the developing world and explores the spatial nuances of economic and social policies; social harmony, which presents and analyzes new data on urban inequalities worldwide and describes the types of shelter deprivations experienced by slum dwellers in developing world regions; and environmental harmony, which examines the role of cities in the climate change debate, and the impact of global warming on the most vulnerable cities. The report also assesses the various intangible assets within cities that contribute to harmony, such as cultural heritage, sense of place and memory and the complex set of social and symbolic relationships that give cities meaning. It argues that these intangible assets represent the soul of the city and are as important for harmonious urban development as tangible assets. Harmony within cities, argues the report, is both a journey and a destination. Published with UN-HABITAT

Over 50 full-colour world maps and graphics break down hardcore statistics to provide a compelling analysis of all the political, social, economic and ecological nightmares that keep us awake at night. The world's car population has grown five times as fast as the human population over the last 50 years. Wal-Mart's sales revenue exceeds the GDP of 150 countries. Climate change may put 2.7 billion at risk of armed conflict. Germany generates more tourists than anywhere else. Americans use 160 times more water than people in Rwanda. If you want to get behind the headlines and understand the world - from urbanization to globalization, terrorism to tourism, military spending to human rights - The State of the World Atlas is unmatched.

Growing urbanization affects women and men in fundamentally different ways, but the relationship between gender and city environments has been ignored or misunderstood. Women and men play different roles, frequent different public areas, and face different health risks. Women suffer disproportionately from disease, injury, and violence because their access to resources is often more limited than that of their male counterparts. Yet, when women are healthy and safe, so are their families and communities. Urban policy makers and public health professionals need to understand how conditions in densely populated places can help or harm the well-being of women in order to serve this large segment of humanity. Women's Health and the World's Cities illuminates the intersection of gender, health, and urban environments. This collection of essays examines the impact of urban living on the physical and psychological states of women and girls in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States. Urban planners, scholars, medical practitioners, and activists present original research and compelling ideas. They consider the specific needs of subpopulations of urban women and evaluate strategies for designing spaces, services, and infrastructure in ways that promote women's health. Women's Health and the World's Cities provides urban planners and public health care providers with on-the-ground examples of projects and policies that have changed women's lives for the better.

This book reviews the key conceptions and economic theories of poverty, explains poverty-environment nexus, and finally offers innovative socio-economic and scientific geospatial solutions for the 21st Century. The book makes it possible for our readers to understand poverty thorough a concise review of the major theoretical economic frameworks, measures of poverty, and points out the need to understand rural-urban dichotomy of poverty. We find the theories and measures to be less-than perfect and therefore point out the need to treat these measures and theories as convenient tools lacking perfect accuracy and utmost scientific reliability. It follows then that the supposedly knowledgeably crafted poverty reduction and environmental preservation solutions are inherently imperfect. The economic solutions proposed in this book transcend extant humdrum macroeconomic and policy measures targeting poverty and environmental issues. We point to a new paradigm in which private sector and other stakeholders can create new and inclusive markets where value is co-created and shared. Above all, this book offers timely state-of-the-art geospatial solutions targeting the most pressing global problems of water, e.g., the use of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) missions to estimate changes in stored water in the water-poverty-environment nexus, pollution, agriculture and disaster management, where geospatial techniques are applied under strong environmental impact assessment regulatory regimes. This book provides a good summary of economic theories of poverty as well as a vivid depiction of the state of environmental degradation in the world. People often work separately on different issues that are, in fact, closely intertwined. The principle of holism is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and I believe that this joint-venture of two experts on poverty and environment has produced something more than a sum of two separate monographs on the issues. Various points raised in this volume are worth heeding when we think of formulation and implementation of a truly effective post-MDGs development agenda. Yoichi Mine, Professor of Human Security and African Area Study, Graduate School of Global Studies, Doshisha University, Japan

This comprehensive and clear volume reveals the numerous ways demographic trends such as age structure, composition, and migration influence national security. Population size, structure, distribution, and composition affect security in numerous ways, including national power, civil conflict, and development. The Future Faces of War: Population and National Security offers a comprehensive overview of how demographic trends can function as components, indicators, and multipliers of a state's national security. Each chapter focuses on a particular demographic trend and describes its national security implications in three realms—military, regime, and structural. Illustrating the mechanisms by which demography and security are connected, the book pushes the conversation forward by challenging common conceptions about demographic trends and national security. Key for policymakers and general readers alike, it goes on to suggest ways trends can provide opportunities for building partnerships and strengthening states. Focusing on multiple scenarios and the theoretical links between population and security, the insights gathered here will remain relevant for years to come.

The world faces a ‘perfect storm’ of social and ecological stresses, including climate change, habitat loss, resource degradation and social, economic and cultural change. In order to cope with these, communities are struggling to transition to sustainable ways of living that improve well-being and increase resilience. This book demonstrates how communities in both developed and developing countries are already taking action to maintain or build resilient and sustainable lifestyles. These communities, here designated as ‘Ecocultures’, are exemplars of the art and science of sustainable living. Though they form a diverse group, they organise themselves around several common organising principles including an ethic of care for nature, a respect for community, high ecological knowledge, and a desire to maintain and improve personal and social wellbeing. Case studies from both developed and developing countries including Australia, Brazil, Finland, Greenland, India, Indonesia, South Africa, UK and USA, show how, based on these principles, communities have been able to increase social, ecological and personal wellbeing and resilience. They also address how other more mainstream communities are beginning to transition to more sustainable, resilient alternatives. Some examples also illustrate the decline of ecocultures in the face of economic pressures, globalisation and climate change. Theoretical chapters examine the barriers and bridges to wider application of these examples. Overall, the volume describes how ecocultures can provide the global community with important lessons for a wider transition to sustainability and will show how we can redefine our personal and collective futures around these principles.

This book shows the effects of globalization on language in social context, identifying the city as the key site for the realization of these effects. It challenges assumptions that hold sustainable linguistic diversity to be inherently non-urban while regarding the city as an unproblematic site for understanding the social function of language.

As urbanization continues, and even accelerates, scientists estimate that by 2015 the world will have up to 60 ‘megacities’ – urban areas with more than five million inhabitants. With the irresistible economic attractions of urban centers, particularly in developing countries, making the influx of citizens unstoppable, many of humankind’s coming social, economic and political dramas will be played out in megacities. This book shows how geographers and Earth scientists are contributing to a better understanding of megacities. The contributors analyze the impact of socio-economic and political activities on environmental change and vice versa, and identify solutions to the worst problems. They propose ways of improving the management of megacities and achieving a greater degree of sustainability in their development. The goals, of wise use of human and natural resources, risk reduction (both social and environmental) and quality of life enhancement, are agreed upon. But, as this text proves, the means of achieving these ends are varied. Hence, chapters cover an array of topics, from health management in Indian megacities, to planning in New York, to transport solutions for the chronically traffic-choked Bangkok. Authors cover the impact of climate change on megacities, as well as less tangible issues such as socio-political fragmentation in the urban areas of Rio de Janeiro. This exploration of some of the most crucial issues that we face as a species sets out research that is of the utmost importance, with the potential to contribute substantially to global justice and peace – and thereby prosperity.