Providing access to urban sanitation is challenging because of space limitations, complex land tenure and higher public health concerns in crowded settlements. This is especially true for low-income urban areas. For URBANET, Jane Njagi describes how this challenge has been tackled in Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya.
Like most major cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, Abidjan has a traffic problem: Congestion, pollution and extortion amongst public transport providers means that the basic service of mobility can only be provided to citizens on a limited scale. Alexis Gueu analyses the situation.
Mobile money has revolutionised the lives of many people in the Global South, most of all the ones living in difficult economic circumstances. The M-Pesa service in Kenya is one of these success stories. Judith Owigar describes how it helps making basic services like water and energy available to citizens.
The world’s population is becoming younger, and the majority of people under the age of 25 are living in the rapidly growing cities of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Reports claim that a disproportionate proportion of youth live in impoverished, unplanned, and often highly violent urban settlements where they are more likely to be both victims and perpetrators of urban violence. What education strategies are needed in order to improve their situation?
In the International Development world, “youth” constitutes a critical variable to look at in any given country. Policy makers believe that more educated generations with better health and economic conditions than their parents are the absolute precondition for achieving long-term economic and social development. They are also aware that a frustrated youth is a serious threat to political stability and economic growth.
Santiago de Chile is one of the most well-developed and safe cities in Latin America. We spoke to its mayor Claudio Orrego not only about what metropolitan governance means in Santiago, but also about the current situation in Chile, how urban justice can be enforced and why it is so important to invest in public goods for the urban poor.
Cities have complex relationships with gender. They challenge some models of traditional femininity and masculinity, and reinforce others. Our author Paula Meth explains how gendered relations play out in informal urban settlements.
Does urban living threaten our mental health and happiness? Popular culture is rife with stories suggesting that city living causes emotional stress and unhappiness. Our author Todd Litman's review of the research indicates that city living has a variety of impacts on our mental health and happiness that reduce certain risks and increase others.
John Bongat is the mayor of Naga City in the Philippines, one of the most disaster-prone cities in the world. URBANET talked to him about how he attempts to make Naga City more livable.
In a four-part series, URBANET takes a closer look at specific projects that contribute to making cities more liveable. In this first part, the focus lies on San Salvador, El Salvador's capital city, where the houses of thousands of families who live in slums are being reconstructed. Since they have gained access to regular water and electricity supply, the living conditions have improved significantly.
What do cities in India need to be more livable? In the four part series "Spotlight on livable cities", ISOCARP Vice-President Shipra Narang Suri aims to answer this question by approaching it from various angles, giving examples from different areas of urban planning. In this third part, she talks about how Indian cities could be made more livable by improving urban services, mobility, public-private partnerships and the situation in slums.
For sustainable urban planning, administrative bodies, service providers and citizens need to work together. In Kairouan, Tunisia, different actors are collaborating to put in place a comprehensive geographical information system for their city.
