Poverty and Hunger

Planning in the Shadow of Colonialism: India’s Balancing Act

By |2024-01-05T13:00:32+01:00December 5th 2023|

Explore how colonial legacies perpetuate inequalities in access to resources like housing and food in contemporary Indian cities. Join Utkarsh Sharma in unraveling this narrative and seeking paths to decolonization.

Poverty and Hunger

The Right to Food: School Feeding Initiatives and Inequality in Kenya’s Urban Informal Settlements

By |2024-01-05T13:00:56+01:00November 30th 2023|

Interconnected crises are fuelling food insecurity and negatively impacting children the most. Serah Kiragu-Wissler is convinced: School feeding programmes can push processes towards the realisation of a right to food.

Public Spaces and Integrated Planning

Fall and Rise of Streets as Vital Public Spaces for Children

By |2023-11-08T15:10:39+01:00September 5th 2023|

From Amsterdam's playful Potgieterstraat to Barcelona's superblocks and Bristol's 'Playing Out' movement, Sudeshna Chatterjee is exploring how urban landscapes are transforming to be more child-friendly.

How Can Nature-Based Solutions Help Build Resilience of the Urban Poor?

By |2024-01-04T13:25:04+01:00March 3rd 2020|

Working with nature within and around cities can protect vulnerable urban residents from climate change impacts and disasters, improve their quality of life, and reduce the impacts of cities on other valuable systems, argues Dr Hannah Reid.

Zimnina Making: The Urban Nexus of Food, Water, and Energy in the City of Sofia

By |2024-01-02T15:05:06+01:00April 19th 2018|

In the Bulgarian capital city of Sofia, many people prepare pickled vegetables (zimnina) for the winter months. This widespread practice touches on basic service issues like water and energy supply, as well as food provisioning for the city’s most vulnerable residents, explains Ralitsa Hiteva from the Resnexus project.

Severing Mumbai’s Slums: Structural Violence Through Spatial Transformation

By |2024-01-02T11:28:13+01:00March 15th 2018|

Almost half of Mumbai’s 12 million inhabitants live in informal settlements—“slums”—that are diverse and vibrant living and working spaces. Though unofficially nurtured by the city, these settlements are officially treated as illegal. Today, Mumbai’s state is radically transforming the city through market-led slum redevelopment. Lalitha Kamath and Himanshu Burte argue that the government is inflicting structural violence on the city’s slum dwellers by reshaping Mumbai’s physical space.

Mozambique’s Stand-by Generation

By |2023-12-19T15:02:21+01:00April 13th 2017|

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.

“We need to develop urban rights” – An interview with Claudio Orrego, mayor of Santiago de Chile

By |2023-12-19T15:09:45+01:00March 30th 2017|

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.

“The New Urban Agenda lacks a human rights focus” – Interview with Shivani Chaudhry from the Housing and Land Rights Network

By |2023-12-19T15:10:12+01:00March 23rd 2017|

The absence of a human rights approach and the lack of a focus on social justice in the New Urban Agenda is an cause of concern, says Shivani Chaudry from the Housing and Land Rights Network. In her interview with URBANET, she discusses these issues in relation to housing.

“Everyone has to bring something to the table” – An Interview with Janice Perlman, founder of the Mega Cities Project

By |2023-12-19T14:52:21+01:00February 10th 2017|

Inequality and insufficient political and social structures in developing countries and and in the megacities of the Global South are still a huge problem, and change only occurs slowly. To enable cities to share their experiences and their efforts to bring about change, Janice Perlman founded the Mega Cities Project.

Spotlight on livable cities, Part IV: Building livable cities

By |2023-12-19T14:38:57+01:00December 1st 2016|

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 fourth part, she explains what is concretely being done against the factors that threaten the livability of India's cities and concludes by saying that there needs to be a fundamental shift in the way planners and policy-makers approach urban development.

Spotlight on livable cities, Part III: Responding to the challenge of livability

By |2023-12-19T14:42:09+01:00November 29th 2016|

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.

Spotlight on livable cities, Part II: The Changing Mechanisms of Planning

By |2023-12-19T14:43:15+01:00November 23rd 2016|

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 second part, she talks about urban building master plans, the land housing market in India's cities and the urban poor.

“Nobody plans for slums” – An interview with SDI’s Sarah Nandudu

By |2023-12-19T14:44:37+01:00November 17th 2016|

Slums and informal settlements are not just a matter of housing quality, they also affect the quality of life that people have, their health and their chances at a good education. At the Habitat III conference in Quito, URBANET talked to Sarah Nandudu, vice-chairperson of the National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda, about community building in slums, the responsibility of the New Urban Agenda, and what formal settlements can still learn from informal ones.

The Urban Informal Economy: Towards more inclusive Cities

By |2023-12-19T12:19:09+01:00August 16th 2016|

In many countries, informal employment still makes up a large proportion of the economy. Yet local governments often do nothing to protect these workers and instead they are frequently subject to discrimination. Marty Chen, Sally Roever and Caroline Skinner from the WIEGO Network show ways in which they can organize to claim their rights and be better included in urban policy processes.

Go to Top