Marco Keiner - Böcker

Urbanization is one of the most powerful forces influencing global sustainability. It is dominated by three factors: population growth, rural-urban migration and subsequent urban expansion. Perhaps nowhere are these factors more dominant than in developing countries. This volume brings together leading experts including Alan Gilbert, John Friedmann, Saskia Sassen and Janice Perlman to explore the conflicting challenges of rapid urbanization in developing countries. While all have to contend with key issues such as social segregation, poverty, and loss of governability, the ongoing forces of urban growth vary from country to country. By comparing the challenges of urbanization in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, this book puts forward a new way of thinking about mega- and million-cities in developing countries - one that promotes their vital function in society as engines of ideas, technologies, societal change, democratic transformation and loci of political will to build a new regime of global sustainability.

Urbanization is one of the most powerful forces influencing global sustainability. It is dominated by three factors: population growth, rural-urban migration and subsequent urban expansion. Perhaps nowhere are these factors more dominant than in developing countries. This volume brings together leading experts including Alan Gilbert, John Friedmann, Saskia Sassen and Janice Perlman to explore the conflicting challenges of rapid urbanization in developing countries. While all have to contend with key issues such as social segregation, poverty, and loss of governability, the ongoing forces of urban growth vary from country to country. By comparing the challenges of urbanization in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, this book puts forward a new way of thinking about mega- and million-cities in developing countries - one that promotes their vital function in society as engines of ideas, technologies, societal change, democratic transformation and loci of political will to build a new regime of global sustainability.

Hans van Ginkel Rector, United Nations University The challenges of the world's future are linked to the growing share of the global population that will reside in urban areas. UN projections indicate that by 2030 the world's urban population share will rise to 60 percent. Of the two billion added to the global population, 99 percent will be added to the urban areas of the world. Of this number, 95 percent will be in countries of the developing world. As most people will live in urban areas we had better work to build and organize them as both attractive and less resource consuming places. That is, to promote sustainable urban development is to promote the creation of dense human settlements that are livable and have reduced their impacts on larger scale ecosystems. While much attention has been focused on the "mega-cities," those with a population of over 10 million, the amount of people living in these places will remain almost constant while the smaller and medium size cities will be the great absorbers of the world's urban population. Indeed, it is predicted that while the absolute number of people that will live in urban centers of 10 million or more will increase from approximately 263 to 375 million between 2000 and 20 IS, their share of the total urban population will only increase from 9. 2 percent to 9. 8 percent, a 6. 34 percent increase.

At the beginning of the 21st Millennium, outstanding visionary thinkers and scientists make a timely assessment as to the future prospects of mankind: In what direction are we heading? How can the world become more just and equitable, and how can future development be sustained to adequately address economic, social, and --perhaps most important-- environmental issues? This book provides a broad discussion on Sustainable Development, rethinking and improving its effectiveness as a paradigm of today and tomorrow by bringing together the visions and contributions of highly esteemed thinkers on the subject (such as Herman E. Daly, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker, Mikhail Gorbachev, Dennis Meadows and others). Communities, states, and transnational corporations must take steps to transform engrained practices and priorities. If they fail to do so, Sustainable Development will remain an abstract concept or a superficial catchword and will not become reality.This publication is of special interest for university researchers and students, international experts and organizations in the field of Sustainable Development, but also for decision-makers of enterprises and the public sector worldwide.From each author's thoughts, experiences and concerns the reader will learn about what the concept of Sustainable Development can really accomplish and where future needs for action are.

The Real and Virtual Worlds of Spatial Planning brings together contributions from leaders in landscape, transportation, and urban planning today. The authors present an international range of case studies - from Europe, Australia, North America, Asia and Africa - that ground the exploration of ideas in the realities of sustainable urban and regional planning, landscape planning and present the prospects for using virtual worlds for modeling spatial environments and their application in planning. The first part of this volume explores the challenges for planning in the real world that are caused by the dynamics of socio-spatial systems as well as by the contradictions of their evolutionary trends related to their spatial layout. Case studies from developed as well as developing countries are presented. The second part presents diverse concepts to model, analyze, visualize, monitor and control socio-spatial systems by using virtual worlds. Theoretical topics include modeling spatial systems such as Petri nets, cellular automata as well as dynamical systems.

Experiencing the world of daily life means to observe and perceive the natural, the man-made, the socio-spatial, and the politico-economic elements of the en­ vironment we live in. But, have you ever tried to explain the phenomena of daily life such as a traffic jam or mass transit to a child? It will take you quite a while to find suitable images to make invisible forces perceivable and con­ cepts like timetables, bus routes, or capacity constraints comprehensible. This exercise alone will convince you that we need imagery or virtual worlds to cope with the complexity of the real world. The task of spatial planning is to design, implement and manage alternative futures for a complex, dynamic socio-spatial environment that emerges from a wide range of intertwined social, political, economic and environmental processes. In order to learn about these processes and gain knowledge that en­ ables spatial planners to better understand and manage socio-spatial reality, they need to think in and work with virtual worlds.

This book provides a framework for the design, implementation, and measurement of sustainable urban development in developing countries. It presents the findings of an AGS-sponsored project. Based on case studies in Johannesburg, Gabarone, and Santiago de Chile, the book identifies challenges and potentials for sustainable urban development and suggests alternative ways that governments, city-regions, communities, and planners can respond to these challenges. The introductory part highlights the problem of global urbanization, focusing on cities of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The design part includes a context/needs analysis followed by recommendations of broad frameworks for sustainable urban development. The implementation part looks at the institutional and policy framework and strategies necessary for sustainable urban development, while the measurement part deals with the required mechanisms and tools for evaluating sustainable urban development policy and strategies as well as the review of outcomes/impacts (indicators).This publication is of special interest for university researchers and students, international experts, and organizations for sustainable urban development in developing countries, but also practitioners from planning authorities worldwide.

This book presents a broad discussion on sustainable development, rethinking and improving its effectiveness as a paradigm of today and tomorrow. Outstanding visionary thinkers and scientists offer their timely assessment on the future prospects of mankind: In what direction are we heading? How can the world become more just and equitable, and how can future development be sustained to adequately address economic, social, and -- perhaps most important -- environmental issues?