From Understanding to Action

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.

Auteur

Keiner (Eds), From Understanding to Action (Alliance f. Global Sustain.)

Contenu

Urban Development In Southern Africa And Latin America: The scope of the project 'Designing, Implementing and Measuring Sustainable Urban Development' (DIMSUD); Marco Keiner, Diego Salmerón, Willy A. Schmid, Iván Poduje.- Framework For Research On Sustainable Urban Development: The Innovative Collaboration and Research Methodology of the DIMSUD Project; Diego Salmerón, Marco Keiner, Willy A. Schmid.- The Case Study Cities: Santiago de Chile, Johannesburg, Gaborone; Branko I. Cavric, Aloyse C. Mosha, Marco Keiner.- Challenges For Sustainable Urban Development; Daniel K. Irurah, Björn Malbert, Pål Castell, Jaan-Henrik Kain, Branko I. Cavric, Aloyse C. Mosha.- Opportunities And Strategies For Sustainable Urban Development; Daniel K. Irurah, Björn Malbert, Aly Karam, Pål Castell, Marco Keiner, Branko I. Cavric.- Indicators For Sustainable Urban Development; P. Christopher Zegras, Iván Poduje, Whitney Foutz, Eran Ben-Joseph, Oscar Figueroa.- Toward Sustainable Urban Management In Developing Countries: A Synthesis of the DIMSUD Project Findings and Further General Recommendations; Marco Keiner, Diego Salmerón, Willy A. Schmid, Iván Poduje.- About the Authors.- Index