Approaches to Urban Slums

Approaches to Urban Slums
Author: Barjor Mehta
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 64
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0821373552

This multimedia sourcebook on CD-ROM synthesizes an extensive body of knowledge and experience in managing urban slums accumulated over the last 30 years. The key lessons learned and their implications for future work serve as a useful tool for capacity building and knowledge sharing for policy makers, practitioners, planning institutions, community groups, NGOs, and university students. Approaches to Urban Slums include 14 audiovisual presentations (photographs, illustrations, maps, graphic animations, and aerial imagery, along with voice-over narration) and 18 video interviews.

The Challenge of Slums

The Challenge of Slums
Author: United Nations Human Settlements Programme
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2012-05-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1136554750

The Challenge of Slums presents the first global assessment of slums, emphasizing their problems and prospects. Using a newly formulated operational definition of slums, it presents estimates of the number of urban slum dwellers and examines the factors at all level, from local to global, that underlie the formation of slums as well as their social, spatial and economic characteristics and dynamics. It goes on to evaluate the principal policy responses to the slum challenge of the last few decades. From this assessment, the immensity of the challenges that slums pose is clear. Almost 1 billion people live in slums, the majority in the developing world where over 40 per cent of the urban population are slum dwellers. The number is growing and will continue to increase unless there is serious and concerted action by municipal authorities, governments, civil society and the international community. This report points the way forward and identifies the most promising approaches to achieving the United Nations Millennium Declaration targets for improving the lives of slum dwellers by scaling up participatory slum upgrading and poverty reduction programmes. The Global Report on Human Settlements is the most authoritative and up-to-date assessment of conditions and trends in the world's cities. Written in clear language and supported by informative graphics, case studies and extensive statistical data, it will be an essential tool and reference for researchers, academics, planners, public authorities and civil society organizations around the world.

Slum Health

Slum Health
Author: Jason Corburn
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2016-06-07
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0520962796

Urban slum dwellers—especially in emerging-economy countries—are often poor, live in squalor, and suffer unnecessarily from disease, disability, premature death, and reduced life expectancy. Yet living in a city can and should be healthy. Slum Health exposes how and why slums can be unhealthy; reveals that not all slums are equal in terms of the hazards and health issues faced by residents; and suggests how slum dwellers, scientists, and social movements can come together to make slum life safer, more just, and healthier. Editors Jason Corburn and Lee Riley argue that valuing both new biologic and “street” science—professional and lay knowledge—is crucial for improving the well-being of the millions of urban poor living in slums.

Slums

Slums
Author: Alan Mayne
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2017-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1780238878

More than half of the world’s population now lives in urban areas, and a billion of these urban dwellers reside in neighborhoods of entrenched disadvantage—neighborhoods that are characterized as slums. Slums are often seen as a debilitating and even subversive presence within society. In reality, though, it is public policies that are often at fault, not the people who live in these neighborhoods. In this comprehensive global history, Alan Mayne explores the evolution and meaning of the word “slum,” from its origins in London in the early nineteenth century to its use as a slur against the favela communities in the lead-up to the Rio Olympics in 2016. Mayne shows how the word slum has been extensively used for two hundred years to condemn and disparage poor communities, with the result that these agendas are now indivisible from the word’s essence. He probes beyond the stereotypes of deviance, social disorganization, inertia, and degraded environments to explore the spatial coherence, collective sense of community, and effective social organization of poor and marginalized neighborhoods over the last two centuries. In mounting a case for the word’s elimination from the language of progressive urban social reform, Slums is a must-read book for all those interested in social history and the importance of the world’s vibrant and vital neighborhoods.

Urbanization and Slums

Urbanization and Slums
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2018-06-08
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309474426

The urban built environment is a prime setting for microbial transmission, because just as cities serve as hubs for migration and international travel, components of the urban built environment serve as hubs that drive the transmission of infectious disease pathogens. The risk of infectious diseases for many people living in slums is further compounded by their poverty and their surrounding physical and social environment, which is often overcrowded, is prone to physical hazards, and lacks adequate or secure housing and basic infrastructure, including water, sanitation, or hygiene services. To examine the role of the urban built environment in the emergence and reemergence of infectious diseases that affect human health, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine planned a public workshop. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

Multidimensional Approach to Quality of Life Issues

Multidimensional Approach to Quality of Life Issues
Author: Braj Raj Kumar Sinha
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2019-08-27
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9811369585

This comprehensive volume provides a broad overview of quality of life issues covering a wide geographical region: North America, Europe, parts of Africa, East Asia, and South Asia. Spread over more than 25 chapters, it includes the latest findings from these regions to provide a multidisciplinary account of the major dimensions of quality of life, and therefore has a vast scope. The volume is divided into four thematic parts: theoretical dimension; Demographic dimension; socio-cultural and economic dimensions; and urban and environment related dimensions. Extensive maps, diagrams and tables accompany the discussions and facilitate understanding. This is an indispensable reference and serves the interest of students and scholars of human geography, economics, demography, sociology, anthropology, social work, and philosophy. It is particularly useful for those engaged in further research on quality of life issues.

Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology

Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology
Author: Carol R. Ember
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 1103
Release: 2003-12-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0306477548

Medical practitioners and the ordinary citizen are becoming more aware that we need to understand cultural variation in medical belief and practice. The more we know how health and disease are managed in different cultures, the more we can recognize what is "culture bound" in our own medical belief and practice. The Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology is unique because it is the first reference work to describe the cultural practices relevant to health in the world's cultures and to provide an overview of important topics in medical anthropology. No other single reference work comes close to marching the depth and breadth of information on the varying cultural background of health and illness around the world. More than 100 experts - anthropologists and other social scientists - have contributed their firsthand experience of medical cultures from around the world.

An Interdisciplinary Approach for Disaster Resilience and Sustainability

An Interdisciplinary Approach for Disaster Resilience and Sustainability
Author: Indrajit Pal
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 528
Release: 2019-10-17
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9813295279

This book includes selected papers presented at the international expert forum on “Mainstreaming Resilience and Disaster Risk Reduction in Education,” held at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand on 1–2 December 2017. The journey towards disaster risk reduction and resilience requires the participation of a wide array of stakeholders ranging from academics to policymakers, to disaster managers. Given the multifaceted and interdependent nature of disasters, disaster risk reduction and resilience require a multidisciplinary problem-solving approach and evidence-based techniques from the natural, social, engineering, and other relevant sciences. Traditionally, hazard and disaster-related studies have been dominated by the engineering and social science fields. In this regard, the main purpose of this book is to capture the multidisciplinary and multisectoral nature of disaster risk reduction, and to gather existing data, research, conceptual work, and practical cases regarding risk reduction and its ties to sustainable development under a single “umbrella.” Along with the sustainability aspect, the book also links disaster risk reduction with development, technology, governance, education, and climate change, and includes discussions on challenges, solutions, and best practices in the mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction.