Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Livable Cities?: Urban Struggles for Livelihood and Sustainability
ISBN: 9780520935976
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of California Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Metropolitan areas -- Case studies; Urbanization -- Case studies;

The sprawling cities of the developing world are vibrant hubs of economic growth, but they are also increasingly ecologically unsustainable and, for ordinary citizens, increasingly unlivable. Pollution is rising, affordable housing is decreasing, and green space is shrinking. Since three-quarters of those joining the world's population during the next century will live in Third World cities, making these urban areas more livable is one of the key challenges of the twenty-first century. This book explores the linked issues of livelihood and ecological sustainability in major cities of the developing and transitional world. Livable Cities? identifies important strategies for collective solutions by showing how political alliances among local communities, nongovernmental organizations, and public agencies can help ordinary citizens live better lives.

Peter Evans is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (1995), and coeditor of Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics (California, 1993), among other books.